A Review of Trials Rising

Player - "Awwwwww yeah, time to have some simple fun!"
Ubisoft - *Deeply Inhales Cigarette* "Do the fun on a loop until it isn't fun anymore, then eventually we'll unlock the NEW FUN"
Player - "Okay, I'll do it...Please don't hurt Rayman"

Can't wait to unlock Aiden Pearce's ICONIC cap

I was quite excited for the game and first started worrying when I saw that world map. Trials was always something like a comfort food for me. I'd sit down, not pay too much attention to it and worked on perfecting those times while a show played in the background, going one level after another. With all that extra gunk added it frankly sounds a bit headache-inducing.

The gameplay and track designs are great, the unnecessarily grindy progression system really isn’t.
Edit: great review btw. Agreed with every single complaint.

First, the way you edit some parts so gameplay fits what you're saying is amazing even if simple to execute. And second, its really sad to me seeing something like this because i have a feeling most of these convoluted additions were not a decision made by the people actually making the game, but came from somewhere else. The idea of making a good product that gets a bad package hits really close to home for me

Lootboxes are the heat death of the universe.

There is no doubt in my mind that the grindy progression system and the lootboxes were the fault of Ubisoft, not Redlynx. Redlynx loves their games and their community very much, it's hard for me to imagine them intentionally screwing us like this.

Is this really going to be enough of a moneymaker for Ubi that it was worth stripping out the structure and lootboxifying it? It just seems like an absolutely strange decision

Dead on with this review...and pretty much exactly what I expected too.
It pains me when games go this way...because it just destroys them for the sake of a quick buck.
I remember the love and heart that went into the first Trials game, where it had guys from the CKY/Jackass crew doing voicework and more.
Where the 'reward' was over coming the challenge, getting the gold medal or beating your friends best time.
The moment I started seeing all of these absurd outfits...was the moment I knew what kind of game this would be.

The players actually asked for more customisation. RedLynx listened.

This will be the best trials game once I unlock all the tracks and they release a patch that shows all the tracks in a simple list from easiest to hardest. Until then evolution is my favorite.

I remember when Trials was a flash game, who knew they'd come so far?

I love the care and effort you put into making these vids.

I love this channel. One of the few remaining honest channels on games.

Fantastic review ... captures exactly how I feel about this game, especially as a long time fan of the games.

I like the attention to detail in the tracks and the interactive elements

I love this series, but early on in the video, seeing that it's designed around progression, lootboxes, and microtransactions turns me off wanting to play it. Thanks for taking the hit on this one :)

Great work!!

Very well articulated as always. Haven't played any Trials games myself but the arguments you make are universal to game design and should be (easily) taken into consideration when analyzing any other franchise. Thank you for filling 10 minutes of my life with amazing content. Keep up the good work.

I don’t recall seeing this review when it came out but spot on with the challenges but underlying so much care in the level design etc. I always appreciate when people mention the tutorials in this game because I spent 2 years on them. An absolute passion project as it’s never been done in a trials game before. Proudest achievement was being in this game.

Absolutely spot-on review I hope they take notes from this video

Brilliant write-up. The general presentation of the game and seemingly constant slog through menus and arbitrary challenges are what turned me away. The simplicity of Trials is what made it work, and though they advertised Rising with that impression at the forefront, all of this overcomplication with the mission structure and social elements only detract from that. It's an unfortunate circumstance of a company's larger-scale decisions impacting the design of the game. Much like the wait times in Just Cause 3's weapon/vehicle drop system, the implementation of microtransactions still affects the overall gameplay, despite being removed before release.

Redlynx asked for the input of core Trials players reharding Trials Rising. That's why the game looks this way. Core players loved Trials Evolution, couldn't get behind Trials Fusion's so-called story. RedLynx took notice of that and decided to ask for input. Players liked to compete online against eachother. It's one of the things that makes the game fun. This option was included in the solo campaign, but you do have the option to "switch off" the ghosts.
Rising has taken all the best part of Evolution and turned it up a couple of notches.

writing on games and game makers tool kit on the same day! i half expected a colab

30+ second loading screens you have to sit through one of the biggest offenders here. Transitioning between tracks used to be instant, then they were a few seconds as the world became more complex. Now the game has so many features each track takes as long as a GTA game to load. It’s absolutely bonkers.

Ol' 2 Videos in 1 Week Hambibobible is back!

That was a fantastic review

Heard a bunch about grind. So after the grind, what do you have? A good game with replayability like previous trials?

Well said!

Remember back when people were cool with cosmetic only loot boxes? Pepperidge Farm remembers...
If you haven't already, check out the mobile game Trials Frontier, from what I've played of Rising, they seemed to use a lot of the out of game stuff (specifically the "cardboard cutouts" giving you missions) which I think worked out pretty well for them.

Very good review!!

Prefect review

Great review.

holy shit, I knew that Fusion involved the clones but I didn't think of it as a metaphor for the company!

So i have to choose between evo, fusion and rising, which one should i pick...

I haven't really played a trials game before, but so far I like it with the tutorials etc. I hope the issues get fixed soon and they don't go the Trackmania Turbo way and let the game rotting, after it was released and the problems came to the surface.

Is the podcast uploaded to anywhere aside from itunes?

ive been playing for over an hour. and I still dont know how to start the campaign ?

my god the amount of puns you made XD

As someone who's never played a Trials game before, should I avoid this one and go with Fusion instead?

Great game. I really only had to grind 4 levels with challengers and really wasn't that hard as should rerun them anyways to grab squirrels and diamond runs. sell your dup items and buy stuff form the store if really want a item. acorns can be earned with squirrels, and by time hit medium already have last bike

A really good review in my mind. I have been enyoing Rising quite a bit. I think that with a little bit of tweaking this title could be the best trials for both hardcore fans and casuals

This is the best Trials review of all time.

When I was I the mood to play trails rising again I've noticed thay didn't update the game

I was completely obsessed with this game, I played each trial over and over until I had a gold medal, I even did all the contracts I could see - but then I hit that wall, despite all my work I was still several levels away from unlocking more and I just lost all motivation. I hope they change this in a patch because I'd love to actually, ya know, finish the game I was enjoying

I think Rising sadly has much less story than the little that Fusion had, but I'd be super happy to find out Rising had some kind of dark backstory

In the tiniest projects, in the smallest of products, where there is budget but no corporate oppression, is where you can find the most heart, in the AAA industry at least.

WELL SAID THANKS FOR TELLING THE TRUTH

Spot on!

I was actually thinking of picking them up, because the back to basics aesthetic was one I was happy to see return. But this review pretty much made it a guarantee that I will never get this.

Very fair criticism and the grind when unlocking the tracks the first time is annoying, though you can totally ignore the lootboxes if they annoy you, I do and somehow without opening them I still end up with new shit in my garage all the time.

I had frame rate issues on the switch while playing the free demo

Ive been grinding all these contracts for around 6 hours now. 10 back flips here and there. It’s doing my head in. Sick of playing same levels over and over and over. and I’ve yet to even unlock hard levels!!!All I want is the extreme tracks! Other than that it’s a great game tbh

Fantastic analysis! Unfortunate you completely ignored multiplayer, the editor, and track central though.

i find it ironic that the first time i played trials was the mobile version, here we are with a mobile-esque progression in a console game. although it sucks that all the bad things are there, it's good to hear that the gameplay is still good.

Doesn’t the game let you play as Tiemo from My Summer Car?

I played Trials Fusion for a while but i hated the menus so much that i never came back.

Pre-order and get the Ezio pack featuring the CLASSIC outfit you've wore for 10 years AND the DaVinci bike

holy shit trials had sequels after the 360 one?

You mean there were other games between this and HD? I have missed out on a lot. That does seem disappointing the direction they're taking it in. Who bets paid shortcuts get stealth-introduced eventually? Seems like it's designed for that to happen at some point. Ugh. Loot boxes. And ugh, other players. Is this a game you need to play online to complete, then? Or can it be single-playered?

7:03 , I see what you did there....

I should re-install Fusion

Glad to know I'm not the only one who's brain has a really low response to Pavlovian conditioning

Ok, ok, I have to stop here a second. If you are not interested on crates (what I share), don't open them and keep playing. Nobody is forcing you to waste your time on them.

Hamdaddy calm your HAMS just caught your noire P.I. Hulk video this morning for breakfast and now ham’s our here hitting these moto stunts??
C A L M
I T

The triple AYY industry is choking it self out. This looks so much like a mobile game it's uncanny. It's actually sad when you can see the effort and care the developers put in between the cracks

It really is an indictment of the industry that reviewers are now praising games (or at least are pleasantly surprised) for having microtransactions that can only be used to purchase cosmetics

Trials is actually a real sport! You won’t see the crazy roller coaster-y insanity you see in the games, but the core “dirtbikes pretending to be cats” technical aspect is definitely there. Look it up on YT if ya want. It’s pretty neat.

I do like the smaller sections of ubisoft. I want another Grow home/up game. Weird that the climbing was more engaging than another Ubisoft game.

Trials rising challenges are like:
- Do 2365 backflips and frontflips
- not make any mistakes
- beat xXTrialsProXx‘s time
- do a 2 mile wheele
- dont have fun and play the same level over and over again until you wanna quit...

There are some slow downs with PS4. Needless to say that with the need of precision inputs a slowdown will ruin that track for u.

It does have a story of a company doing something terrible still... pay attention to your surroundings though it is hard to find and very rare

It's more frontier than fusion, but it has fatshady.

I love Ubisoft and how one moment i can be totally enjoying their games and the next being completely overtaken by disappointment. Shitty, but kinda fascinating to have this many mixed feeling about a company.

You guys remember when games would give you cosmetics for beating difficult challenges?

All challenge is hostile. Ideally a game should play itself, at which point it would be a movie. Ideally, a game should not exist.

At its core? it's a great game.
If I played Trials HD, Evolution, or any of the other versions, maybe I'd be disappointed at this entry. But with it being my second Trials game (Trials Fusion was my first) I really enjoyed it.
Just a shame everything Ubisoft clearly had its grubby fingers on is horrendous.

anyone wanna go back to ps3?

The new Ubification is grind, and I'm not impressed.

5 seconds for a fault is dumb as fuck.
Also I hate having to race ghosts on every track but at least I can make them invisible.

This game is perfect in my opinion ! But thx for reviewing it .

Jokes on U-bisoft, I don't even play big developer games anymore!

While this is a well made review I can't agree with it 100% due to personal Opinion. That is ok, but i fell like writing it down anyway. Maybe just to tell my perspecive.
I really didn't like Fusion. Something was odd. Maybe it was because of the futuristic setting (but not future enough to be western again like in the Mobile Version Trials Frontier) but the tracks felt like they missed something. I gave up on it after some time, while I had bite my way through Evolution to unlock those Extreme Levels (My Point of having "beaten" a Trials game, as those are definetly above my Skill Level).
I have just "beaten" Rising yesterday and would argue that the Grind only came in the last few Leagues, when I just skiped through the game a bit to have more unbeaten Tracks on offer.
The Contracts had the effect that I can take a bit more time when I didn't get a Gold on a Track yet (Which became a bit easier later down the line, thanks to the way the game hands out Medals now) and jump back in to improve or challenge myself. Some even challenged me to beat a Track in a specific way I never thought about how possible it would be.
The Improve aspect could also be applied to the (a little bit forced) Social Compenent of having opponents on a Track. The first time on a track with those is sort of orientation for the first three Medals. Every other time after that, when you go back to the Track, they will allways have better times in an attempt to push you forward.
Ironically one of my Favorite Track is a Stadium, that being the Montreal Mayhem for feeling the most realistic, Monster Mash being a Photo Finish close second. For completion, other Favorites include: I Fell Tower, Siberian Skies or Seoul Searching.
In Short: Rising is the Sequel to Evolution that I hoped for and the Fluff rather added to it rather than stretching it out.
But the Gear Crates were a stupid Idea.
Next I'm thinking about going back to Trials of the Blood Dragon, the Story-Heavy one, and beat that.

I don’t think there are more stadiums instead of great tracks because there are a lot of good tracks in this game.
The grind is real though. But the contracts make me play the easier tracks more and makes them a real challenge now and then. It is just 2 much or give me the hard and extremes first and then the contracts.
And for your info. Yo dont have! to open crates. Just ignore that shit.
Good review!

In the first 2 trials, YOU were in control 100% of the time, in their newer entries, there are too many moving parts and you end up doing your best, hoping that the randomness of the physics will play ball, removing any sense of accomplishment and progress from the part of the player.
If you were #1 in a course in Trials Evo, you were a great player, if you are the #1 in a level of Fusion or Rising, all I know is that you played long enough to get good RNG...

I feel like people dont realise that neither the costumization, nor the missions aspect of the game are forced onto you ...
Yes, trials is / was for many people about the simplicity of the concept. You don't seem to realise that this simplicity is still very present and none of the missions HAVE to be done. This is still a great review, i just felt like this information was missing

I'm not sure if anyone could even argue that the game's somehow dumbed down. 2 buttons and a stick never were exactly complicated controls, and the game just accommodates new players better by having tutorial stages should you want to do them, with more easy and beginner level tracks than I can remember Fusion having, without compromising on the quality, complexity, and amount of the harder levels.

Unfortunately nowadays there is a real money currency to buy new tracks and bikes...

I absolutely adore the customisation in Rising. It's something I've wanted from a Trials game since Evolution on the 360, but since I never got it I never played another.
Rising was fun from what I played in the beta, and I really want to get in on it, but you're right about how the loot crates get in the way. I'd much prefer a shop system akin to many Neversoft games like Guitar Hero where you can still have all the customisation, and none of the monetisation BS, but alas; those games are a thing of the past.

So... this is STEEP with bikes? All the bits about events and having to unlock content sounds the same

Not gonna lie, they had us at the first haf

The soundtrack sounds like cover versions of songs that don't exist

Sounds like Steep another game under Ubisoft

lmao I was wondering how long it'd be till I saw swear words plastering the players

I decided I was done with Ubisoft after far cry 5.

I actually prefer the rising level design over fusion's future bullshit

Dab if you want loot boxes in every game!

I am really considering never buying a game with lootboxes again - in the faint hope that if others do the same we might relegate this blight on games to the annals of history.

so.......do you like the game or not?

I thought it was only me who got annoyed at the way you progress through the game ! Anyways great review I agree with all of it.