Trine

The "puzzle-platformer" genre has gained a lot of traction over the past few years, with the bar now sitting pretty high. While Trine has some interesting ideas and a certain level of creative charm to its design, it also lacks the level of polish that defines the genre's juggernauts. Trine can be a bit of an uneven experience as a result, and your enjoyment of it will probably be directly proportional to your overall affection for the genre itself.

First and foremost, Trine's basic gameplay dynamic is pretty neat. You're given control of three characters, all of which have unique capabilities. Between the thief's grappling hook, the wizard's ability to move boxes around, and the knight's natural affinity for cracking skulls, there's a lot of mechanics for you to play around with in Trine, and the level designs do a good job at giving you ample incentive to use each of them. I was constantly switching back and forth between the three, and it proved to be pretty satisfying to get through a tricky area by using all the skills at your disposal. There's also a great leveling system that rewards you for fully exploring each stage, as you'll find experience hidden away in every little nook and cranny. You get to spend the points you earn on upgrading your characters' abilities, and most of the upgrades are pretty neat. All in all, Trine has a clever and entertaining structure, which should be more than enough to please established fans of puzzle-platformers.

That being said, there are a lot of aspects about Trine that aren't up to par. While the core structure is satisfying, I found some of the game's more basic functions to be frustrating. The controls aren't as tight as I would want, as you're awkwardly fast and far reaching when moving vertically, but unnecessarily sluggish when moving horizontally. This makes moving around the game's horizontally oriented world way too cumbersome, creating a handful of unwieldy platforming segments in the process. Even worse, however, are the game's enemies, which consist almost entirely of bats and skeletons. The bats are annoying simply because your characters are ill equipped to deal with their haphazard movement patterns, but it's the seemingly endless skeleton spawns that really drag the game down. They'll keep coming as you try to solve a tricky platforming puzzle, and just when you think it's safe to start advancing, they pop back up to knock you back down. It's super tedious, and the complete lack of enemy variety means you'll tire of killing skeletons well before the game's done. The last few stages are the worst about this, and managed to suck almost all the fun out of the game in its final hour.

Trine has a lot of really neat ideas going for it- the three way character balance, clever physics puzzles, and interesting level design all lay the groundwork for a solid puzzle-platformer. But that solid base is frequently undermined by lackluster control and repetitive, frustrating, and ultimately unsatisfying combat. Trine should certainly be enjoyed by fans of the genre who are looking for more, but there are better alternatives for everyone else.
 
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