Trials Fusion

I've lost entire afternoons to Trials Fusion and I still can't decide if it loves me or hates me. That's the series in a nutshell, and Fusion delivers it in full. At its core this is a side-scrolling physics platformer where you ride a motorbike from one end of a course to the other, managing just three inputs: throttle, brake, and body lean. That sounds like it should be simple. It is not. The gap between understanding what you need to do and actually doing it is where Trials Fusion lives, breathes, and absolutely ruins your evening. The physics engine is the star of the show. Each of the six vehicles handles distinctly, with lighter bikes offering more precision and heavier ones trading finesse for raw momentum. Leaning forward or back shifts your rider's weight and that weight does not snap back automatically, so early sessions involve a lot of wrestling with your own inputs before muscle memory kicks in. The course design across eight single-player zones ramps up gradually enough for newcomers to find their footing, but the medal system has teeth: progress gates require at least silver medals, which means the game actively forces you to revisit tracks and actually get better at them rather than bronze-medal your way to the end. That design choice will annoy some players and be exactly what others came for. The futuristic setting is a stylistic swing that lands about halfway. Riding through towering skyscrapers and glowing test facilities looks great and gives level designers room to get genuinely wild with obstacle layouts. The FMX trick system, where you pose your rider mid-air through specific inputs, adds a freestyle-scoring layer that some players find fun and others find like a distracting mini-game bolted onto something that didn't need it. The story framing around it all is forgettable, but at least it stays out of the way. A track editor with over a thousand assets and a community hub for downloading user-created courses extends the lifespan considerably, and creative players will find a lot to sink time into there. On the multiplayer front, be aware of what you're actually getting on PC. Local multiplayer supports up to four players in a side-by-side Supercross mode, and the track editor even lets you build custom Supercross layouts, which is genuinely fun for a couch session if everyone is on board with the chaos. Online multiplayer, which arrived post-launch as a free update, supports up to eight players in the Online X-Supercross format and private lobbies with customisable parameters like track gravity and bike speed. The honest caveat in 2025 is that the online player pool has thinned considerably over the years, so don't bank on finding a full lobby without friends organised in advance. For four people on a couch though, with someone inevitably rage-quitting and immediately hitting restart, this still holds up as a solid party game in short bursts. The Mixed Steam rating reflects a real tension in the community: players who bounced off the aggressive difficulty curve, the in-app purchases attached to DLC, and the online multiplayer that launched later than it should have. None of that makes the core game worse, but it is context worth having. If you're a solo player who enjoys punishment-loop design with near-instant retries keeping frustration from tipping into boredom, Trials Fusion does that as well as anything in the genre. If you're buying it primarily for a robust online competitive experience right now, temper expectations.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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