Multplayer here harkens back to the days of Excitebike, with up to four players simultaneously racing across a selection of specially-made supercross courses (courses featuring four lanes rather than one). It's one thing making something for your friend to play on, but it's another thing actually playing them. Browsing them is simple though, with players able to search for hard tracks, RedLynx picks, top-rated weekly, and more. The setting is more varied, for instance, and now contains snow and desert areas, but when people can literally make Limbo inside of it, these additions seem a bit pointless. While little of note has been introduced, little needed to be. The track editor builds on what came before. While the game isn't yet in the magic fingers of the community, you can cast an eye to the predecessors for over 700,000 ideas of what to expect: first-person shooters, Angry Bird clones, bank heists, Endor chases, sub-ocean explorations, Mirror's Edge tributes, and even fully working versions of Asteroids. When you've finally finished the courses, the challenges, the secrets, and the skill games, there's a whole other side to Fusion-creating stuff for others to do the same. Sure, you could do the job quickly, or you could do it right. If anything they're more like some great temptation, making the fight not only between you and the course, but your own ego. Tricks don't net you points, unless we're talking about the FMX mode where only cool tricks assure a top finish. That is to say, you're just wiggling the stick at a bunch of acute angles until something cool happens. At any point in the air you can manipulate the right stick and contort your ragdoll rider into all manner of ungainly positions, almost like lockpicking in Thief or Skyrim. Complete them for points to buy bike parts (shuriken wheels and bladed bodykits, for example) and rider attire drawing inspiration from Mad Max, Evel Knievel, and demon clowns.Р”В¬hallenges give tracks a new layer, and stunts have the same effect on driving. On Deep Freeze you'll get points for climbing a flag pole. So on Stormtrooper you must dunk all the penguins underwater. 'Completing 2 flips', 'performing an endo for 30m', or 'finishing a faultless run' add an extra dynamic to merely completing levels without bailing. Deepest are challenges, and there are three on each course. There are warp points to find-wormholes you can travel through to visit an extra hard portion of the course-and secret squirrels to acquire. To their credit, these are tracks designed to be replayed dozens of times. They did these things because they could. Across eight worlds featuring eight courses apiece, you get the sense RedLynx loved every second of creation. Someone not only had to model those cars, but give them AI routines and tiny headlights, all for a piece of scenery you might not even notice in a game set entirely on a 2D plane. You almost want to ask developers RedLynx: 'Why?' On the Marina Mania level, for instance, there's a suspension bridge miles into the distance, and on it cars pass back and forth. There are dense stormy jungles and African savannas bathed in dreamy orange sunlight. There are grand urban sprawls where shiny spaceships docking in the background and cars whizz down roads. The philosophy is the same as before but the scale is unprecedented. While the punishing second half deals in piecemeal progress, the first is all about big air, monster tricks and constant forward motion. The other stuff-the sleek cityscapes, the gorgeous new lighting and weather effects, the sheer amount of background noise-though impressive, feels almost distracting.Р”Р‡usion, like its predecessors, almost qualifies as two different games. Losing by a millisecond to your ghost (who actually races alongside you), then restarting the course to shave off two.

When you're nervously ascending an almost vertical incline or bunny-hopping between platforms narrower than a handlebar. When restarts number in the hundreds and each checkpoint attained feels like a victory.

Trials fusion