Trine 2: Complete Story (PS4) Review

Trine 2: Complete Story (PS4)

Trine 2: Complete Story is a side scrolling action adventure and puzzle game available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4. Trine 2: Complete Story is an enhanced version of Trine 2 and is the latest release in the award winning and popular Trine franchise.

The game tells the story of three characters that are brought together by a mystical artefact called the Trine, which guides them to preventing an evil presence from sweeping across their kingdom. Each

character has their own thoughts in regards to if they see the return of the Trine as a positive or a negative, but in the knowledge that the kingdom must be protected they know they have to set out on the adventure together, regardless of their other priorities or opinions.

There are three characters including: Amadeus, Pontius and Zoya with their own unique weapons and abilities. Amadeus is a wizard, while Pontius is a brave warrior and Zoya is a thief who prefers to consider herself to be an entrepreneur. The spells, skills and abilities of each of the three characters certainly represent who they are supposed to be in the game. Amadeus as a wizard is able to conjure magic spells to create objects to counter balance weights and enable him to climb to reach previously unattainable heights and platforms, although he can also use his magic spells to lower objects onto enemies, particularly when out of an enemies’ view as a quick ambush; while Pontius as a brave warrior has no magic spells, but as he wears thick armour he also carries his sword for attacking enemies, a shield to protect him from enemies on the attack and falling objects, alongside his storm hammer which can knock through unstable walls and floors to reveal new areas; and Zoya as a thief is able to aim crossbows from afar to take out her enemies and sneak through areas quickly and away from danger with her grappling hook.

You can level up any of the three characters by collecting fifty orbs, which you will find many naturally

as you progress through the game, while you will have to look a little harder for some of them by overcoming a puzzle to reach the height of the orb. Each time you level up, you earn a skill point which can in turn be used to improve an ability of any of the three characters. There are seven improvements that can be made to each of the three characters by levelling up, although each improvement costs between one and four skill points, which means that you have to level up sixteen times to reach your maximum potential for each character and levelling up a total of 48 occasions to be able to maximise skills of all three characters. However, if you have not reached the maximum level with all of your characters and you want to reset the improvements to redistribute all of your skill points to improving alternative abilities, then you can do so at any given time. Skills that can be improved from skill points include: Amadeus being able to levitate monsters, imprison monsters and conjure two or even three items simultaneously; while Zoya is able to fire various types of arrows from her crossbow, such as frost, frozen, fire and explosive; and Pontius is able to throw his hammer and charge at enemies, alongside upgrades from the normal shield to a frost shield or a magnetic shield and a fire sword.

The level design is massive in scale with such a variety of backgrounds and environments to explore ranging from a mushroom forest to a burning desert and snowy ice mountains. Each level has a range of puzzles, such as physics based puzzles in which you will be required to counter balance the weight of an object, so you can reach a higher platform or changing the lean of an object, so water can flow through a log and onto a plant enabling the plant to grow and allowing you to climb to a higher platform.

The enemy design varies greatly including: wild plants that attempt to wrap themselves around you, goblins that attack with swords and others that attack with crossbows, carefully laid traps such as spikes and boulders, hazards such as fireballs and so much more besides. The enemy design progresses through phases throughout the game to keep the challenge of the enemies, traps and hazards feeling fresh and exciting.

There are plenty of collectibles for you to look out for including: seventeen paintings, seventeen poems and ten map pieces that you will find in treasure chests spread across the entire game. Having a total of 44 collectibles is certainly a wise design choice as it provides a genuine reason for you to explore the entire area thoroughly before moving onto the next stage of the level. However, alongside the 44 collectibles there are also orbs that can be collected for the purpose of counting towards the target of fifty orbs, which enables you to level up any of the three characters.

Trine 2: Complete Story is exactly that as it contains all of the thirteen levels from the original version of Trine 2 with six additional levels in the form of the Goblin Menace expansion and a secret level

called the Dwarven Caverns that is unlocked by collecting the ten secret map pieces that are found scattered throughout the six Goblin Menace levels. All three areas of the game are connected into one extended campaign across twenty levels, so you are able to maintain all of the skills you have learned as you have progressed through the game, rather than having to start each area afresh.

Trine 2: Complete Story supports the share feature that allows you to upload a video clip to Facebook or Twitter; upload a screen shot to Facebook or Twitter; and broadcast live gameplay footage via Twitch or Ustream as you are experiencing the game with a simple tap of the share button and selecting the option of your choice. The PS4’s hard-drive continuously stores your most recent fifteen minutes of gameplay footage, so you still have the chance to decide if you would like to share something amazing a few minutes after it has taken place. The share feature is a next-gen revolution that will only continue to prosper and flourish as it matures with additional features and further experimentation.

The controls are really well mapped to the DualShock 4 controller. The face buttons control scheme consists of pressing X to jump; holding X to leap higher from a bouncing object; pressing square or R2 to attack with Pontius’ sword or to use Zoya’s grappling hook; triangle to change your weapons such as changing Pontius’ sword and shield to his storm hammer; R1 or L1 to change between the three

characters; changing the direction of the left analogue stick to the left or right or pressing the left or right buttons on the d-pad to move your character; changing the direction of the right analogue stick to manoeuvre the cursor in the appropriate direction for Pontius to be able to protect himself from attacks, hazards and traps by moving his shield to deflect them and for Zoya to be able to fire her crossbow; when R2 is combined with the right analogue stick it allows Amadeus to craft objects from magic spells, pick them up and move those objects accordingly to counter balance the weight of objects to help with puzzles and to attack enemies by dropping objects on their heads; pressing the share button takes you to the share feature menu; and pressing the options button to display the pause menu. The touch pad controls certainly provide the best use for the touch pad in any PS4 game so far as you can manoeuvre the cursor for any of the three characters. The best demonstration of the quality of the touch pad controls is particularly when using Amadeus as you can lightly touch the surface of the touch pad while holding R2 to draw an object and lift that object by moving your finger around the touch pad and watching the object move in real time in accordance to exactly were you want it to move in the game. Other demonstrations of the capabilities of the touch pad include aiming and firing Zoya’s crossbow and raising Pontius’ shield to the appropriate angle to block any incoming attacks, traps or hazards, while tapping the touch pad will display the skill points menu. There is no question Trine 2: Complete Story’s controls stand out in particular for the experimentation and appropriate use of the touch pad, whereas many PS4 games are yet to succeed in providing the touch pad with an efficient purpose. The

colour of the light bar on the DualShock 4 controller unfortunately remains the same standard colour throughout the game, which is a bit of a surprise as I thought there would have been some experimentation in this area of the controller too as a neutral colour could have been assigned to each of the three characters for when they are exploring with a particular colour for attacking enemies and a separate colour for when enemies are attacking you, alongside an eerie glowing effect which could have been utilised for when Amadeus is casting a spell. However, the lack of experimentation for the light bar can be forgiven considering the experimentation and work that has obviously been explored with the touch pad controls, while you can feel the sensation of rumble feedback particularly when you are being attacked during combat situations and when you discover a lever that needs to be turned to operate a mechanism to raise a bridge.

Graphically, Trine 2 has never looked this good before with breathtaking visuals running at a stunning native resolution of 1080p in 60 frames per second and stereoscopic 3D. To put that into perspective; previous versions of Trine 2 on consoles run at a resolution of 720p in 30 frames per second without

3D, so Trine 2: Complete Story on PS4 certainly offers the best graphical quality of any console version of Trine 2 and rivals the overall performance quality of a high end PC when running the game. Trine 2: Complete Story includes the best implementation of stereoscopic 3D that I have saw in any game with an amazing depth of field as characters stand out as there is noticeable depth between the foreground and background. There has been so much emphasis placed into the depth of the 3D that even the menus pop out from their backgrounds.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface across various menus such as the main menu, settings menu, extras menu and options menu with support for navigation via the left analogue stick, directional pad and face buttons, although it does not include support for navigation via the right analogue stick and touch pad, although that is not an issue considering the other methods of navigation

that are available. The background of the menu screens consists of a beautifully natural and flourishing landscape with the sun reflecting off the water below, lots of vegetation and butterflies flying around the tall trees and lanterns, although the background of the menu screens will alternate between a sunny daytime and a night time sky that look just as beautiful and magical as each other.

The audio consists of voice-overs, sound effects and music. The voice-overs are essential to the story driven narrative of Trine 2: Complete Story with the full returning voice-over cast from the first Trine game that perform their roles exceptionally well and really bring a lot to the atmosphere of the game. The sound effects are wide ranging for each character as they have their own abilities and weapons, alongside ambient sound effects that bring more life to the environments such as birds tweeting and fire lit wood, while the music has a score that is quite adventurous. Despite achieving a phenomenal sense of atmosphere with the audio; I would have really liked to see Trine 2: Complete Story make use of the speaker in the DualShock 4 controller as I believe the sound effects of the ambience, characters or enemies through the speaker would have been a great addition to the quality of the audio and would have certainly added a further layer to the atmosphere of the game.

The trophy list includes fifty-one trophies with forty-two bronze trophies, five silver trophies, three gold trophies and one platinum trophy. Whereas the PS3 version of Trine 2 only had a meagre thirteen trophies; Trine 2: Complete Story on PS4 has a comprehensively re-worked trophy list totalling to fifty-one trophies. You will be able to obtain around half of the trophies by naturally progressing through the game and completing it on any difficulty level as nineteen of the levels will reward you with a bronze trophy for completing each level and the I want more silver trophy for completing the game on any difficulty level. There are a number of trophies related to killing enemies with particular methods that range in difficulty and mostly require skill points to upgrade certain attacks, such as the Hammer Havoc bronze trophy for killing an enemy by throwing Pontius’ hammer and making sure it bounces at least once before it kills the enemy. There are also significantly harder trophies, such as the Lost and Found gold trophy for finding all of the treasure chests, which will certainly take some exploring; the Grand Collector gold trophy for collecting all of the experience pick-ups in the game; and the Walk in the Park gold trophy for completing the game on the hard difficulty level, while also using hardcore mode. I would estimate depending upon skill and a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips that it would take around fifteen to twenty hours to platinum the trophy list.

There are three difficulty levels including: easy, medium and hard. An additional complexity of the difficulty level can be enabled or disabled for any of the three difficulty levels and characters by selecting the hardcore mode. The hardcore mode provides an even greater challenge by limiting the amount of times dead characters can be resurrected and by disabling the ability to save during a level. You can also set a delay on the amount of time before you are given a hint regarding the puzzle you are attempting to overcome with the ability to have hints after two minutes or five minutes or alternatively

turn any delay for puzzle hints off entirely, so you can immediately hear the hint regarding the puzzle you are currently facing.

There are no online leaderboards, which is a surprise as I thought the game would have featured leaderboards for each level with positions decided by how quickly you have completed a level and how quickly you have completed the overall game, alongside points scoring leaderboards based upon your overall performance with points rewarded for killing an enemy, finding and collecting the contents of treasure chests and completing a level within a set period of time.

However, the lack of online leaderboards can be forgiven considering there are extensive local co-operative multiplayer and online co-operative multiplayer experiences spanning the entire game. You can switch from playing a single player game to having a friend join at any given time by pressing the options button on their DualShock 4 controller via the drop-in/drop-out co-op system, alongside being able to convert your single player or local co-operative multiplayer game into hosting an online multiplayer game from the current game menu for the public or friends from your friends list to be able to join your game at the level you have currently reached, alternatively you can also join anyone else’s online multiplayer game from the multiplayer menu.

The replayability of Trine 2: Complete Story is provided from a number of different areas, such as being able to play as three characters, collectible extras that will not necessarily be found during your first attempt to do so and being able to level up all of the skills for each character, which allows you to be more experimental with your approach to attacking enemies and overcoming puzzles. With an extensive amount of features, customisation and three varying difficulty levels, alongside local co-op and online co-op are sure to have you coming back to play Trine 2: Complete Story for many hours even beyond your initial playthrough of the game.

Overall, Trine 2: Complete Story offers content that will have you returning to the game long after your initial investment, such as an enchanting story, three customisable difficulty levels, a skill points and levelling up system, drop-in/drop-out local co-op multiplayer and online co-op multiplayer. Trine 2: Complete Story is exceptional value as it offers just as much content as you would expect to find in a retail game, but for a much lower price of £14.49. Trine 2: Complete Story delivers the ultimate experience of Trine 2 across any platform and for that reason alone; you should certainly make this a must purchase.

10 out of 10

Jason Bonnar

Analysis