Compliments and Complaints
This is my second round on the beta, and there are some things that I wanted to throw out there.
First, thank you for supporting 21:9 monitors without resorting to a "pan-and-scan" format where you zoom in to fit the aspect ratio. It's nice that 21:9 really does render extra information for the sides. It's a small thing and doesn't offer any advantage, but it's still a nice addition. (Stereoscopic 3D support would look amazing, but that's obviously niche.)
On that note, I noticed that only items that are rendered by the engine are properly shown in the proper aspect ratio. Anything that would be placed on top of renders is displayed in stretch-o-vision.This is noticeable on the menus and other overlays. It would be really nice to see these returned to their normal width but properly placed on the screen instead of simply stretching the overlays/menus/etc to fit.
I only encountered one actual crash during a course load, but I allowed it to report back. Interestingly, though, EVERY time I exit the game seems to trigger a crash report, which is odd.
Finally, I have to say that even though I love Trials Fusion and Trials Evolution and own them both on consoles and PC, I doubt that I will be purchasing this game based on what I've played here. There is way, WAY too much focus on multiplayer and/or being forced to race ghosts of other players. The previous Trials games were great because you could go at your own pace and the only person you had to challenge was yourself. That's not the case in Rising. Now no matter what, I'm always racing against someone else in some fashion and it's annoying as all hell. I don't mind having multiplayer in games as long as they're optional where I can go into them whenever I want. They're not optional here. And even if it's really a single player race, being forced to race against the ghosts of complete strangers is nothing more than time-shifted multiplayer especially when you're still ranked on a first to fourth place scale.
The number of courses seems to be lacking as well, although admittedly that might be just for the beta. If additional tracks and challenges are locked behind stadium races where you have to win against others to unlock them, that will seal the "won't buy" deal. (I never bothered to finish the final race on the stadium because multiplayer/ghosts, so I don't really know what happens when you win.)
I'll keep playing until the beta ends so that I can report and bugs or glitches that I encounter (which seem to be few, fortunately); however, the forced multiplayer - even if it's simply against ghosts - is leaning heavily towards a "won't buy" at this point.