Trine Review [PC]

08 Jul 2009 at 13:47:37 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (PS3, PC)

Trine is absolutely beautiful.

This, if anything, is the one thing that you'll take away from the game: it looks absolutely gorgeous. The environments are jaw-droppingly gorgeous, with dark forests illuminated by dimly glowing lamps, surrounded by gently sparkling fireflies. Heavy stone blocks scattered around ruins almost glow in the daylight. Limpid pools of water are occasionally broken up by ripples along the surface.

It is impossible to fault the art style. Art does not and never has made a game worth playing, though, and Trine has some mechanics that, while not necessarily innovative, haven't been seen in quite a few years.

The gist of it is that three characters – a Thief, a Wizard, and a Knight – all touch a fabled artefact known as the Trine, which binds them together. The only way to free themselves, it seems, is to track down the other artefacts related to it, and so begins their quest, in a world that's been rather suddenly blighted by the undead.

The story isn't exactly the game's strong point. It's serviceable, certainly, but it's also generic and really has little in the way of development. It's also clear that it never was the strong point, but it's nice that some care and attention has been taken in the presentation of it, with all three characters having cliched, stereotypical attitudes and voice actors that if anything add to the fairytale ambience rather than detract. The narrator, too, is very much what you'd imagine when you think of a narrator reading a fairytale. It's just not the focus.

The focus is on the characters themselves, and the way in which they interact with their environments. Trine is a physics-based platform game, and while all three characters start off with a base set of powers – the Wizard conjures boxes and telekinetically moves things; the Thief fires her bow and uses a grappling hook to swing around; the Knight swings a sword and blocks with a shield, and you can transform into any of the three with a tap of 1, 2, or 3 – the number and complexity of the powers ramps up as the game goes on. Collecting green experience potions and killing enemies reward your team with a level up, giving them points that can be assigned to various powers. You might decide you want the Thief to fire two or three arrows at once, or perhaps you'd prefer her to be much faster at drawing back the bowstring. Perhaps the Wizard should get the ability to summon two or three boxes, rather than just one. It's up to you, but it's a set of decisions you should make carefully as these are frequently your tools for getting around the environment, and can make things much easier, or much, much harder.

Trine is all getting from A to B. There's combat, certainly, but it's generally rather disappointing. There are maybe eight types of enemy throughout the eight-hour game, and while the skeletons can expertly traverse the maps to get to you, your options are limited. Oh, you can choose which weapon you want the Knight to hit them with, or whether or not the Thief should just spam arrows at the respawning hordes behind her or if picking off the skeleton archer first is the best idea, but that's about it. Click, click, click, click until they stop respawning, and then move on.

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