Trine: Three's Company Review

Have you heard of Trine? If you haven’t it’s a puzzle/platformer game for the PS3 and PC. Like Shadow Complex it uses 3D characters and landscape but limits gameplay to a 2D plane. This can sometimes become confusing but you quickly adjust to the format.

Trine is absolutely beautiful, its lavish environments reminds me of the game Folklore sometimes. The combination of very vivid and bright colors and expressive lighting makes the settings they choose very attractive to play in.




What also makes it attractive to play is the ability to use 3 different characters as one. You are a wizard, thief and warrior all at time same time and can use each character’s ability to solve puzzles and progress through the level. You also use these same abilities to acquire green flasks that represent experience points allowing each character to get stronger/level up. As each character levels they can hone their skills making them more effective when completing challenges.



Throughout the levels there are checkpoint points so if perhaps one or all your characters die you can go back to that spot to revive them. If your wondering how your characters could die, there are plenty of ways such as falling off cliffs, drowning, getting hit by objects, or killed by enemies don’t forget this is a platformer as well. Checkpoints also serve as a place to replenish some of your hp or your wizard’s mp if you run out. There are other ways to do this such as killing enemies, they occasionally drop hp and mp flasks as well as give experience points.

There is no formula on how to use each characters abilities to solve the puzzle its whatever gets the job done. The wizard has no fighting abilities but can levitate and make items to help solve challenges. The thief; a female character as I would like to note, can shoot a bow and arrow and use a grappling hook. I like the thief being a woman because it breaks up the monotony of having an all male cast. I also liked that she is fully clothed and not used as a sexual ploy to attract buyers. Lastly, the knight is just what he is a knight and has a sword and shield to prove it.



Together these 3 make for a fun gaming experience but like everything there are always some flaws. My biggest pet peeve is the controls. I feel like they are not intuitive enough. To switch between characters you can press L1 or R1 and I do not like that.



One because usually action buttons are assigned to L1 or R1 and switching characters is not major enough. Instead of L1 or R1 I think it should have been L2 and R2. So then you can use those buttons for actions like when the wizard needs to draw to make an object, you would hold down L1 or R1 and draw with the right joystick. I found when in a rush to switch characters I always pressed L2 or R2 first and when I wanted to do an action I pressed L1 or R1 which was frustrating.

What is also frustrating is holding down on the right stick to block when using the knight. Everyone should know its either back or R1 to block simple. The thief control scheme is ok but I do which I had more control while aiming with her arrows. So currently its hold the right stick in any direction and let go to fire. I would have preferred hold the right stick and press R1 to fire. Therefore I am aiming and releasing when I want more precisely.

Another small pet peeve of mine is the story. It could be 10 times more engrossing and its not. It feels like they banked a lot on the gameplay being the seller which it is but there is supposely a story there. I feel it could have been more interesting or told in a more engrossing way to actually make me care.

So overall I like Trine alot and if you have a ps3 you should get it off the psn store immediately. It is definetely not a waste of your time. Perfect game to pick up during your Modern Warfare downtime because if you didn't know just like the famous tv show said Three's Company too.