By Mike Strong on April 26, 2014 at 7:30pm
"Trials Fusion" made it clear to me that there are essentially two distinct genres of games. Focusing on whether something is an RPG, a shooter, or an adventure game is much too technical of an analysis. I now realize that a game should only be classified as either happily immersive or challengingly rewarding. I admit that this sounds like a naïve generalization, but despite the wide variety of games these days, genre classification simply comes down to the type of satisfaction a game shoots for.
Games like “Trials,” “Spelunky,” and even “Dark Souls” favor trial and error satisfaction over the classic immersion of a world you use to escape. Realizing this distinction leads to both an understanding of why “Trials” is called “Trials,” as well as just what makes it so great. "Fusion" alongside the rest of the other "Trials" games are essentially slower-paced and more calculated versions of “Excitebike.” But to stop there would be to sell the game short. "Fusion" features a deep track-maker, which also means it has a robust online system including leaderboards and rating systems.
The core of "Fusion’s" gameplay is in its intelligently-crafted physics system. While riding your motorcycle through each course, you must carefully focus on leaning and feathering the throttle. These mechanics are explained quite well early on, and the need for them is paced out well enough for newcomers to enjoy the ride. But later levels step up the challenge significantly, making getting to the end of a level much more important than beating any high scores. I just wish that there was some sort of speed tracker on the screen. Knowing what speed I was going at when I overshot a jump would have helped immensely and only would have added to the satisfaction of trial and error gameplay. The last two or three events were so challenging at times, I found myself frustrated and believed I may never progress any further. It is odd that the first two thirds of the game executed trial-and-error gameplay so well, while the end is so infuriatingly impossible.
Each level has the potential to reward you with three medals: bronze, silver, and gold. These medals are essential to unlocking later stages, and simply getting bronzes or silvers will halt your progress about halfway through the game. This need to shave seconds off of your time to get the gold led to some of the most fun I had with the game. At any point during a track, a simple button press will throw you back to the start of the level in the blink of an eye. Problems like texture pop-in arose here, but that is such a minor problem next to the game’s otherwise beautiful visuals.
While running a track that you or a friend have already done, you can see a ghost of their player. This allows for an exciting system of attempting to beat your friend’s times, which is then posted to their main game screen. This mechanic, alongside the medal system, caused me to play and restart certain tracks more than 100 times in a sitting with no anger or boredom. One downside I found with this was that the same narration is played over the track each time you retry it. On certain tracks, I would hear the robotic narrator’s same lame joke over and over again. But getting me to restart a level that many times in one sitting is a feat that only the best of trial and error games can achieve. And the game’s significant number of tracks makes "Fusion" more than worth the cost. With new tracks added on a daily basis and placed in a well-organized “top rated this week” system, there is just so much to do in this game.
"Fusion" features a new addition to the "Trials" series in the form of freestyle tricks. The physics of the game are put to good use here, allowing you to create your own tricks and combine them with back flips and front flips. But this mechanic is not even introduced until almost halfway through and only matters on one or two tracks in each event. This is only excusable because freestyle tricks would get in the way when you are trying to beat someone’s posted time on a track."
I will never feel nostalgic enough to play "Trials Fusion" again. Any time I hear a classic tune from “The Legend of Zelda,” I immediately want to play it. But hearing Fusion’s hilariously self-aware title track that says “Welcome to the future. Man. Machine. The future,” will never inspire me to pick up my controller and grind away at a high score. But that is not to say I did not have a great time with the game. This is not the type of game that needs to immerse you in a world. It only asks that you have fun attempting its over-the-top tracks again and again. And I certainly did.
