Trials Fusion

UPDATE: Now that Trials of the Blood Dragon is live on the market we can confirm its price of £11.99 / $14.99.

The next Trials release will be a mash-up with over-the-top Far Cry spin-off Blood Dragon.

Arcade stunt bike racer Trials Fusion will be expanded next month by an add-on that stars a cat riding a fire-breathing unicorn.

Yep, that's right.

Trials Fusion: Awesome Level MX will be available to download on 14th July for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

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Trials Fusion publisher Ubisoft has today released the sixth and final DLC in the stunt bike racer's season pass.

Trials Fusion's Fault One Zero DLC is out now on Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC. PS4 and PS3 users in North America will have already received it while those in Europe need to wait until tomorrow.

You know how no-one really works past 3pm on a Friday anyway? No? Uh, me neither. Anyway, we've come up with possibly the best way to end the week - an office Trials Fusion livestream. Come 3pm, our regular livestream host with the most Ian Higton will be joined by a bunch of would-be challengers, including our new senior video producer Johnny Chiodini, and together they'll keep you company right up until quittin' time. The winners will earn our love and respect, the losers will be appropriately harangued, and we'll all go home with a better knowledge of how bike-based physics work. Sound good?

Trials Fusion has finally added online multiplayer to all platforms as part of a free update, publisher Ubisoft has announced.

Futuristic stunt racer Trials Fusion now includes the ability to form clan-like "teams" of up to 50 members, thanks to a new free game update.

Each team has their own name, emblem and bulletin board, so friends can co-ordinate and communicate.

The feature arrives ahead of Fusion's upcoming online multiplayer mode, which is set to launch via another free update in early 2015.

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Trials Fusion will get a free update later this year adding online multiplayer and doubling the number of players from four to eight.

Welcome to the Abyss, the upcoming third expansion for Trials Fusion, launches for PC, Xbox 360 and Xbox One on 7th October and a day later on PlayStation 4.

Season Pass owners can snap up the add-on for free - otherwise it'll set you back £3.99.

Included within the nautical-themed DLC are another 10 tracks, 24 challenges, five Achievements/Trophies and another batch of objects for the game's versatile track creator.

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A 16-year-old Trials Fusion genius is building a functional version of Minecraft within RedLynx's racer.

It's taken a few months but Trials Fusion has finally surpassed 1m sales. That's across PC, PS4, Xbox One and Xbox 360.

Coinciding with the news comes the release of a new free update that lets you build your own Supercross tracks for local multiplayer. There are improvements to Tournaments, Track Central and the Track Editor, too.

In addition, 15 of the best community tracks have been bundled up and stuffed on the Uplay Recommended feed in Track Central.

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Trials Fusion's first of six DLC packs will launch on 29th July with the Riders of the Rustlands add-on.

Ubisoft has added a Tournament mode to Trials Fusion in a free update to the game.

The patch, available from yesterday evening on all platforms, allows you to enter three ongoing tournaments of varying difficulties.

Each event runs for a limited time and will award users in-game XP depending on their ranking. It's similar in mechanics to the timed challenges found in Rayman Legends.

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With the arrival of a new Trials game, it's the Digital Foundry tradition to accompany the launch with an in-depth tech interview with RedLynx's tech mastermind, lead graphics programmer Sebastian Aaltonen - aka sebbbi. Whereas previous interviews have concentrated on how RedLynx coaxed stunning effects, physics and performance from Xbox 360 hardware, the topic of conversation shifts somewhat here: Trials Fusion is the studio's first simultaneous release, multi-platform project - and a cross-generation game to boot.

Respawn's shooter Titanfall is the UK's number one game for a second week running, successfully fending off the challenge of EA's 2014 FIFA World Cup game.

Trials Fusion is the most ambitious entry in RedLynx's physics-driven motorbike game to date, developed in tandem with other internal studios at Ubisoft and delivered on four platforms - PS4, Xbox One, PC and Xbox 360. The most exciting battleground is next-gen console, where Fusion shoots for full 1080p on PS4, while optimisation has clearly gone down to the wire on Xbox One, which arrived at 800p before being boosted to 900p in a day-one patch.

The Trials series has always had convincing physics, dynamic lighting, a bullish commitment to 60fps and material effects impacting control across the environment, and despite splitting its focus across more platforms we find Trials Fusion is much the same. It still uses a 2D plane for gameplay while flexing its technical might with outlandish, detailed 3D backdrops, and thankfully the team knows when to hold back eye candy for the sake of playability.

This goes for resolution, too, where the Xbox One version has made waves for a last-minute switch in specification. Inspecting captures before and after the patch, we're able to confirm the default resolution is 1408x800, rising impressively to 1600x900 post-patch to achieve a 30% increase in pixels. This still falls short of matching PS4 running at 1920x1080 (and of course PC running at that and more), but produces a marked boost in clarity that softens the blow.

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The Xbox One version of Trials Fusion will require a day-one patch to raise the game's resolution to 900p, Ubisoft has confirmed to Eurogamer.

Before that the game will run at 800p, albeit at 60fps.

The game's PlayStation 4 version will run at 1080p 60fps from launch.

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How do you make a sequel to Trials Evolution? The most recent 2D trials biking game from RedLynx, Evolution had everything: spectacular level design, crowd-pleasing acrobatics, tight technical riding and endless user-generated content. It took Trials HD to what felt like its logical extreme: a potent blend of accessibility and hardcore challenge, with all the modern technical accoutrements. Trials Fusion makes a few changes to that formula in search of another hit, but it does so very cautiously.

The basics obviously remain intact. You still take control of a trials biker and ride over impossible courses filled with huge pitfalls and obstacles, trying your best not to spill yourself from the saddle in violent and comical ways, using a flawless instant-restart button to have a thousand variations on 'one more go' whenever you do. The controls are as sharp as they have ever been and have you back in the zone in seconds.

Fusion's biggest change is probably the setting: after the back country locations of Evolution, RedLynx catapults you into a space-age future of gun-metal greys, dropships and neon. The artists haven't thrown the old world out completely, though, preferring to layer new elements over the usual ancient ruins, forests, deserts and ice floes to form a pleasant blend of old and new, as though you're watching The Jetsons visit Shadow of the Colossus.

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UPDATE: It's all over! But you can recreate the emotional highs and lows of Ian's livestream still by checking out the video below.

Trials Frontier will wheelie its way to the iOS App Store on 10th April, Ubisoft has announced. An Android version will follow at a later date.

It's the first mobile version of RedLynx's famed stuntbike series, and one that - rather controversially - runs on the fuel of microtransactions.

However, the free-to-play mechanic is just for the game's mobile version, RedLynx has assured us.

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UPDATE 27/03/2014 08:45: If you entered the competition, check your email! We just sent out all the keys. Enjoy the beta if you got one and apologies if you missed out this time.

ORIGINAL STORY: I don't know about you, but I don't get wildly excited ahead of a new Trials game. I just sort of nod politely as it works its way through to release. When it hits, though, it's like someone flips a switch in my brain: suddenly it's on my hard disk and entire days are disappearing into its endless cycle of inching forward, dying spectacularly and snapping back to checkpoints. I imagine the same will be true of Trials Fusion, due out next month on PC, PS4, Xbox One and Xbox 360.

Except, you don't have to wait quite that long, because there's a closed PC beta running between now and 24th April, featuring 14 tracks and two Skill Games, and Ubisoft has kindly provided us with 500 keys to give away.

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A closed beta version of Trials Fusion will launch for PC tomorrow, publisher Ubisoft has announced.

The trial edition will be available until 24th April and include a different range of content available to try each week.

14 tracks and two skill games will be included during the first testing phase.

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For a few weeks in 2012, Trials Evolution was a record-holder. Launched in April that year to roaring success, the last entry in RedLynx's racing series sold quicker than any Xbox Live Arcade title in history. Until the following month, that is, when the console version of Minecraft arrived.

RedLynx has defended the inclusion of micro-transactions in Trials Frontier, the upcoming mobile version of its addictive racing series.

UPDATE: Trials Frontier uses an energy system to limit the amount of time you can play in one session.

Ubisoft has announced two new titles in RedLynx's lovably sadistic Trials series of physics-based motorcycle platformers.

Trials Fusion is being developed for Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS4, PS3, and PC. The Wii U was curiously not mentioned here.

Meanwhile, Trials Frontier is an upcoming mobile game in the series. RedLynx has dabbled in Trials-like mobile games before like Motoheroz, but this marks the first time the Trials series proper will have made its way to mobile.

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