Trine (PlayStation 3) review

wolfqueen001 posted September 25, 2009:

Hey. I'm glad you continue to submit here, and I hope you keep doing so. If you're open to feedback, here are some things I thought you may want to look into for making your review read a little better.

Firstly, you don't need to start the revview (or end it) with ellipses. It's unnecessary here, and doens't really add anything at all to the review.

Secondly, your "conclusion", the paragraph you italicized, can function well as an intro, and even works a lot better than how you have it worded here. Also, where you have it now, anyone can just scroll to the end of your review and read that paragraph and get a general idea of what the game's about, thus making their time reading what you've written before then almost pointless.

Thirdly, the way your review reads off now is rather clunky, sporadic and confusing. You sort of just throw us all into the middle of the game... without any real explanation. I think, at least in some parts, you're trying to be cheeky with how little the game itself actually tells you from the start (I assume), but it doesn't really work the way you have it now. You need to elaborate a lot more and organize your paragraphs in such a way that it all flows together chronologically and in an organized manner. For example, you give some intriguing examples about how the characters can be used... but because I don't know much more than "These are who you have.... let's go on an adventure!", I'm a bit confused as to how exactly they're applied. I also have no sense of connection to them just from the review since I don't have any real perception of them outside of the most basic sense.

Fourthly, you have this quote box thing to the right in the middle of your review that's completely unnecessary and detracts from the text itself. If you'd had a screenshot or something, that might function as a good caption, but as you don't, it's not doing anyone any favors and makes the spacing look strange.

Lastly, and this is a minor issue, you have spacing errors between some paragraphs - at least two of them have two spaces instead of one.

Anyway, all you really need is a bit of a rewrite... and quite a bit of elaboration. You have the basics of the game laid out pretty well, so that's always a good thing. You just need to organize them and expand on them in order to make this a much more engaging review.

Keep up the work. I hope this feedback helps. I'm sure it sounds like a lot, and I don't want you to get discouraged or anything. I'm just trying to help. You do have a good solid basis here; it just needs a bit more tidying up and elaboration. If you want, I can try to elaborate on specific points.

wolfqueen001 posted September 26, 2009:

Hm... Well, I'm a little confused as to what you're trying to say, but I think I have an idea. Still, I'm going to pick apart your review to try and show you what I'm talking about. I'll try to model the examples akin to what you're trying to get at, too. Forgive me if I err.

You don't have to follow the advice if you don't want to, but... I think it's definitely something you should consider, especially with later works.

"Once upon a time", the narrator ensures you, accompanied to Ari Pulkkinen's playful soundtrack, "there was a King". And there's a kingdom. And magic. I'd be sceptical about the magic if I were king, because it always means trouble. But the King and his wizards fashioned three powerful artefacts, each representing the important parts that make up the wholeness of things - and so maintaining balance in the kingdom.

My main problem with this paragraph is how it starts. I just kind of feel like I'm thrown in the middle, and while it sounds like this all happens rather early on, I think I feel this way because you start off with a quote. Now a quote can work quite well in reviews sometimes, especially if you manage to make it really amusing, but here it feels... almost forced. I think you'd be better just describing everything like you do later in the paragraph. I really like how you finish describing things. It comes off as very nonchalant and almost witty as if it's... not very important, while at the same time telling us the basic premise of the game. And I think that's the "wrapper/mirror" thing you're talking about. So I just think you should make the whole paragraph about that.

Also, I think this would benefit from a more introductory paragraph. Like, the one I cited above sounds like it's part of the review itself... not a real introductioin, and I think that's part of the reason why it throws me off. Perhaps you could rearrange that conclusion paragraph of yours to make it a functional introduction that would make a great start for this review as a whole.

Unfortunately, the artefact representing the mind has, minutes of story-telling time prior to the game starting, been lost. And so the kingdom falls into chaos and disaster.

I think you can just say "one of the artefacts" here because I don't recall you explaining in the first paragraph what each of the three are... except that there are three of them and that they're important to keeping balance. Describing one of the artefacts without describing the others could create a little bit of confusion with what exactly you're talking about.

As a result of this disaster, for a variety of random yet interesting reasons, a thief, a wizard and a knight each make their way to the Wizard's Academy vault. And due to yet another completely random accident with magical artefacts, they become inexplicably linked together. Until they can break the spell - or save the kingdom, whichever comes first.


I think you're still trying to use that tactic of brushing off the plot here... but I think it suffers a little bit because of just... how involved it is. I mean, there are many different discussions about artefacts. It gets a little confusing which ones you're referring to if you're just reading it through the first time. I think a little more elaboration, or at least identifying them by names (which would require further elaboration in previous paragraphs), would do wonders here. I know you tell us what Trine is in the next paragraph, but I think it would be better to tell us here.

As far as design goes, using each individual hero's strengths to complete the puzzles is what the game revolves around

This is just awkward phrasing. Something like "In order to complete the game's puzzles, you need to use each individual hero's strengths"

Whether it is using the knight to fend off undead, while the wizard levitates a broken bridge, so the thief can jump across to the next checkpoint. Or if it's slowly building a tower of planks and boxes to reach a wooden support further up - that the thief can then grapple with her hook. Of course, the fiendishly challenging rotating seesaw requires a more elaborate strategy - because of the wholesome physics based gameplay, and the different weight of the characters for example

I really like the examples you're tryiing to lay across here. However, as a whole, the structure needs a little tidying up. Mostly this is just awkward phrasing. Instead of starting out with "Whether" and trying to make a list of things from there, I would just describe an example specific to each hero just as it is without necessarily trying to link them. Also, towards the end, this is the first time I'm hearing of the physics engine... Dropping it here sort of throws me off. While it's fine to have it there, I think you should make note of the physics in your intro somewhere if you haven't yet, should you swap out the conclusion.

Also, that's the paragraph with the quote box. Haha. I didn't mean to insult your amazing CSS skills - I certainly can't do that - but... the box basically tells us one of the examples you used in your paragraph, so.... just from a basic "necessary" basis, it's... irrelevant. Sorry. =(

The game may not be a graphical marvel in pseudo 3d - but it is very beautiful. And the bridge between the detailed character animation and the physics based levels is so well done that the flow of the game is very pleasing - you rarely seem limited by game-world constraints that do not make intuitive sense. In spite of the world detail, the characters simply belong there.

See. This is a pargraph that feels like it belongs before the one I just took apart. If that had been in there, the one above it would make much more sense. Granted, if you do this, you would have to rearrange things so that everything coming before also flows nicely and makes just as much sense, but I'm sure you can do it.

The paragraph coming after is pretty good. (This is the one starting with "Frozenbyte"). It elaborates more on the puzzle thing, which would definitely be appropriate to come after the neat examples you cited - should you choose to shift things around. However, the one after that I have issues with, and I will cite below.

Trine also magically avoids the typical objects plastered to walls, snaking ropes, or sliding objects with no weight - that always tend to show up in physics games. Which adds, along with the rest, to the whole game being larger than the sum of it's individual parts.

I feel like you're just throwing this in as an after thought. While I see it as relevant... I don't see any kind of mention anywhere else in the review to make me think of this. In fact, this is something that might be better integrated throughout the review... like within the other paragraphs citing specific examples. Or, alternatively, you can give a more concrete example here instead of just describing how it is. Also, if you swap out the italicized conclusion at the end, this paragraph would not function well as a conclusion. You would need to create a new more complete conclusion to wrap up the review.

I hope this helps. =D I also just think simply tidying up some of the awkward phrasings would go a long way. So even if you just do that little bit, this review would improve dramatically.

Keep up the good work! I do hope you consider the advice and try to revise this one at last a little. But ultimately, the choice is yours. Either way, the opinions are there for you to consider for the future, so that's always a good thing.

True posted September 28, 2009:

After reading this review, I wanted to check the game out...

And I'm sure this going to validate my stupidity, but I wasn't able to find it. I checked Amazon and only found the PC version. Then I consider it would be on the Playstation store since it says PSN but I couldn't find it there either

It's strange to me...

True posted September 28, 2009:

USA. I'll look again, but even using the search function didn't produce any results. I may need a software update or something.

True posted September 28, 2009:

Ha. Now I don't feel so stupid. We should update that, though, Senator Venter. On the sidecar it says September 10th.