I'll just come out and say that I had a whole lot of fun playing this game. If Super Meat Boy is a guide on how to hastily design an infuriating and mediocre platformer, Trine is a glowing example amidst a sea of tripe of how to turn some simple ideas into a grand adventure. Though given that this game came out in mid-2009, almost everyone may have gotten around to playing it by now. Still for those that haven't, let's delve in there to see what it is that makes this game so remarkably good.
The premise of Trine is fairly standard fantasy fare: dark power unleashed, taking over kingdom, stalwart heroes must put a stop to it. The catch is that through a series of coincidences, the stalwart heroes all have to share one body because they touched the magical macguffin (called The Trine) at the same time. You are then tasked with using each character's special abilities in order to navigate a series of linear platforming levels full of robust physics puzzles. Your characters are a knight who is good for close combat and smashing heavy obstacles, a thief who uses a hook shot to cross big gaps and can kill from a distance with her arrows (and later light torches with fire arrows), and a wizard who can conjure boxes and planks from nowhere or manipulate out of reach objects. Each one has a bit of personality that, wile predictable, is still very quaintly charming. The knight is a big boorish fellow who wants to solve all of his problems with a sword, but loves eating, the thief is the token aloof female, and the wizard is the only one who seems to follow what is happening to the kingdom.
Anyone with a mustache like that MUST
know what's up.
The writing is not what makes the game shine, however. It is simply effective and never detracts from the experience or pulls you out of the game. There are several areas where the game shines, and again, I almost find myself at a loss as to where to begin. I suppose what really holds this game up is its superior sense of pacing. Never once did I encounter a puzzle that felt out of place in a level, or sections that I was required to repeat ad nauseam. I'm not saying that there weren't parts that were difficult to get through that took several tries, simply that I never felt stuck, simply impeded at worst. The game progresses at a pace that gives you time to master the use and application of each ability, so that you can learn a more diverse set of skills for solving more challenging sections, and perhaps most importantly, there is never one right way to go about things. The game doesn't care that you make it through the levels exactly as the designers intended, simply that you make it through. Granted, this becomes a little unbalanced later in the game when you can conjure up 4 boxes at a time and most puzzles can simply be walked over with your makeshift steps (or even later, when you can summon a floating platform). And you certainly could play a lot of the game this way, but I simply don't understand why you'd want to. It would be like skipping over the assassination's in Assassin's Creed II in order to focus solely on maintaining your villa.
Though admittedly, playing with object stacking in the physics
engine is a great time wasting diversion.
I guess one area where the game mis-steps a little bit is in the combat, which becomes fairly repetitive pretty quickly, since all of your enemies are skeletons armored to varying degrees or bats. The enemy sets also have a weird habit of thinning out towards the end of an enemy wave, relentlessly spawning skeletons one at a time for a while after the main fight has ended. The spawns are so telegraphed, too, that you can usually kill the enemy before it has finished appearing. Part of me wonders if this is to compel you to simply move on and not kill anything, but then I might miss out on getting some experience. Anyway, since the combat isn't too difficult throughout, this complaint takes a backseat in this particular joyride. The characters gain abilities throughout the game, and you must combine them in more and more varied ways as the game progresses. Half of the experience earned in the game is through combat, but in order to really get the most out of your characters' abilities you have to be on the lookout for the extra experience scattered throughout the level. There are also two treasures per world to find that provide boosts to your abilities or stats. These are great elements for keeping your skills sharp in each character's specialties or experimenting to find new tactics.
I could go on and on about this game, but honestly the best way to get a sense of the balance and impeccably executed mechanics is simply to play the game. A demo is available here, and its built on a very forgiving engine, so any machine these days should be able to run it (though I believe the demo is PC only). I really can't urge you to try it strongly enough, as once you do, you will probably be unable to resist adding it to your collection.
You, sirs, are truly kings among men.
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