Trine

For a game that once again treads the 2D platfomrer path (albeit with meticuluosly detailed 3D environments), Trine is able to feel surprisingly original by mixing a mastery of the established with the novelty of a couple of interesting new concepts.

The titular astrological aspect unites the souls of three characters into one being, which at first seems like a somewhat forced excuse to be able to swap between them on the fly. You'll learn to forgive that early on, though, since you'll be swapping between those characters often as you make your way through torchlit mines and spectral forests that have a knack for placing wooden objects and doors where they clearly don't belong.

The three characters you'll be swapping between follow your standard fantasy archetypes, but the way the game plays with those archetypes is what accounts for a lot of their charm. The knight, who'll be responsible for fending off enemies and carrying things around, for example, is a bit on the husky side. The wizard, who can create objects such as blocks and boards, has failed to learn the most basic fire spell and is something of a womanizer. The thief, who uses a grappling hook to climb wooden ledges, as well as arrows for long range combat, is played with the least amount of irony, but manages to feel like she wasn't drawn directly from a D&D manual nonetheless.

You'll get most of your clues as to what's going on between levels, with a combination of ominous narration and brief dialogue. Most of it serves as a way of telling you why you're where you are, as well as flesh out the personae you're adapting. It isn't much, but not much really needs to be said, and you get just enough interactions that towards the end you'll feel you're as familiar with the characters' personalities as you are their talents.

And it's the varied set of talents that each of the characters has, on top of well-realized physics, that allow for truly inspired level design. What makes the design of the levels so clever is that at any given point, you have a number of options available to you. For example, you can manipulate a rotating platform by simply moving it with the wizard's magic, throw a block at it with the knight, or bypass it altogether with the thief's grappling hook. There is never a single area of the game for which there is the one and only true solution. Sure, there are times when the only way to progress is to hit a switch to open a door, but how you get to and activate that switch is up to you. You never feel as if you're being forced to follow a certain logic, which, for a game essentially about getting from point A to B in the best way possible, is refreshing. The wealth of options is both thoughtful and necessary, since it's possible to have one of your characters die, forcing you to progress to the next checkpoint without, say, the ability to create a bridge whenever you want.

It may seem like it'd be easy to simple build or grapple your way out of every problem you encounter, but the game is smart about when those solutions will work and when they won't. If it wants you to get across a certain chasm by activating a switch, it'll make the ceiling stone (making it impossible to grapple to the other side), and long enough that no amount of planks or boxes will allow you to cross.

In this way, Trine is able to let you use the abilities of all three of your characters without becoming too reliant on one of them for too long. I'm almost certain that the game could be beaten exclusively with one character, but you'll have a much better time juggling the three. If you're prone to using the wizard, he'll have a hard time fighting enemies, and the knight will have difficulty with some of the more complex platforming scenarios. The thief is the most versatile, with the ability to fight enemies effectively and get through areas with a greater degree of ease, though even she has her weaknesses.

The character's individual talents can be upgraded with experience, which is found, not earned. Each level has set amount of experience, half of which can be gained from killing certain enemies. The rest are hidden throughout the level, and though most of them are on the beaten path, you'll find that a certain number of them act as tangential puzzles that require both creative thinking and sharp reflexes.

Some notes about platform differences: The PS3 version of the game is exactly the same as the PC, feature-wise. Multiplayer, as far as I know, is only available locally, and the physics tended to get a bit wacky when stress-tested. Control-wise, the game transferred almost perfectly to the gamepad. Creating boxes using the wizard is the biggest issue that the controller faces (it's much easier to use the mouse than to drag a cursor with the analog stick, then trace a shape), but for the most part, it feels like the game was designed with this control scheme in mind. Analog control of the thief's bow and the knight's shield add some much-appreciated articulation to the combat, which manages to feel surprisingly sophisticated for a platformer. I've also noticed a few physics mishaps every now and then, but that might apply to both versions, though either way they're minimal at best.

You'll still cross the same pits, activate the same switches and jump from one time-sensitive platform to another, but Trine does just enough with this formula to truly deserve your spending money, and more importantly, your time.