Trials is a 2D game in 3D environments. Your bike is limited to travelling in a straight line and you must navigate many complex and difficult terrains to cross the finish line. These range from simple straightford levels to tracks so difficult that they were possibly designed by Satan himself. To get going, you must be careful with the throttle, applying power when it’s needed and using the left analog stick to balance your rider. Precision is the key to this game and players must be careful not to accelerate or brake too hard and smash the poor rider’s face into the ground.

Each track is like a puzzle filled with various objects such as barrels, jumps, loops, massive drops, see-saws, tyres, bombs, giant metal cages called the Ball Of Death etc… Essentially, the levels are designed to kill you. Not that you actually see your getting his arms torn off, but one of the funny parts to the Trials games was watching the horrible falls being inflicted on the poor chap in the saddle. Trials HD continues that tradition and there will be many a time when you will see your rider being thrown through a window, or falling down a huge jump or sliding on the ground on his head. There are over 35 of these tracks in total and they range from beginner to extreme and can be played in a Tournament mode where players must try and achieve the fastest overall time. There are also skill games where the player needs to demonstrate various stunts to be awarded medals.  Natually, your scores are recorded and you can compare them with frends, and point and laugh at them when you beat them. To keep Trials HD interesting, the developers have also included a track editor which is extremely simple to use and new tracks can be made quite quickly. These can be shared and others can be downloaded provided people keep playing.

This is a great looking game, it’s got quality lighting effects, detailed maps and environments and it’s surprisingly fast paced when you practice a bit. There is enough here to keep a casual gamer happy. It’s also a nice price on the Live Market as well, at just 1200 xbox gamer points. AND there was an expansion pack released in December for another 400 points. All in all, very nice stuff from RedLynx.

You can download this game now from the Xbox Live Arcade for only 1200 Microsoft points

Developer: EA Digital Illusions

With the release of the first Bad Company game came a more humourous first person shooter, revolving around a team of misfits who were used as cannon fodder before the real special forces were sent in and now with the release of Bad Company 2, all the old crowd are back again. You are in B-Company, a squad specially created to put more unruly soldiers with a high mortality rate and considered “expendable”. In the previous game they escaped from a war with a lot of gold but were captured soon after and now work on a special assaignment for the army, which is to secure a weapon known as “Aurora”.

The first Battlefield: Bad Company game brought some fairly unique features to the first person shooter genre, of which only a handful of games had before it. One of these was that everything on the map was destrucible. Players could level entire buildings to kill any enemies inside if they wished. In this outing this is still featured and has been improved further. Firing rockets, planting explosives, grenades will blow apart walls and collapse entire structures if enough are used all in a very satisfying manner. The use of vehicles is still there and players can drive tanks, quad bikes, boats, APCs etc… There is an impressive stockpile of weaponry at your disposal which should help everyone reduce entire battlefields to rubble.

But the physics in the game really come into play in the multiplayer. Because everything is destructible (apart from some essential supports on buildings), the online battlefield is constantly shifting and changing. There’s no gaurantee that a building will stay standing for an entire match or that the wall you’re hiding behind will protect you completely from gunfire. It eliminates a player’s total familiarity with maps, and while they can only have so many differences in each round played, nobody knows what order it will happen in or who will do it. It adds so much more to the online experience, something which it’s biggest competitor, the Modern Warfare series, lacks in. Another excellent feature is the option of changing your class. You can gain points being a soldier and killing people and completing objectives. However, if you feel that you don’t fit in with that you can be a medic and gain points for healing team mates and recovering them from danger. OR you could be an engineer and sort out those tanks and vehicles for your team.

Because of the different classes, the incredibly detailed and destructable maps, the vehicles, gameplay and a much more widespread appeal, I wouldn’t be suprised if this game toppled the Modern Warfare series off the topspot for online FPS.

Well, there’s always EVE Online from CCP Games. A science fiction space simulator set 21,000 years in the future; this game revolves around the story of a fictional colonial disaster. When the human race populated the Milky Way there was fighting and squabbles over who owned what and “I was here first” etc… However, all the fighting changed with the discovery of a wormhole which led to a new galaxy known as “New Eden”. This had plenty of resources for everyone and quite soon there was colonies sprouting up all over the place. Then disaster struck when the structure that was holding the wormhole open collapsed and the gate closed and supplies from the Milky Way dried up for the new colonies. Many starved to death but 5 survived and now are established societies. This is where you come in. Playing as one of the four different races, you can create a character and buy a little ship. Then you can do some flying, exploring, various missions, mining for resources and trade, eventually working your way up to enable you to buy a bigger ship. ..and then a bigger one after that. Then attach some guns to it! Then start shooting and capturing other ships!

Actually, you can play the game any way you like. That’s the joy of it really. There may be the stunning space scenes, the immense ships you can create, the effects, the people you will meet and naturally the lunatics who take these games too seriously but EVE has evolved into it’s own, almost living, world. It’s even got some of the same problems we see in real life, like in-game corruption and piracy. You could even call it what is possibly the most realistic outlook on our race in the future. But it’s entirely up to the player how far they want to dive into it’s universe and all I wanted was to be a pirate and EVE gave me the opportunity to do that. Thank you EVE Online!