A while back I chose Machinarium as my Pick of the week. A pick that was put my way by our exalted intro music guru, Paul. Machinarium is a good old fashioned point and click adventure. The time-old story of boy robot tragically split from girl robot by nasty police robots and the quest to be re-united. So why is this game worthy of pick status? Quite simply because it’s gorgeous, exceptionally well realised and just plain cute and funny.

As you can see from these screen-shots, every location in the game is sublimely drawn. The detail is brilliant and you can tell a whole lot of love and attention went into creating this game. The style doesn’t just end at the graphics though. The animation and environments all keep up the illusion of a whole world full of robots.

Gameplay is pretty standard point-and-click affair. Solve the puzzles and problems. Work out how to get to new areas. There are plenty of mini games thrown in, with humor aplenty throughout. Along the way, the pacing was good and even with absolutely no dialogue, you always know exactly what’s going on. New problems are introduced subtly and you then need to find the solution! I didn’t find the puzzles impossibly hard at any point but I am pretty versed with the whole genre and some problems may lead to frustration. However, there is an in-built hint system used throughout the game should you really not know what to do. There is one hint available per screen to give you a light pointer but there is also a more in depth “walkthrough” type hint book available that spells out the steps needed. Like everything in this game – they’ve taken a potentially boring thing, a hint book, and added a twist. You have to go through a mini game to unlock the hint book. This mini game is long enough to stop you delving in just for the sake of it but also fun enough to see through should you actually require help.

My only criticism of the game is that it’s not massively long. But then that’s because I consumed it with relish and just wanted it to go on! If you’re good at point and clicks, you’ll probably be done in 5 sessions but playing back through again won’t be seen as a chore and the game is only £14 or so.

You can play a demo of the first few screens on http://machinarium.net as well as buying the full version. If you have Steam installed on your system, it’s also available through that.

With the dirth of good games appearing on the Xbox platform for many months now, it’s great to see some people developing pick up and play titles for release as Arcade titles. These aren’t the usual run of the mill conversion of pap 8-bit games that should long have been dead and buried, they are games that have had love, attention and oodles of technical skill applied to them.

Trials HD is simple in concept. Ride a Trials bike across an obstacle course whilst not crashing. Controls are simple. Accelerate, brake, lean forward and back. That’s it. And in fact, it starts off ludicrously easy. But the difficulty ramps up fairly quickly – although never unfairly. Each level 3 achievement levels – Bronze, Silver and Gold. Early on, it’s fairly simple to get gold medals but as you progress through the difficulty bands, it become harder and harder and then, finally, nearly impossible.

At least, you’d think they were impossible to get, but there are video’s out on the internet to prove otherwise! Even if you can’t beat a particular level at the Gold standard, there’s always the challenge of beating your mates times.

Beyond the main game, which will keep you going for ages anyway – there are tonnes of silly mini games of different sorts to play with. Some truly imaginative extensions on the main game concept and they’re bound to make you laugh – as well as cry!

Beyond these skill games, there are also tournaments to take part in. These are in effect 3 or more levels from the game strung together and your overall rating is based on cumulatively how long you took to complete the levels and how many times you crashed.

And, as if all this wasn’t enough, they have also put in level editors that you can both create your own content, as well as play other peoples content across Live.

So, there’s absolutely tonnes of positive about this game. The only negatives I can think of are the fact it would have been nice to have ghost racing against your mates – or against the best times in the world. I can see how this might eliminate some of the enjoyment of finally finding out how to achieve an obstacle though. Also, the game can get frustrating. When you’ve tried to achieve a gold medal for the 500th time and come up short once more, it can lead to controller throwing and full on emotional breakdown – but the fact that as soon as you wipe away the tears and put the controller back together again, you want “just one more go” speaks volumes!

There are plenty of games selling for £40 that don’t have half the content of this game, let alone the fun. For £10 it’s expensive as an Arcade game but incredible value by any standard.

Take a look at a gameplay vid from the developers site: http://download.eu.redlynxtrials.com/video/trialshd/TrialsHD-Gameplay-FullRes.wmv