Trine Review

Three's company.

While 2D action adventure games have all but disappeared from retail, the genre is very much alive on digital distribution platforms like PlayStation Network, Xbox Live Arcade, and PC. Trine is the latest of these neo-classic games and it's an impressive, modernized take on the sort of effort that dominated through the 16-bit era. It does feel a little unfinished, as though the developers ran out of money or were pressured to get the game out the door. Still, Trine is a lot of fun and definitely worth playing.

Gamers have control of three unique characters: a thief, a wizard, and a knight. Each has their own abilities they can use to traverse the game's environments and dispatch of enemies. The thief wields a bow and arrow and can grapple to wooden surfaces. The wizard can move objects with his mind and summon blocks or bridges. And the knight is the fighter of the group, best used for hacking through the undead army plaguing the world. The thief and knight give players the choice to use ranged or melee combat, and both can be equally effective. A typical example of the sort of puzzles the trio will encounter would be a seemingly impassable chasm -- the thief could use her grappling hook to swing across or the wizard could summon a plank and stroll to the other side.

Click here to watch the thief tutorial.

Most predicaments can be solved in multiple ways and you could make it though most of the game with just the thief or the wizard (the knight is really only useful in combat). There are instances, though, where you'll have to use multiple characters in tandem to proceed. The wizard might be able to get a hanging block swinging from side to side. The thief can then grapple to it, and the block's momentum will allow her to jump to a previously unreachable area.

Our heroes' goal is to free themselves from the curse that has bound them together and rid the land of the usual evil that has consumed it. Along the way they'll solve puzzles, kill lots of skeletons, and earn experience points that can be spent to gain new skills. A lot of the green vials that contain precious experience points are hidden, so there are many secrets to be found for players that want to put in the effort.

If you're playing Trine by yourself the three characters inhabit one body and you can switch between them on the fly. They each have independent health and magic meters, and if one perishes you'll have to get by with whoever's left until you reach the next checkpoint. The game can also be played by three people cooperatively, with each controlling one of our heroes, but this completely changes the experience. When playing by yourself, you only have to worry about getting one body past an obstacle. In multiplayer, each person needs to figure out how to get their character from point A to point B, making the game more difficult and stretching every little challenge out. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but other inconveniences get in the way of making multiplayer an optimal experience. The camera will let players wander off screen, for instance, where they can be killed by who knows what and that person will have to sit around until the other players find the next checkpoint.