Developed by Finnish developer Frozenbyte, and published by Southpeak Interactive, Trine was released to the PC in July, and will be released to the PlayStation Network sometime in October, and eventually on Xbox Live, all for 20 bucks. Trine puts you in control of three heroes with different abilities in one of the most beautiful games I’ve ever seen. I actually had to stop playing many times, just to stand there and look at the wonderfully detailed and dazzling environments. If for nothing else, you should check this game out just for the stunning visuals.
There is a story in Trine, but it certainly is not the reason you should play this game. It really just exists to provide a transition between the levels as far as I’m concerned. Basically the kingdom has lost its King without a successor, so everything is falling apart as a new heir tries to take his place. The world has become ravaged with undead. Because of this, a Thief is taking the opportunity to steal a magical artifact know as the Trine. In her attempts, she awakens a Wizard, and alerts a Knight of her presence and they both show up to stop her, and in doing so, all three touch the Trine and their souls are all merged into a single being.
From here, the main goal is to essentially return each of the heroes to their original state, by tracking down various artifacts and in the end, stopping all of the undead. The story is told during the loading screens between the levels by a narrator, and some dialog is spun between the characters at the start of each level. Each of the three characters has their own motives and they all work wonderfully together. The Wizard’s goal is to learn the fireball spell to give his life meaning, the Knight is after fame, food and ale, and the thief is of course after riches.
From start to end, Trine took me about 8 hours to complete. You’ll travel through a wide variety of levels including lush forests, dark and dreary mines, and even a fiery forge. Each level gets significantly harder than the previous via the platforming that you are going to have to figure out how to get past, and the fact that the monsters gain better armor and weapons. The final level alone is retardedly hard. It probably took me about 15 tries to beat it.
I played Trine all the way through as single player, but there is hop-in and hop-out multiplayer if you have multiple gamepads for your pc. Once you complete a level, you can go back and replay it at any time.
Trine is of course; a 2D side-scrolling platformer and it is a blast to play. You will be required to switch between the 3 heroes to beat each level as each of them contains a different tool to solve each puzzle. The Knight has a sword and shield or a mighty two handed hammer that can easily fight off the undead, block arrows and falling objects and break through walls. The Thief in my eyes was the most useful as she can use a grappling hook to swing across and climb obstacles, as well as use her bow to take out ranged foes. The Wizard doesn’t technically have any weapons, but he can create various boxes and platforms that can be used to climb on, cross chasms, and even crush enemy undead.
You will gain experience for killing enemies and finding green bottles scattered throughout the levels, and each level gained gives you a point to increase the power of each of the characters abilities, allowing the Wizard to create additional boxes and platforms, and the Thief and Knight to increase the strength and usefulness of their weapons.
There are magical items scattered throughout the levels hidden in treasure boxes that can be used by all of the heroes to increase their stats and give them magical bonuses.
Trine actually takes a lot of skill, and the more creative you are, the easier the levels are going to be for you. If you take a look at the trailer over at trine-thegame.com you’ll see that the players in that video are significantly more skilled than me. To get good at Trine, it’s going to take some practice.
The presentation is by far the most impressive aspect of Trine. Each level is just stunning. This game easily has some of the best graphics I’ve ever seen, hell, these are probably the best graphics I’ve seen in a game all year.
Along the same lines, the sound track is superb. It is fully orchestrated and really completes the whole gaming experience. I’d say it is right on track with the soundtracks of Braid and Halo 3: ODST. The voice acting of every single character, especially that of the narrator is amazing.
You will probably need a pretty beefy computer if you want to run Trine in all of its glory. I was only running it in 720p without any anti-aliasing turned on and it still looked awesome, so I can only imagine how great it would look with all of the options turned up.
Trine was awarded the Editor’s choice award from GameSpot at E3 this year, and for good reason. The graphics are beautiful, the sound is amazingly immersive and the platforming action is creative, challenging and entertaining. I know that side-scrolling platformers are not for everyone, but I seriously think that Trine is a title that every gamer should at least try out. This game is perfect. Not a single flaw. 100%. You need to check out Trine.
