In Pursuit of Magical MacGuffins: A small list of complaints about 'Trine'

I really wanted to like this game. Seriously I did. Whoops, I should probably mention what game I'm referring to before launching into a discussion on it. The game in question is I really wanted to like this game. Seriously I did. Whoops, I should probably mention what game I'm referring to before launching into a discussion on it. The game in question is 'Trine', a digitally distributed puzzle/platforming/action adventure game available on Playstation Network (PSN), X-Box Live Arcade (XBLA) and Steam (and probably a few other PC distribution platforms). Note that we're not discussing the more recently released 'Trine 2' as I haven't gotten around to that one yet. Yes, in spite of the upcoming slew of petty complaints about 'Trine' I'm probably still going to give 'Trine 2' a go at some point.

So for a game that bills itself as a puzzle/platformer* 'Trine' only really manages the puzzle part particularly well. Ah, let's back up a bit. The premise of the game is that a rogue, wizard and warrior all simultaneously touched a magical MacGuffin that bound them together. The player progresses by switching off between the different characters as the situation dictates. The wizard can conjure up various objects (boxes, bridges, etc.), the rogue can use a grappling hook and shoot arrows and the warrior has a shield and a sword. So the reason that I say that puzzle part works well is that the wizards object conjuring mechanic works. That's pretty much it. A very simple mechanic with a lot of creative applications. The reason that the platforming part doesn't work so well is that the rogue's grappling hook is a finicky load of garbage that is incredibly picky about what surfaces it will latch onto (it only hooks onto 'wooden' surfaces but the range at which it will do so seems almost completely random). The grappling hook also has this annoying habit of not retracting quickly enough or at all so what was intended to be a graceful Tarzan imitation over a pit of spikes ends up dragging your sorry ass over every last sharp object on the screen. Also the jumping for the characters feels incredibly floaty if that makes sense with characters frequently overshooting the target ledge. You might say, well get better at platforming. To which I would reply when jumping from one narrow ledge to another there isn't really anything to get better at.

The second problem that I ran into in the game was one of leveling up and progression. Namely that I had no idea whether or not I was doing well for myself. You collect XP in the form of objects and drops from enemies but as I progressed I noticed that a lot of the collectable XP was very much out of reach to the various shape toys that my wizard had at his disposal making me wonder if there was stuff that I had missed on previous levels. In short I would have liked a little more of an indication from the game about my level of progress.

When outlining this article I had several subject headings that I wanted to talk about with the last of them being 'Combat' to which my statement would be: “It's repetitive”. Sort of going back to the XP idea for a second, combat getting more difficult is usually sign that the player has under-leveled their character(s) in a given game and that they should level their character(s) or buy new equipment. Well in 'Trine' all I ran into during my playtime was various flavors of skeletons who as long as I didn't attempt to attack them with my face posed exactly zero threat. About the only challenge with the combat was when the bow wielding skeletons had the high ground. This only being a challenge because the rogue's bow was, like her grappling hook, utter garbage. Hard to aim, slow to fire and not particularly damaging. Fantastic.

And here's me being nice to the game in closing. It looks really nice. It is easily among the prettiest indie games I ever played. A very richly colored world with, aside from it's enemies, a well thought out aesthetic. There are a few games that stylistically come close to 'Trine' in 'Outland', 'Bastion' and 'Limbo' some of which I may even talk about some other time. Anyhow see you all next week.

*For those who are confused about this designation shame on you. This genre is basically the sidescrolling style of a old style Super Mario game combined with puzzles in need of solving in order to progress.