There are moments in Trials Rising when your stomach rises up into your chest, you can feel the pull of gravity through your TV screen, and the bike hangs in the air for the briefest of seconds like a roller coaster at the peak of the tracks before plummeting back to earth. The Trials series has always excelled at these pulse-pounding moments. Despite the fact that you?re playing a sidescroller?rarely considered an especially immersive genre?you genuinely feel like you?re there. You feel like you?re experiencing the course alongside your avatar.
In fact, this feeling is frequently intensified by Trials Rising?s core mechanics. Twitching a smidge too far in any direction could result in your character exploding into a million little Fox-sponsored pieces. Across a slew of games, developer RedLynx has mined the series? Keep It Simple Stupid controls?R2 to accelerate, L2 to brake, left stick to lean?for exhilarating moments of tension facilitated by tightly designed levels.
The latest title in the long-running motorbiking series continues to nail these basics. Trials Rising feels consistently good to play across a slew of levels that test your skills on a very neat difficulty curve. But I?m continually impressed by how the series? camerawork solves a multitude of potential issues that 2.5D games often face.
It?s All How You Look At It
Trials Rising?s camera placement is nothing new. Like Trials Fusion? the most recent mainline game in the series?Rising maintains control of...