Just a short one tonight, one, because last week was a bit hectic and two, because I haven’t been able to finish the demo yet (graphics card overheating).
When I first saw a video showing Trine I was quite impressed, I’m not a big fan of platformers but the magic and overall flow of the game looked very different to other games of it’s type. Trine is based around three characters, your traditional thief\mage\warrior, and you have to work out how to use them to bypass traps, gaping chasms, skeleton guards and the like. I first tried the game on maximum settings but the FPS kept dipping into the twenty’s, not good for a game that requires precise reactions, however after removing the AA it ran much better and I didn’t notice any difference.
The game starts before the three main characters have met, giving you a chance to understand their individual abilities and also to start off the story.
The thief is spry and light, she fires arrows and has a grappling hook which allows her to swing from wooden objects. Her arrows don’t do much damage, I mainly found myself using her to access higher areas and make the longer jumps. Once you get going she flows very well, speeding across the level.
The Magician has the power to levitate objects, left-clicking then right allows you to lift blocks into place and make use of all the traps and swinging platforms. He can also create blocks using a gesture system, so even if there isn’t anything in the area you can use he’s still useful. He is mainly a support character, or was for all that I played.
The Knight is usually the one to switch too when enemies are around, left-clicking swings his sword and right blocks with his impressively sized shield. He isn’t just a fighter though, he’s good for breaking through wooden barriers and is heavier than the other two.
The engine makes use of PhysX on the many objects that litter the stage (I actually saw a skeleton hit an object and it flew towards my character) and even parts of the stage itself. I don’t know whether it was because I had the settings up to high, but the blocks that you move around, particularly with magic, were a bit slow to react and floaty, they could have done with some more weight.
There were several interesting traps that require a little though to make use of. Such as the wooden crate blocked by a wooden barrier. This isn’t just a straight run platformer, the developers have obviously put thought into each of the area, with many objects that interact with each other.
The visuals are magical, not quite realistic, not quite cartoon. Trine has a very definite art-style to it that I can’t remember seeing in another game, possibly a simplified version in some kids animation. There is a lot of contrast between light and dark, the glows are all placed in exactly the right position, drawing your focus and accentuating the darkness.
There’s also a fourth character of note, the narrator, who I thought added a lot to the cut-scenes, loading screen and sometimes even mid-level. He has an ‘old adventurer sitting by the fire telling stories’ feel to him, helps keep the story flowing and it very well voiced.
I don’t think I’ll be buying Trine, the only platformer I’ve ever really gotten on with is Super Mario World and for the price I don’t feel that it will have enough content for me. Had it been £5 cheaper I’d have thought about it more, however if it ever comes up in a sale I’ll definitely have a good think about it. It’s well worth giving the demo some of your time, if only because few developers release demos before the full game, giving you time to mull it over. The demo is available from several download sites, and also Steam. Overall it’s very high quality, and it’s a big step up from the company that produced Shadowgrounds (which I haven’t played, but know of it’s reputation), platforming fans will love it, others will for it’s artistic style, for the rest of us it’s well worth considering.
It definately looks interesting and the graphics look pretty good too. Odd to see how much work has actually gone into a side scrolling platformer. I think your definately right about the price, for that we could buy a full blown FPS but that said we haven’t played the full version so I guess we cannot really say how good value wise it is.
Might I ask if your graphics card overheating was anything to do with the glorious graphics at all haha?
Value wise, you’re right we can’t know, but we can make a pretty good guess. Taking my Super Mario World example, there are new enemies practically every level and and the levels themselves had a huge variation. Whereas Trine seems more like, variations on a theme.
You can see how many skills there are on the inventory screen, and since you can replay old levels once you have levelled up I very much doubt they will change the gameplay drastically.
I also think it’s fairly reasonable to assume that most of the effort has gone into the engine, and whilst the level design is very good, I don’t see it having much scope. I could be wrong of course.
Also, glorious graphics card?
Strangely I didn’t get the problem with TF2, despite the high settings, but World in Conflict, ARMA2 demo and Trine all suffered the problem. After a period of time, the screen goes all square-y and soon the graphics driver crashes. It’s partly linked to when I disconnected the side fan, but I think it’s also a sign that overall air flow isn’t what it could be. I’ve seen a reasonably priced third party cooler, that instead of just blowing the hot air away, it pushes it out the back. I might go for something like that, and maybe then limit the side fan as the noise is noticeable.