Trine, the Game

Last night, my fiance and I went to a friends house to have a little fun, play some games. After watching the Celtics beat Magic (I cheered on the Celtics, just because I liked their uniforms better), we put a video game on that my friend had recently acquired online through his PS3. When I first saw Trine, I thought it would be lame, but my friend went ahead and bought it, possibly because we'd researched it a bit online and heard some good stuff about it.

This retro, side-scrolling fantasy/action/physics-based game is addicting and fun. It can be played with three players, as ti has three characters. One, a Magician, has the powers to conjure boxes and planks that help jumping onto high ledges and walking across spike-infested pits. Another character, the Knight (or Fat Kid, as I dubbed him last night), has strength on his side. He's really the combat-ready character of the team. The protector. Finally, the Thief, which I claim as my character, has a bow and arrows as weapons, which can be upgraded to shoot fire arrows, or even just more arrows in one shot. She also has a whip-like tool which can fasten onto wooden objects and be used to swing about. I use this tool heavily, considering I don't have to wait for the magician to conjure a box when I want to swing to the next ledge, or I just want to easily avoid treacherous pits of acid or spikes.
While this game can be played with just one player, you need all the characters in order to get through the levels. When playing one person style, you can switch characters depending on your needs.

This game was very addicting, and we whiled away a few hours without even realizing it. We laughed so hard at some of the goofy things that occurred, for example my penchant for swinging myself onto spikes, or failing to swing to the appointed ledge; my friend's inability to swim because he was so big and heavy a character; my fiance's drawing skills when conjuring a plank or box; our overall general lack of staying alive for longer than a few seconds after being regenerated due to our gung-ho approach to the mission. At one point, instead of running quickly back to the check point to retrieve my dead character, my fiance and my friend left the check point behind. They figured they had the Knight, a combat-ready character, and so did not especially need my abilities, and would make it to the next check point first. My friend, the Knight, promptly died in a pit of acid, and my fiance, the Magician, being defenseless, tried his best to kill five undead skeletons by drawing boxes above them and squishing them. He died as well, and we all ended up back where we began.

There was a lot of laughter, a lot of teasing, and a great time in all. I highly recommend this game for a bit of fun with a couple of friends. Make sure they can draw, first, though.