March 4, 2009
X-Treme Motorbike Skillz
So, last weekendish, Steam had one of its many sales. This was a “Indie Games” pack. It was a whole bunch of Indie Games for 10 dollars. In this pack was the PC version of Eets, which I paid 10 dollars for by itself on the 360 and thought it worth every penny. It was a pretty darn good deal. So I just gave in and jumped on it.
One of the reasons I jumped on it is because it included a copy of Trials 2: Second Edition. Way, way back in the GFW Radio days, one might recall Shawn Elliot talking about this game at length. Seeing it in the pack was one of the reasons I pulled the trigger on it.
It’s every bit as ridiculous as its name.
Basically, you’re a guy on a motorcycle, and you’re on a 2D plane. You can accelerate, brake, and lean the driver forward and backward. And that’s it. And with those tools, you have to traverse increasingly fucked-up terrain. It’s really hardcore, honestly, because you have such little tools at your disposal. You have to learn how to game the physics system in order to, say, make your rider jump higher or longer or whatever.
What happens is you dying all the damn time. You drive forward a little bit, then crash. Your driver goes flying. You hit backspace to go back to the last checkpoint, and try again. Oftentimes, you’ll die right after getting past something to the next checkpoint, but it feels SO GOOD to have pulled off the crazy shit to get there. Then you keep going.
This is a game for the hardest of the hardcore, who enjoy mastering a system so completely that they can do crazy-ass shit like this without any issue whatsoever. I am not that person, so I really wasn’t expecting to enjoy the game as much as I have. I was expecting to try it, and then move on. But I’ve beat all the easy levels and I’m working on the Medium ones, and I’m kinda hooked. The game is a ton of fun, and it’s actually a pretty darn good podcast game as well, which is always a plus. I mean, I die every five seconds. It takes me at least 30 tries to get to the next checkpoint on almost every level at this point. But for some reason, it is a good time. I honestly can’t help but recommend it.
Reminds me of some ancient sprite game I played back in the dark ages on my C64. There was a lot of death involved, frequently involving the little dude flying across the screen. Eventually, my brother and I had enough of the courses, and just competed to see how far we could fling the little bastard. “Ahhhhhh!”
Comment by Cris — March 4, 2009 @ 2:51 am