Trine (PS3) Review

Posted by Jon Seddon on 10.09.2009

Finally on PS3

Title: Trine
Publisher: Nobilis Publishing
Developer: Frozenbyte
Genre: Platformer
Players: 1
Rated: M for Mature

Trine is the game that was originally announced for PS3 months ago and then was released on PC a while back. The game is now coming to PSN very soon, but was it worth the wait.

Gameplay



Trine follows the adventures of 3 heroes trying to escape the Trine, which is a device that has trapped their souls. This is really an excuse for a game that lets you control a wizard, a thief and a knight through a series of fantasy themed platform levels. You only control one of these characters at a time, although you can switch between each of them at will and you will throughout the game as they each have their own abilities.

The thief has both a grappling hook to get around and a bow to defend to defend herself, which is a fairly strong combination letting you get to a lot of the hard to reach places. Upgrades for the thief allow you to shoot multiple arrows at once and eventually give you flaming arrows, which destroy some scenery.

The wizard has no real offensive capability, but can create boxes and once you unlock the upgrades, platforms and floating platforms, which he can then move to positions to enable you to get up and over obstacles. You can also place these object on top of traps to stop you taking damage. Your boxes also have mass and realistically interact with other objects allowing you to e.g. force one end of a see saw game down. The thief's magic also interacts with certain parts of the scenery directly sometimes allow you to move platforms to your advantage. Lastly, you can drop objects on enemies which will kill them



The knight is potentially the weakest of the three characters with really only his sword and shield. The sword is obviously useful for melee and the shield is an underused element that can protect you from falling debris as well as enemies blows. The knight can also pick up objects and throw them, but there's almost no need to ever use this.

As you progress you collect experience points by both finding green vials and killing enemies and you are typically trying to pick up 40 points per level. For each 50 points you can upgrade one of your abilities, e.g. have more than one wizard box on screen at a time. You also find chests in hidden places that provide further upgrades giving you more health and a host of other benefits.

Trying to stop you progressing is a bunch of skeleton warriors that rush towards you, jumping and clambering over the level to reach you whenever they can. There are a very limited number of different enemy types with the only variation coming from the odd bat and occasionally a larger end of level boss, which present little challenge.

The main challenge then is to use your combination of your abilities to cross chasms, swing between platforms and jump your way to the end of each of the 16 levels. The only level that breaks with that format which is the very last one, which features a time limit and a spike in difficulty. No spoilers, but definitely not a high point of the game.

Graphics

When originally shown in video format, Trine looked pretty incredible in a way that only a 2.5D game can with spectacular lighting, beautiful animation and realistic physics only adding to the overall fantasy theme. The initial impression was therefore a little disappointing with a definite jaggedness to the character models, ruining the overall polish of the levels. It wasn't until the first level was viewed again after completing the game that the reason for the poor first impression became apparent: the first level has the camera zoomed in close, which is the only time this is used.



Once into the game proper you can appreciate the animation of both the lead characters and the limited enemy types. This is initially complemented by the scenery and the in game objects that are extremely detailed. By about the mid point of the game though you've seen pretty much all of the different types of background, objects and enemies and so one level tends to blur into the next.

Sound

The soundtrack is a very orchestral sounding score, but this tends to soon get very repetitive. The sound effects recreate what you'd expect from the clashing of sword on shield or the sound of flaming arrow hitting skeleton. All decent but nothing spectacular. The character's voices are used sparingly and so it's fairly irrelevant what they have to say, but tend to be one character moaning at one of the others at the start or end of a level. Each level is introduced as a narrator but again after the first few levels, I skipped the dialogue to get back to the action.

Lasting Appeal

The game is pretty lengthy for a downloadable title with 16 levels that can take 30-40 minutes to complete each if you are diligent about finding all of the collectables. Eventually though the last few objects proved too elusive for a time pressed gamer and most levels were left at about the hour mark.

Once finished there's not a lot to return to it for, unless you absolutely have to find all the potions and chests. If you want to collect all of the games Trophies you'll have to do this as there is only one Silver Trophy for each level, which requires you find everything. Other Trophies are awarded for using the different heroes abilities, e.g. shooting 3 enemies with one bow shot using the thief.

I believe the PC had multiplayer, but I haven't played it, but the PS3 version is a purely single player experience.



Fun Factor

Within the first few levels of the game you will feel that you're playing something pretty special. Using agility, the excellent physics and a little combat, each new puzzle solved will raise a smile. The first time that you can use the wizard's platforms to cross perilous spike traps or use the thief's swing mechanic to get to a platform that looked impossible are hugely rewarding. To begin with you can't wait to see what's going to come next.

Around the 10th level though it started to feel a little familiar as if the game had run out of tricks and art assets. You also stop using the knight fairly early on, unless you have to; if a character dies, they stay unavailable until you reach the next checkpoint. It's also fairly easy although finding every collectable isn't.

The 411:

Trine is one of those games to show off how pretty modern games can look and can back up the graphics with robust physics and decent gameplay. If you like platformers and the whole collecting thing then there's plenty here to do, but you may eventually get a little bored with once all the levels begin to look the same. You definitely get the impression that the developers had a brilliant concept and then kept creating levels. If they had stopped a little earlier it would have made for a shorter but much sweeter experience.

Graphics	8.0	Graphics that look pretty gorgeous, but get repetitive
Gameplay	8.0	Another well executed 2.5D platformer
Sound	6.0	Functional sound and music but not a soundtrack to remember
Lasting Appeal	7.0	Goes on a bit too long and runs out of clever ideas before the end
Fun Factor	7.0	Starts out as a 9, but ends up a 7 as you wonder how many more levels there are
Overall	7.5   [ Good ]

Screenshots
All 4 Trine Screenshots