Trials Evolution DLC – Origin of Pain [400 points]
To be honest, I
was more than a little surprised to see paid-for DLC coming out for
the excellent Trials Evolution. After all, with thousands of
freely downloadable tracks, often by the Red Lynx team themselves, I
figured you had as much Trials as you could ever want (or
need) right at your fingertips.
So what has Red
Lynx given us for our 400 points? Well I am afraid to say, very
little actually. There are 36 new trials stages, all taking place on
the new Paine Island map. The difficulty curve on these is a lot
harsher than on the regular Evolution levels, up there with original
Trials HD levels. After the initial handful of fairly straight
forward trials you will soon find yourself back in sweaty hands and
bulging veins on your forehead mode.
The trials themselves are well
designed, and feel polished, though after playing some of the truly
creative user maps they seem quite tame design wise. There are some stand out moments to be had though. There is a
cool 'Portal' style level with teleporters and crazy gravity,
another military level with incoming gunfire and crashing planes, and a very cool 'toy box' level which amps up the creativity slightly.
There are 10
super-cross stages, all of which are fun to play and are nice to see
after playing the meagre selection currently available to
death. The designs are tight and result in some great races, but they
don't seem to make much use of the new items in the DLC, a big
oversight if you ask me.
The one new bike
on offer, the Gecko 520 is unlocked from the offset, and is a BMX
bike. After the initial amusement of seeing your rider franticly
pedalling away in mid-air like something from a roadrunner cartoon,
you soon realise that the Gecko is an absolute horror to control.
Every time you accelerate, even slightly, your wheels slip out as if
you have just run over a banana skin. It is very frustrating.
There are some new
audio tracks which fit the game nicely, and are less intrusive than
some of the games regular songs. Heck, it's just nice to have some
variety in the listening experience as you fail over and over again.
Some of the tracks are actually very good, the toy box music
definitely sounds like Amiga music (a massive Win!), but some are also quite
dull (one in particular sounds like an episode of the Charlie Brown
and Snoopy cartoon).
So we are left
with two very bland and unimaginative skill games (fire bike from cannon, get bike up steep hill), and a load of pointless unlockable
'heads' for your rider and that is about all there is here.
Of course
all the new traps, gadgets and environments are all available for use
in the editor, so it will be interesting to see what the dedicated
fans can come up with. Judged on the amazing creations we have seen
so far, made with the standard Evolution, I am certain we will see
some pretty spectacular tracks.
I think for huge fans
of Trials Evolution this will be a no-brainer, and 400 points is not
a lot of money for new content. I just feel the fairly limited amount
of content on offer is slightly disappointing. Nothing here blew me away like many
of the excellent user maps. It just feels like more of the same, even
if that is more polished, well designed tracks to race around. The
fairly minimal content and improvements are actually shown up by the
very generosity of giving away an editor and tracks for free to begin
with.
If you are really
into creating your own tracks then I am sure it is worth the price of
admission for the new editor features alone. For those of us that are
happy playing other people's creations, only time will tell if this
is a worthwhile DLC.
For
now though I feel that there isn't anything particularly special
about Origin of Pain. Certainly nothing you can't garner the same
level of entertainment
from, for free, via the download tracks
feature. However it is only 400 points, so if you love Trials Evolution, this will give you more entertainment and some cool new features.
The Good:
- More excellent, well designed courses
- New and improved environments and items
- Great, yet fairly unimaginative Supercross tracks for multiplayer
- New creative possibilities for the track editor
The Bad:
- Nothing really spectactular on offer
- You can have as many tracks as you like for free via the in-game 'Get Tracks'
(add 1 point if you create levels using the editor)
