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Trials Evolution

Trials Evolution: Origin of Pain

You'll quickly remember how much you hated angles of forty-five degrees or more.

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Welcome back to Evolution, by way of a newly-released and fairly chunky DLC pack; thirty plus tracks split across new challenges, tournaments and skill circuses and planted in an all-new Paine Island.

I know you've been away for a while. So have I. Somewhere during the shift between digital summer and retail winter the traditional time-sink of Trials Evolution got misplaced, forgotten about. Those spare five minutes that turned into hours of sharpening skills on a handful of tracks. The Friday nights that were bookended by Evolution's multiplayer when friends were round.

Origin of Pain refreshes the memory - the jarring transfers between exhilaration, despondency, frustration. The intoxicating relationship that was arguably more hate than love, but you never considered divorce.

400 Microsoft Points is an amazingly cheap excuse to get back on the bike and learn to appreciate the perfect physics of a game that was always part puzzle, part racer. But the cost of loose change will also get you front-side seats to Red Lynx's more inventive courses.

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Trials Evolution

Japanese gardens, sandstorms, toy boxes, post-apocalyptic cities, warp gates firing you through space and time, all and more you'll burn through during your time on the new mini-island.

Sure most of the details will only be on the periphery of your vision - fixated as it is on the next curve or angle of the track. And there's not as much crazy stunt work on the tracks themselves, but you remain an appreciative, if casual, observer of the studio's level of inventiveness.

But the core is that attempt of an unbroken race from left to right. In this, the DLC proves true to the creator's wishes to keep the courses open to all: long-term Extremists won't find much to break a sweat over here, but for the other 99%, you'll easily see the double-figures sky-rocket on retries.

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There's a not-quite balanced attempt here to intermix tough tracks with easier courses rather than steadily scaling the difficulty towards impossible inclines. Challenges are still split by difficulty, but there a definite switch in offering the odd track designed for pure fun in-between the nightmarish ones, and as a result there's a better rhythm to the DLC.

Trials Evolution

But the pack tosses in some curveballs, such as multiple tracks boosting you off the ground (via wind thermals), or spitting you into the air (via warp gates). Red Lynx however always make sure you feel in complete control in those moments of air-time, a critically important factor and another reason to commend the physics system the game has in play.

The game also exchanges the lengthy course run that climaxed the main game for a complex Aftermath level set, as the name would suggest, in the wake of some city disaster that'll test the patience (and give the hardcore some meat to finally chew). Again, Red Lynx total erases the memory of rather bland warehouses from the first game for locations that are equally cinematic, abstract and tongue-in-cheek - and the new music to compliment the areas is a fantastic addition.

The BMX inclusion is great as well, a feather-weight model that requires significant adjustment from the heavier motorcycles to hit jumps and power through speedways.

Another host of great tracks, new rides and more, all for 400 Microsoft Points. Bargain. Just get ready to loose yourself in that time sink for a few weeks again.

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09 Gamereactor UK
9 / 10
+
+ Trackside designs are fantastic. + BMX is a lot of fun. + New music. + Cheap price.
-
- Track designs are great, but nothing mind-blowing.
overall score
is our network score. What's yours? The network score is the average of every country's score

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