Badass Trial Race Free Ride is one of the cooler Excitebike-inspired games available on the App Store today, and this is a combination of two primary factors. Graphics and Gameplay. The game looks absolutely amazing. It has little nods to its 8-bit ancestor, with the somewhat pixelated rider and bike, but the rest of the levels, including the backdrops are beautiful looking, 21-st century 2D, almost abstract, art. Yup, art. Thanks to the efforts of indie developer Three Legged Egg, the game is EYE-CANDY!
Onto the gameplay bit, the controls are simple enough, forward, backwards, jump, plenty enough for players to negotiate through the tricky levels, and sometimes, you’ll need to make use of the dynamic environments available in certain levels. Speaking of levels, there are plenty of those in the game and they are divided across separate chapters. Unlocking levels uses fuel, and fuel can be earned by doing well in levels. There are power ups to that will make collecting stars that populate the level so much easier.
One of the cooler parts of Badass Trial Race is the time-shifted multiplayer, kinda like the ghost mode in the Mario Kart games but this time, you compete against the ghost bikes of your friends! That’s totally awesome! On the other hand though, I wonder whether this particular function is also responsible for the game’s random crashes; I had issues with the game crashing twice when I was trying to record a video of the game in action, and it crashed on other occasions, once when I tried to use a Logitech game controller with it (the game does state support for that particular controller)
In any case, Badass Trial Race Free Ride is available for FREE on the App Store for iOS devices. Crashes aside, the game strongly warrants a look even though you might not be a fan of the original Excitebike. Nine Over Ten 9/10 rates it at a 4 out of 5. Check it out over here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/badass-trial-race-free-ride/id881084850?mt=8
