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It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to buy anything half decent for just 99p – it’s hardly enough to cover the dash of milk added to our coffee. And so with Mr Trials coming to Xbox at such a price – a penny short of a pound – we didn’t jump aboard our trials bike expecting too much.
And not too much is what we’ve got. In fact, we’ve been left with one of the buggiest games that we’ve played for a while. One that verges on being unplayable. Or at the very least, uncompletable.
In Mr Trials you hop aboard a little trials bike, left to conquer the series of levels put in front of you, riding out across various worlds. Set visually in a voxel style, all blocky and sharp corners, there’s nothing here to suggest that Mr Trials will be able to make for any stunt medals or podium place. But whilst the premise is decent, and we’ve been up for a Trials killer for a while, the execution is anything but.
Running from left to right across your screen, slightly tilted into an isometric viewpoint, hammering the throttle, teasing your bike across platforms, over jumps, into loops and pulling off stunts is the name of the game. And honestly, it does that just about okay, with some twitchy feels to the bike handling. It’s nothing that we wouldn’t have previously honed in Trials Fusion and Trials Rising (before the difficulties of those brought out rage quits), and whilst Mr Trials is far away from being able to compete with those behemoths of the trials scene, it can at least just about hang in their company.
Fifty stages await too, and when you consider the absurdly low asking price, that is superb value for money. Two pence per stage, no matter if some of them only last ten seconds, feels a steal. And that’s something which will go in Mr Trials’ favour – a high content to cash outlay will always tempt a gamer in. Each of those stages offers up collectible coins, target and stunt scores, and there are also ‘gifts’ and a weird little traffic light mini-game, all alongside a 3-star completion system.
You can then throw in some skins too, kitting Mr Trials, and his bike, out in a variety of blocky styles, purchased through some earned in-game cash. Is that a game changer? No, not at all, but it’s nice to have the option, adding a teeny tiny bit of fun and some comedic value.
At least it would if Mr Trials on Xbox worked properly. But it doesn’t. In fact, it crashes every single time an achievement pops, as the player is gifted up to 200 Gamerscore with every ping. Now, being dropped back to the Xbox dashboard wouldn’t be too bad as compensation for such a Gamerscore gift, especially if you could then fire up Mr Trials and jump back in at your dropping off point. But you can’t, and instead you are left to start from Level 1, repeating everything all over again. At least you are unless the level select screen decides to work, but again, buggy as hell.
Remember, 50 levels are included here, with the final achievement popping as Level 50 is completed. Imagine therefore getting to – say – Level 40, battling through the twitchy stunt-fuelled stages that have come before it, only to see the game break as your 200 Gamerscore arrives, chucking you back at Level 1 again. Actually, don’t imagine it – that’s exactly what WILL happen should you play Mr Trials on Xbox Series X|S.
That constant crashing, the constant need to run level after level after level, time and time again, as Gamerscore notifications break the game beyond repair, means you should do your level best to not play Mr Trials. At least not in its current launch state, at least not until the devs at Entity3 get a fix out. The thing is, will those devs get a fix out? And should we expect more for 99p? Well, yes we damn well should, and it’s beyond me how Mr Trials passed certification, 99p or not.
It’s a shame that Mr Trials is just SO broken. It’s a shame because the premise, the visual look, the catchy little soundtrack (although it won’t be long before you switch that off) and the gameplay could just about have proven to be decent. And it’s a shame because we thought we were in for a real bargain, with just a 99p outlay required. It was never going to be a Game of the Year contender, but hopes for something half decent were real.
Yet, 99p or not, a broken game is a broken game. And that means Mr Trials should be avoided at all costs – unless you have the patience of a saint and are happy to run through completed levels over and over again.