Ubisoft is still keeping its Trials franchise alive and well, but weirdly enough it has grown in complexity over the years, way more than it should have ever been for an arcade-like experience. This is when Tate Multimedia’s Urban Trial franchise started to shine, with simplified controls and mechanics to capture the essence the earlier Trials games had. Even if their 2018 outing, the mediocre Urban Trial Playground, didn’t set the world on fire, the follow-up, Urban Trial Tricky, received quite a handful of praise when it was originally released for the Nintendo Switch. It took a while for the Xbox One and PS4 to receive their own ports, with extra enhancements and a handful of new cosmetics, in the shape of Urban Trial Tricky Deluxe Edition. Let’s see if it was worth the wait.

In Urban Trial Tricky, you control a motorcycle and are told to either complete a racing gauntlet in the shortest amount of time possible, or to score as many points and complete as many objectives as you can within a time limit in playground-esque levels reminiscent of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series. The catch is that this is a 2D, side-scrolling game. There’s not a lot of room for you to perform your tricks, nor a lot of combos to pull off. You have to properly learn when and where to turn your bike in order to extend your combos and obtain higher scores. In the case of racing sections, you also need to learn the best angles and positions for you to perform jumps.

This works pretty well all thanks to its simple control system. For the most part, this can be summarised by using a jump button, a spinning button, and two trick buttons in conjunction with using the analog stick to perform wheelies, backflips, and the like. The controls are easy to learn and hard to master, as they should be, but I feel like they occasionally did not register the inputs I was pressing. Nothing too egregious, as this is not exactly a hard game by any means, but it was a nuisance nonetheless. I also needed some time to get used to the physics as well, as there were moments in which I swore I was supposed to smash my rib cage into pieces, only for nothing to happen, as well as situations in which the opposite happened.

Thankfully, levels are short and very replayable. I really enjoyed the objective-based playgrounds, even if they weren’t big enough to give me room to perform extensive tricks. It boils down to the fun combo system, the excellent performance (60fps at all times, baby!), and blistering-fast loading times. I know Urban Trial is best suited for portables due to its arcade-like nature, but these performance perks (courtesy of the improved hardware) were very welcome in my books.

Even if Urban Trial Tricky doesn’t break any boundaries when it comes to its visuals, I appreciate that the developers have decided to ditch Urban Trial Playground‘s realism in favor of a more colorful and cartoonish art style. The decision allowed the level and environment designers to go wild with more absurd playgrounds to toy with. I also certainly wasn’t expecting for its soundtrack to be as catchy and memorable as it ended up being, with a ton of instrumental hip-hop beats that are stuck in my head right now and won’t be leaving any time soon.

In short, even though Urban Trial Tricky was clearly meant to be enjoyed on a portable, I won’t deny I had quite a bit of fun playing it on an Xbox. Even if I don’t have access to the novelty of portability, I was more than satisfied with its improved performance and faster loading times. The game as a whole is a bit rough around the edges, but its presentation is strong and its gameplay, despite a bit janky at times, is simple to learn and fun to mess around with.

 

Graphics: 7.5 It’s not overly detailed, but its cartoonish art style is pleasant to the eyes, and it runs incredibly well on the Xbox One’s hardware.	Gameplay: 7.5 The control scheme is easy to learn and hard to master, but I feel like there are instances in which the game doesn’t register my button presses properly. The physics also take some time to get used to.
Sound: 9.0 Urban Trial Tricky‘s soundtrack is a lot catchier than it has any right to be.	Fun Factor: 7.5 Urban Trial Tricky is clearly best suited for a portable due to its small levels and arcade-based nature, but I won’t deny I had quite a bit of fun with it on a more powerful system that allowed for faster load times and better performance.
Final Verdict: 7.5

Urban Trial Tricky Deluxe Edition is available now on PS4, Xbox One, PC and Switch.

Reviewed on Xbox One.

A copy of Urban Trial Tricky Deluxe Edition was provided by the publisher.