Trine 2 PS3 review

Your intrepid heroes are the same as before: Amadeus the wizard, Zoya the thief and Pontius the knight, and they all come equipped with a special set of skills. Amadeus can summon boxes and planks to help you get to hard-to-reach places, and also levitate objects; Zoya has a bow and a grappling hook; and Pontius comes complete with sword, shield and ruddy great belly.

How these combine is fairly easy to imagine: the knight smashes walls and foes alike, the thief nimbly scales obstacles and swings from rafters, while Amadeus witters away in a cowardly fashion and ends up being very useful (especially when you realise you can slightly glitch his abilities to make him almost fly). They can all also be incrementally upgraded, and while the scale of the RPG element makes these more like skill bonsais than full-on trees the simplicity of the progression stops it being a distraction from the game’s core.

As mentioned earlier, none of the individual gameplay elements is particularly standout. The platforming lacks zip and immediacy, and while some of the puzzles are genuine head-scratchers, a fair number boil down to stacking up some crates or the old ‘pull lever and dash’ one-two. But the game’s comprehensive physics system kicks everything up a notch, requiring you to take momentum and object weight into account to progress. It also means that you can fluke your way through sections or find alternate, unorthodox solutions – it sometimes feels cheaty, but offers pleasingly unusual variation.

This sequel’s main addition is that you can now play co-op online as well as locally. If you manage to get a good trio together the game is best enjoyed in threes, so it’s definitely a good addition – although snapping between the characters (using the trigger buttons) is so instant that nothing gets lost if you choose to go solo. Beyond that it’s an extension of the old formula, but when that formula involves some challenging gameplay and this much prettiness, that’s no bad thing.

Our Score