I am a big believer in the positive aspects of gaming. I’ve defended my hobby both in person and on the net, and I truly feel that videogames can have a palpable, positive effect on people everywhere.

Recently, I was pleasantly reminded of this fact, thanks to the little downloadable game that could, Trine. Trine is a PSN game (developed originally for Windows PC) by Finnish developer, Frozenbyte. In the game you take control of three heroes, each of whom have been bound together by the mystical Trine. As a result of the magic spell of the Trine, a knight, a thief and a wizard are forced to share one body, and must work together in order to traverse platforms, solve puzzles and defeat enemies. The main concept behind the game is that you can - and must - freely switch between any of the three characters, but can only control one of them at a time, forcing you to use your head and think about which character’s ability you need to get past a specific challenge.

Trine was one of the first downloadable games I ever purchased. The game enamoured me with its beautiful graphics and its old-school, 2-D platforming; plus, since the game allowed up to three players to play locally, I figured it would be a great chance to convince my boyfriend to join in on the gaming fun.

It’s been a concerted mission of mine to turn my boyfriend into a pseudo-gamer of sorts. I have had varying degrees of success. Fighting games he can manage, as long as you don’t force him to choose more than one character. It still surprises me that, to this day, when I play Mortal Kombat with friends and they choose anyone other than Zub-Zero, I had forgotten that such a decision was even possible. Shooters have also been a success of sorts, and we’ve logged hours upon hours playing Resistance - it has become quite evident that shooting aliens in the face is something that makes us a better and happier couple.

Trine was one of our earliest co-op experiences, and I kid you not, gamers, but that game taught me more about us and our relationship than I care to recall.

Before we go further into this, there are a few things you should know. I am not what you might call a 'patient' gamer. If you see me flipping a switch, grappling off a wall and double-jumping over a fiery pit onto a platform, I expect you to do the same. Damn it, how hard could it be?! You just saw me do it, didn’t you? I sometimes forget that not everyone has been doing this since they were five.

Case-in-point: my boyfriend. The poor shmoe owned a Nintendo with a copy of Mario Brothers a few eons ago, and that’s basically where his gaming-jedi training ended. And, although talented in many areas – the man makes a mean apple pie - when it comes to games, a fast learner he is not. As you can imagine, in a game in which three heroes share one body, throwing two gamers into the mix only confuses things even further. Co-operation and communication are key. The players, like the characters of Trine, have to find a way to share the three heroes and their abilities, and act in unison towards achieving their goal.

I think it was maybe after the fifth consecutive time that I plunged to my death, after my significant other conjured a box directly over my head with the Wizard as I attempted to manoeuvre over some platforms, that I very seriously thought it was time to reconsider this whole 'relationship' thing. "It’s just a game!" he protested. "Why are you so lame at this!?" I yelled. It didn’t take much more than that, and a full blown fight was on. Over Trine. Over a game. But not really.

Turns out it wasn’t so much that we were having trouble communicating during our Trine gaming session, but rather we were having trouble communicating in general. I was not only an impatient gamer; the fact of the matter was that I wasn’t a patient boyfriend. As for him, it became pretty evident that he was hesitant to follow my lead during Trine, because, in a lot of ways, he wasn't too keen on following my lead at all. We had run into a problem here; a puzzle of considerable challenge.

Here’s the thing though. We both wanted to make it work. We both wanted to beat Trine, so to speak. Trine became a metaphor for our relationship and its creases. So we took a step back. We took an inventory of what our strengths and weaknesses were, and reassessed that puzzle. Long story short, we beat that puzzle and kicked Trine’s ass.

A few days ago, we started playing Trine 2. Every now and again, a random box will be conjured directly over my head. And yes, many a digital death has ensued as a result of his inherent noobness. But he’s getting better, and I’ve learnt to sit back and enjoy it all. I’ve stopped trying to turn him into a fully-fledged gamer (sort of), and instead I've begun to enjoy the simple joys of gaming with my significant other. As a result, the yelling to laughing ratio has been flipped on its head.

Trine, and gaming in general, has not only helped my relationship, but has provided me and my boyfriend with a hobby that not only allows us to spend time together, but that forces us to work together as a unit, to communicate or fail, that gives us ample opportunities to help each other succeed and to share triumphs. And that's certainly not bad for a pastime that has a reputation for turning us all into a bunch of antisocial loners.

Labels: Feature, Joey Núñez, Opinion, Trine

Well, boys and girls, it's certainly been a trying time for those of us loyal to Sony’s black beauty. With the PlayStation Network down, every PS3 around the world was digitally neutered; floating like plastic islands in a digital ocean, Sony consoles were cut off from one another and from the precious PlayStation Store, home to countless downloadable goodies. Luckily, Sony has finally managed to get the PlayStation Network up and running again, and - like the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel - it seems like the return of the PlayStation Store is imminent.

Hey, it might even be up by the time this is published. A fanboy can dream, right?

So, what should you do once our lovable and cuddly digital store is back up? Well, besides telling it how much you missed it and showering it with gifts after it promises you to never, ever, ever go away again, there really is only one thing to do: get down with the downloads.

Last week I shared a list of some of the best PlayStation 1 classics available on the Playstation Store, and hopefully some of you will find it useful when sifting through the digital riff-raff. But, I know lots of you out there just can’t bear to game like its 1999, and the idea of revisiting a decade-old game is far from appealing. Well, here’s looking at you kids.

Aside from offering gamers some very sweet PS1 classics, the PlayStation Store has its share of great digital titles just waiting to be downloaded onto your hard drive. The task of choosing just a few titles from the hundreds available can be truly daunting, so I’m here to lend a helping hand. If you ask me, here are a few must-own downloadable games.

Flower

Flower was the first game I ever downloaded onto my PS3, and it’s probably one of the games I return to the most. This game isn’t quite like anything else you’ve played before, which automatically means it’s not for everyone, but it is definitely something that everyone should experience at least once.

Here’s the gist: you are a flower (or group of flowers) sitting on a windowsill in a busy city. As a flower you dream of the wild, open fields, filled with the greenest grass sprawling out under the bluest skies. You, as the player, get to play through those dreams. Trippy, huh? You will start out each level with a single flower petal, which you control with the motion capabilities of the Sixaxis controller; the petal will respond to your motions, while a press of a button will create a gust of wind to propel the petal forward. Your mission is to fly over wild flowers which haven’t blossomed and get them to do just that, bringing vibrancy and life to sometimes barren lands.

Simple as the game is, the colours, sounds, graphics and music of Flower combine in such a way that the experience is quite ethereal and very relaxing. When playing Flower, you lose yourself in the breeze. Trust me, that’s a very good thing.

Trine

A wizard, a knight and thief traverse a magical kingdom filled with an army of undead creatures and deadly traps, leading up to an epic confrontation, as the fate of a kingdom hangs in the balance. The catch? The souls of our three heroes inhabit a single body. Oh yeah, things are about to get awesome.

Part side-scrolling platformer and part puzzle game, Trine is visually inspiring, with gorgeous graphics and a lovely colour palette. Gameplay is immensely satisfying, as Trine forces you to be smart about traversing its levels. You see, each level will require you to constantly switch between the Knight, Thief and Wizard in order to access their unique abilities. It can be rather cumbersome at first, but with time this body-swapping mechanic will feel all too natural. Couple this with the Wizard’s abilities to literally create boxes and planks out of thin air and telepathically move them around a stage, and you’ve got yourself some truly epic platforming.

Trine is a blast to play alone or with a friend, via local co-op, and I wholeheartedly recommend you download it as soon as the Sony gods allow.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game

Retro is in. It seems like every game developer is keen to ride the nostalgia train all the way to money town, and that means tonnes of old-school games for us. Look no further than the new releases of Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time, X-Men Arcade, and the new 'old' Megaman games if you want to see what I’m talking about. Sadly, it’s hard to pull off a good old-school game without having it feel outdated. Luckily for us, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World pulls this off with flying colours. Seriously, colours will literally fly whilst playing this game.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is based on the comic series of the same name, and will put you in the shoes of Scott, your run-of-the-mill deadbeat Canadian hipster. Scott bites off more than he can chew when he falls for the lovely Ramona, since - in order to get the girl - he will have to defeat Ramona’s seven evil ex-boyfriends, in a battle royale of love. Cue nineties MIDI music.

A classic side-scrolling beat-um-up brawler, this game has metric tonnes of personality and is filled to the brim with nostalgic goodness, with winks to classics such as Streets of Rage, Super Mario 3 and Street Fighter. If you're a child of the SNES age, you won’t be able to keep from smiling at the old-school feel and references of the game. With four characters to choose from, you can pour hours of gameplay into this game, as you master each character’s skills with a levelling-up system similar to that you'd expect from an action-RPG.

Let the pixellated awesomeness begin.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light

Who said you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?

Tomb Raider games are known as over-the-top adventure games, in which the lovely Lara Croft gives you the opportunity to explore huge, open 3D environments; these are single player experiences, which are more often then not light on the gunplay and heavy on the puzzle solving.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light turns this formula on its head. The game gives you a fixed, isometric view of the action on the screen, doing away with the free-camera that the series is known for. And when I say action, I mean action. This downloadable title probably has more gunplay than all of the previous Tomb Raider games combined. A large part of that is due to the option of having a friend join in on the fun (via local or online co-op). Through the co-op option, Lara can be joined on her journey by the aforementioned 'guardian of light' - double the damage, double the fun.

Although the game will feel initially foreign to Tomb Raider fans, once you get into the groove of things you’ll find that the essence of the series has been retained. Each level is essentially a giant puzzle for you to solve. The developers made the stellar move of tailoring the puzzles to accommodate your single player and co-op experience, making sure that the world around changes slightly when you’re accompanied by a friend.

With an excellent gameplay experience, swathed in great production values and incredible graphics (for a downloadable game), it’s hard not to recommend the Guardian of Light for a download.

Shatter

Brick-breaking games have been around since time immemorial – or at least the last couple of decades – but this game shatters all of your expectations and everything you know about the genre. Forget about a simple paddle bouncing a ball onto a wall of bricks; multiple angles of movement and precise control are what this game is all about. The addictive gameplay will get to you, and breaking that high score will become more of an obsession than a goal

With awe-inspiring visuals and genre-defining gameplay, Shatter is something you have to see, not read about. Check out the video above and put downloading this game onto your to-do list.


The games listed above are but a tiny sample of the gaming gems you can find online. Keep your eyes open for the reopening of the PlayStation Store and make sure to check out the free games Sony is offering as part of their welcome package, which include some high quality downloadable titles. I’ll be sinking my teeth into Dead Nation and Wipeout HD, personally. What will you be downloading once the PlayStation Store is back up? Any recommendations for games I should take a look at? As ever, sound off in the comments section below.

Labels: 2011, Columns, DLC, Flower, Joey Núñez, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, PlayStation, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Store, PS3, RePlay, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game, Shatter, Trine

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Back in the day, platformers were all the rage. Every arcade was full of them - and some were really good. However, recently - bar the Mario popularity - they're all but gone. So it's nice that FrozenByte have decided that we need a new one.

TRINE is a side-scrolling, action-based platformer. Originally released for PC, with a DVD edition and a downloadable version from Valve's ever-popular Steam service, TRINE became an unexpected success. So much so, in fact, that they decided that a PlayStation Network version was in order.

If you're typically a side-scrolling gamer, the first thing you'll notice is the upgrade in graphics. Say the last platformer you played was Super Mario Bros 2: you'll be taken back by the eye watering visuals of TRINE as compared to that. It's as vibrant as a multicoloured tiger (yep, that's right. A multicoloured tiger) and, towards the end, just as difficult. The lighting system has been thoroughly developed and perfected. If you're running through a wood thicket, the odd dash of light will fall through the leaves above. And this fantastical lighting carries through to inside settings just as well.

Be you in a huge, towering corridor or swinging above lava, you'll always feel dwarfed by your surroundings. In some ways, I wonder if the characters are, in fact, tiny - even the mushrooms dominate you. It feels like fantasy; like the worlds in your head. And, more importantly, it has what every good fantasy should include - epic scale. The calming soothingness is carried between levels purely through the voice of the narrator. It's the kind of voice you want to fill your dreams with, calming yet commanding - TRINE's fantastical world is made complete with the narration. It also includes an interesting plot line and a cool little twist half way through.

My first outing with TRINE was the PC demo. Unfortunately, originally it didn't fill me with hope. I struggled with the controls and barely made it through the demo. I'm happy to report, however, that things are a lot better with the PSN port. Perhaps it's because I'm used to a controller, but whatever it is, it's really made a difference. TRINE's a smooth experience, in all - you utilise your characters skills (3 people, magically converted into one) to try and rid the world of evil and split yourself into three bodies again. The three characters include a wizard, knight and thief. Each has a speciality that has to be used to get passed certain objects. The thief has a bow to fight, is light on her feet and can make use of a grapple to reach those out of sight areas. The warrior, on the other hand, makes use of his awesome sword and shield to protect himself. Lastly, the wizard can create a number of objects, a box, plank and hovering triangle, to reach the next area.

Combat is your simple, hit-guard-kill affair. The knight is a good staring point but as soon as you unlock the thief's tri-shot, you'll start using her instead. She really becomes unstoppable then as almost, except from bosses, every enemy dies from one or two hits. The wizard himself can't directly kill anyone but he is able to drop an item on an enemy, causing him to explode. In terms of enemies, there are a few standard types - ordinary skeleton swordsman, swordsman with wood shield, swordsman with steel shield, long-swords, archers, spiders and bats. The spiders, bats and archers are easily the most annoying. Spiders are impossible to get to with the warrior if they're higher than one jump, archers always knock you off a platform you're climbing, and bats never stop! Thankfully, as you progress you'll be able to unlock new abilities for the team. Unlocks include new items for the wizard to create, flaming arrows(perfect for one shot one kills), and a massive hammer. Each time you collect 50 points of xp, you'll get another point to spend on abilities.

TRINE comes with a single player mode and a co-op - however, there's no online co-op. A slight disappointment perhaps, but one that is made up by the single player campaign. A clever level design means that even if one of your players falls to his/her death, you can still get past obstacles. For example, without the thief's grapple a jump may seem impossible, but you could also just bridge the gap with a wizard's plank. There are, of course, some points that need a certain skill, but these are usually near a 'life orb'/spawn point. There's also some tricky obstacles that need a bit of skill to pass. You may even get stuck for a little while, but as soon as you've worked out how to cross 'that spike pit', you'll always know how to do it.

The physics in the game are the main point of concentration, but that's not to say the story isn't any good. Infact, its better than most. After your initial training in the Astral Academy, you'll go out into the wide world in search of a way to split your characters. It does feel like an extract from a Pratchett book - plenty of comedy and an extravaganza of fantasy. It might not be a really challenging game, but it does make up for it in almost every other way. If this game was long and had enough variety, you could play through the night and get transported into your own little fantasy world.

So, TRINE is a beautiful game, but perhaps a little too simple in areas. You'll certainly enjoy what there is, and what there is - well, it's quite a lot. In total there's 15 levels which each take approx 40mins to an hour per level. If you're after those trophies (and why wouldn't you be? It's the first PSN Platinum!) then there are alot of silvers. There are also some tricky ones - 'Better than the Developers!' in which you need to complete the last level without dying is particularly difficult! The beautiful world will certainly satisfy your eyes, whereas the side-scrolling will satisfy your nostalgia. It may not do anything too radical, but the physics are awesome and the fighting is above average. You might not pay much attention to the music but its nice if you do give it a listen. Superb voice acting, the wizards suave voice and the knight's comical extracts are great. At £15.99 from the PlayStation Network, there's no reason why you should pass up on buying this. Unless you hate fantasy-based side-scrollers with wizards in which you conjure planks in a beautiful world in order to beat evil and return your characters to their three individual forms. If you don't like the idea of that - TRINE might not be the buy for you.

Jacques

Labels: FrozenByte, Jacques Hulme, Nobilis, PSN, Review, Trine

For those of you who haven't heard of it, Steam is a PC based download program that hosts lots of new games, demos and other media. It's owned by that great developer Valve, and apart from developing genre defining titles, such as Half Life, Left 4 Dead and Counterstrike, they update it weekly with various media, including full games, demos and more. This week's demos included one that I had only seen a small part of before and as such I wasn't sure how good it would be - that title being Trine. The demo downloaded very quickly, and soon I was listening to the opening story.

Labels: Demo Impressions, Jacques Hulme, Steam, Trine