Trine

Echoing a post I did for the school blog.

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New Era sent us a game title for review several days ago, titled Trine. No, it’s not a well-known game so don’t feel too bad for drawing a blank! I didn’t hear of this game before either, but curious about the front box accolades heaped onto it, I picked it up and gave it a run.

And the game’s a lot of fun! It’s a platformer, but lovingly rendered in 3D and all the visual tricks you see in more graphically-advanced games – including render glow, distortion effects, anisotropic filtering and antialiasing. The game runs on a gamut of resolutions. It works fine even on notebooks with a mid-level graphics solution too, and even with many graphic options turned off to enable a better frame rate, the game still looks stunningly lovely.

In Trine, you play as one of three characters who are given unique dispositions through the story-telling. There’s the wizard who likes to think he’s a woman’s man, the warrior who’s all brawn but precious little on brains (and it shows when he talks – too funny for words!), and the stealthy thief with sardonic wit. Early on in the game, a magical artifact causes the three characters to meld into one, so for the rest of the game’s 15 levels, you can interchangeably switch between the three characters and make use of each’s unique abilities to solve a puzzle.

What else is so special about Trine beyond its lovely visuals? Two more things: firstly, the game touts clever implementation of physics. Each object has weight and inertia, and understanding to harness each object’s characteristics helps solving the ingame puzzles.

Secondly, the voice-acting is some of the most refreshing you’ll hear in a game. The story and narration is told using an elderly voice as though he’s reading from a fairy tale book, and the lines are exactly the sort you’ll hear from an updated Disney classic – full of wit, humor and puns. I don’t typically care much for voiceovers in games, preferring to just skip through them. But Trine is one game where I actually looked forward to hear each narration post-level.

The game’s currently out for the PC, but should be showing up for consoles too. The game title’s been passed to James Fang, GET Senior, for review.:)

(Screenshots from Gamespot)