Trials HD from the Xbox Live Arcade is another title saved by having a big TV. When I played the demo on my old TV, I just couldn’t get into the experience. The graphics were too dark and too small. But now, they’re awesome. This is game is what you’d get if Excitebike was really exciting.

As it should have been

Trials HD is a pretty much Excitebike on steroids. We all know the best part about Excitebike was the speed and the jumps. Trials takes this to the level we should have seen several years ago, even in the PS/PS2 days. There’s not a lot to Trials HD, which is why I like it. It’s a straight forward arcade game that fits into the formula well - easy to play, hard to master.

Big jumps, big speed, big crashes

Trials offers a wide variety of challenge that should satisfy just about any gamer’s need. You want to compete for score? You can do it. Compete for time? You can do that too. Or you can just have fun trying to complete the entire game, of which there is a lot of. There are five difficulty levels each with maybe a dozen tracks to take on. Then tack on specific skill challenge boards - like how many bones can you break - and tournament-style challenges and you have hours of game play, and more importantly, replay value.

The perfect balance…almost

The controls of Trials HD are impressive. You’ll find yourself twisting your arm, your head, heck…you whole body, trying to get your bike to make that one big jump without crashing. And be prepared to crash a lot. But when you crash restarting the level or continuing from the last checkpoint a quick button press with ZERO load time. You can even hit restart if you haven’t crashed and just don’t like how you’re driving. The instant continue and restart saves this game more than you’ll realize.

The physics are probably a little exaggerated, but they act as you would expect and learning how each of your bikes behaves is a lot of fun. There’s nothing better than controlling your bike perfectly so it slides down a ramp and then up and out to the next ramp with a flaw. Especially in the early levels where’s it pretty much just jumps, you’ll find yourself trying over and over again just to shave half a second off your time.

There are the usual unlockables in the form of bikes and tracks, but you’ll find progressing through all the difficulties extremely challenging. If there’s one thing to pick on with Trials HD, it’s the shift in difficulty even within the same setting. One track will be a good challenge and the next track will be seemingly impossible, followed by another good challenge. I’m not saying I don’t like a hard challenge, but games need to do so in context with your progress and here it’s just not quite right. But if that’s all there is to pick on then that’s saying something about the quality of the game.

The track editor works well, if you like editing

And if you’re a creative type, there’s even a level editor a la Excitebike that lets you create and share you own tracks. I only dabbled a bit in the editor to get the easy 5G, but it seemed pretty robust and you could naturally spend hours crafting the ultimate track. I don’t think editors work well on consoles, but to each his own.

A burnout saver

Trials HD isn’t a new game. It’s been out long enough to at least gain an expansion and accrue several awards in 2009. But beyond playing this game on a big TV, the fact that friends also had the game helped me make the purchase. I’m a sucker for some leaderboard competition between friends and it’s been a blast racing circles around their scores. I just hope they step up and fight back.

There’s no regret in spending the $15 for Trials HD, that’s for sure. And even if you’re already knee deep in games you haven’t finished yet, fear not, Trials HD will be there waiting for you when you get burned out and need a quick pickme-up. By then it might even be on sale!