RedLynx

The End of the Road

HIGH More Trials!

LOW The second-to-last Extreme track broke my spirit.

WTF Why does the whole thing skew towards a higher difficulty?

The Fittest Still Survives

HIGH More Trials!

LOW Some of the Extreme tracks can induce ulcers.

WTF The mechanics of the wingman minigame don't make sense.

Masochistic Feelgood

HIGH A ton of new tracks giving great value for the money.

LOW The second-to-last jump on the "Greatest Hits" track. Argh.

WTF I'm not sure if I want more DLC, or to never play the game again.

Sunshine is for losers! We spent our summer vacation indoors, enjoying the offerings of the Xbox Live Summer of Arcade. Well…”enjoying” might be too strong a word. We rundown all five games: Splosion Man, Turtles in Time, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Trials HD, and Shadow Complex. Plus, Mike and Tim red ring within 12 hours of each other! Believe it! Featuring Chi Kong Lui, Brad Gallaway, Mike Bracken, and Tim Spaeth.

Download: Right click here and select "Save Target As..."
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Topic and Game References:

• Shadow Complex
• Splosion Man
• Trials HD
• Turtles in Time
• Marvel vs. Capcom 2

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to podcast (at) gamecritics (dot) com.

I had originally intended to write about Avalon Code tonight, but before I get to that I have to discuss Trials HD.

Anyway, never in a million years would I have predicted that I would have become as obsessed with this game as I have, but it's been dominating my life for the last few days.

Reminding me a lot of an updated Excitebike early on, I knocked out the first few clusters of levels pretty quickly. I didn't get gold medals on all of them, but I did well enough to satisfy my own personal sense of achievement. Moving up, the Hard level was indeed hard. When I got to Extreme, I couldn't believe it.

The best Excitebike since Excitebike

HIGH Nailing a tricky series of jumps after trying a few hundred times.

LOW The Extreme level of difficulty is heartlessly punishing.

WTF Why limit the number of attempts or length of play on the hardest levels?