• Format: PC (version reviewed), Mac, PSN, XBLA
  
• Unleashed: Out Now
• Publisher: Lace Mamba Global/Focus Home Interactive, Atlus
• Developer: Frozenbyte
• Players: 1 – 3
• Site: www.trine2.com

Having a knight, a wizard and a thief simultaneously adventuring together seems like a fairly reasonable Halloween costume line-up or an unspecialised MMO raid party. It also sounds like the most obvious cast for a side-scrolling adventure game. In 2009, Frozenbyte struck the hearts of many with their game Trine that perfected this seemingly obvious formula. Two years on and they have made a sequel, but does it live up to the original game’s charm? If you just want this review in its simplest form, the answer is an absolutely corking “Yes and more.”

If you missed the first game then we’ll recap. It all started when a wizard, thief and knight touched an artefact called the Trine. It bound their souls together and sent them on an adventure. Part of being Trine-bound meant that players could instantly switch between characters to overcome certain puzzles and obstacles. The wizard conjures physical objects into existence and levitates them, the thief is highly mobile with her grappling hook and the knight is proficient at bludgeoning nasties to death. This aspect has not changed at all in Trine 2.

The knight makes short work of goblins but can't solve puzzles unless they involve a good bashing.

What has changed are a number of features from the original game that have been chopped to make the experience flow more smoothly. The inventory and special items have completely disappeared. You can no longer give specific characters benefits like unlimited air underwater or extra health with random trinkets. The only collectible items are experience orbs, poems and pieces of concept art. Characters no longer have an energy reserve either, meaning there is no penalty to constantly using fire arrows or spamming an area with summoned cubes and planks. This streamlining makes the game a lot easier to pick up and encourages experimentation and using abilities, instead of punishing overzealous use. It makes the game a lot more fun.

Puzzles are usually a case of navigating tricky terrain to get from the left side of the screen to the right, with the occasional door mechanism or gaping pit thrown in for good will. Whilst this might sound quite samey, each situation feels unique and can require some real brain power to solve. The one downside we found was the overreliance on the wizard and his block conjuring abilities. Summoning physical stepping stones into the world was always the most obvious (and in many cases only) way to get through most tricky areas. The thief can get herself through some situations with her grapple; but the knight seems fairly useless outside of combat or tasks that involve breaking things. That is of course the knight’s function, but we found ourselves puzzling and platforming a lot more than we were fighting.

Joining the improved mechanics are the gloriously designed environments. Level design remains as fiendish as ever, with several puzzles making you um and ah for minutes before the necessary element snaps in your brain and you discover the solution. Couple this with beautiful scenery and animated 3D backgrounds that are genuinely awe inspiring and you get a visual treat that even the fussiest of graphic grinches can’t grumble about.

And you thought the dragons in Skyrim were big...

The excellent presentation doesn’t stop at the amazing graphics; just about everything you experience serves as an immersive influence that compels you to play. Trine 2 feels like an interactive fairy tale that caters to everyone. The narrator tells the story as you go along and each character occasionally chirps in with their own bits of quirky dialogue. These serve to advance the story, but also provide the player with hints should you find yourself staring at the same chasm or sealed door for long enough.

The major new feature in Trine 2 is online multiplayer. The original game only allowed local co-op play, but the sequel has now opened the floodgates to the scary wide world of the Internet. Use the server browser or jump into a quick match though matchmaking to drop into the main adventure with up to two other players. Having three people tackle the puzzles and goblin ambush attempts is a fantastic experience and unlike the majority of current online games out there.

Multiplayer can also make it much easier in places, and it almost feels like cheating. There are so many occasions in singleplayer that will leave you thinking “This would be much easier with another person helping.” If you can trust yourself not to simply levitate your teammates on a wizard plank to the other side of the problem and then wait for the game to respawn you with them then online is a real laugh. Even if you do decide to cheat the game a little bit, it is very fun and a joy to play. You will giggle every time someone accidently summons a cube above you that thwarts your heroic jump attempt.

Stand on the knight's shield in multiplayer for a cheeky leg up.

Local multiplayer is also very well implemented. Good support like this is to be expected on consoles, but even the PC has brilliant local play capabilities. You don’t even need a set of spare USB gamepads to play on the same PC. The game supports multiple mice and keyboards which works brilliantly, if you can find the space to use them. It took us a slight fiddle in the game options to get it all working, but it wasn’t a huge feat and definitely worth the effort.

Trine 2 is an incredible game and easily tops the brilliant original. It is a charming adventure that can appeal to a very wide audience, but at the same time does not compromise on the challenge with several brilliant physics and platform based puzzles in the mixture. The boxed collector’s edition even comes with an artbook, original soundtrack and a copy of Trine 1. If you like your swords and spells applied to side scrolling adventures then it doesn’t get much better than this. Likewise, if you’re looking for an adventure game that is easy to get into and great fun to play, Trine 2 will not disappoint.

• Format: PS3
• Unleashed: 14th May (EU), 11th May (US)
  
• Publisher: SouthPeak Games (EU), Atlus (US)
  
• Developer: From Software/Silicon Studio
  
• Players: 1
  
• Site: http://www.3ddotgameheroes.eu/

The king of a 2D kingdom turns it into a 3D kingdom, hoping to increase its popularity. Lots of monsters appear, an ancient evil is suspected to have reared its head once again, and a hero – you, of course – appears to set things right. Cue a game armed with charming and refreshingly retro art that parodies and celebrates old skool RPGS in equal measure.

Ah yes, that art style. In keeping with the plot a world of pixels has been dragged into the third dimension; character and scenery designs are appropriately blocky and simple, and everything is unashamedly colourful. It looks as though a very talented child has constructed a fantasy world from Lego. Tiny little blocks are spilled when you deal damage or destroy something, which is a nice little touch (and may well cause women to say ‘aaah’).

There’s an impressive range of characters to choose from (including a small dog, a bank manager, and Santa. We kid you not), but most people will want to take advantage of the character creator. You can fiddle about with one of the existing templates or, if you’re feeling confident, create your own entirely from scratch. That’s what we did and, after hours of hard but rewarding toil, came up with a passable – and possibly copyright infringing – version of a well known U bend technician.

No, his name is David.

Who or what you choose as your avatar makes no difference to gameplay, however. Sticking as it does to the traditions of classic RPGs (especially the Zelda series) you’ll be wandering round talking to NPCs, buying items from merchants, walking into people’s houses unannounced, and blowing holes in suspiciously cracked walls. Plus, of course, killing lots of monsters. The aforementioned merchants are joined here by blacksmiths, who will upgrade your sword – for a price. The main upgrades are strength, length and width (which has led, and will lead, to plenty of double entendres from lazy journalists).

There are several swords to be found and earned in the game, all with different attributes, and each can be inflated to near screen – filling size (which only takes effect when your character is at full health); but combat ultimately consists of hitting ‘X’ to swing your sword until whatever’s in front of you isn’t there any more, with the occasional bit of blocking with your shield. You’ll pick up mostly Zelda influenced secondary weapons and items such as bombs and a boomerang, but most enemies will die at the blocky point of your sword of choice. So yes combat is simple, perhaps overly so. This is, however, blessedly easy to forgive.

If the art style is the aspect of the game to most immediately sidle up to you and whisper sweet nothings in your proverbial ear, the script follows very quickly. This is a game that very rarely takes itself seriously, and is all the better for it. It’s stuffed full of nods and winks to subjects including the RPG genre, the game’s developer (and their most recent RPG Demon’s Souls), Zelda, long standing gaming traditions, and even – in one unexpected instance – sexual intercourse. Jokes pepper the game from start to finish, and you know what? They all work.

A chicken? I have a sword... lots of Zelda references... hmm, I wonder...

Though it looks and plays like an old skool RPG to an extent, gameplay has been sprinkled with 21^st century fairy dust in much the same way as the graphics. There are no autosaves, but you can save from the pause menu whenever you want. When you next load your save, and whenever you die, you reappear at the nearest ‘revival point’ with all your items and most of your progress (unlocked doors, previously conducted conversations, etc.) intact. You have infinite lives, so never need lose your hard work in the game unless you forget to save. Or if, like us, you suffer a power cut just after completing an entire dungeon. Sob.

There are seven dungeons in the game (varying from ‘call that a dungeon?’ to ‘I need a week off work to finish this one’) and, with very few NPCs, are the ‘serious’ areas of 3D Dot Game Heroes. They’re fairly simple by and large, and work as you’d expect from a game that’s essentially a love letter to the genre – cramped areas with aggressive enemies, puzzles, and traps. It’s very much its own game though, and one that you’ll enjoy playing. This is in no small part thanks to the bosses, all of whom have been designed just as lovingly as the rest of the game; though the main appeal of the first boss is that it seems to be a take on the old mobile phone game Snake…

You’ll be breezing through it all, though thoroughly enjoying yourself, until you get about two thirds of the way through the story. It is at this point that the developers unwisely decide to use cheap tricks to artificially lengthen the experience. One dungeon is essentially one big puzzle that resets itself whenever you die or load a save; there’s a fairly brief, though map – wide, wild goose chase; the strongest enemies will suddenly bunch themselves together in rooms; and the final dungeon is the biggest (which is fair enough) but you may find yourself retracing your steps here more than anywhere else in the game, thanks to stingy distribution of internal warp points.

Nonetheless, it’s impossible to dislike this game. The fresh art style and sparkling script is a winning combination and gameplay, whilst intentionally familiar, is not only solid – but enjoyable. Your first playthrough will take anything from 12 – 25 hours depending on skill and sidequests, and a second playthrough is tempted via the unlocked ‘From Mode’ difficulty or ‘New Game +’. There’s also the mysterious ‘Spelunker’ mode to find out about…

Were it not for the blips mentioned above, this would be an essential purchase. As it is, we certainly promise that if you give it a go you won’t be disappointed.

Not quite, sorry.

8/10

A few weeks ago I was reading a very interesting round-table discussion in a well known gaming magazine, concerning the role of traditional narrative and the author in modern video games. At one point they touched upon games trying to impose a sense of permanence upon gamer decisions, and they highlighted an individual, his name escapes me, who decided to play with permanent death. Basically, if he died it was permanent game over. This got me thinking about the wider issue of games attempting to impose a sense of irreversibility onto the player, and as an extension of that, how developers utilise player led decisions in their games.

I can see the appeal of, and am slightly intrigued by, the idea of approaching a game with a sense of finality. Taking the Far Cry 2 example, it’s easy to see how this would add an entirely new dimension to the game. Creeping around every corner, exercising caution where you would usually run in blindly, and spending large portions of the game running away around the nearest corner to pull bullets out of your body. Come to think of it, it doesn’t sound quite as much fun as I initially thought!

Speaking of running away and hiding around corners, Demon’s Souls has delighted and frustrated in equal measure with its take on permanence. Its auto-save feature removes the ability to restart a section, and it punishes the player severely for ill timed or thoughtless actions. A misplaced lunge is liable send you hurtling back to the start of the level, with your previously vanquished enemies re-born anew and stripped of your demon soul currency. Yet, Demon’s Souls has succeeded, at least critically, in its unforgiving take on the RPG. This weighty approach has won it a legion of fans, partly because it fits so well into the game, and because it doesn’t override the fun of simply playing it.

Staying within the RPG genre, a sense of permanence and divergent choices are nothing new in console gaming. Chrono Trigger is a perfect example of a title well ahead of its time that presented numerous options that would affect how the narrative played out. The way it pressed the gamer to carefully consider their next move was exhilarating, but also worrisome. I played Chrono Trigger for the first time earlier this year on the DS, better late than never, and I’m not ashamed to admit that in an attempt to achieve a “good” ending I found myself constantly referring to online game guides, which did dampen the experience somewhat. Moving more towards the PC, MMORPGs have long exhibited a near absolute sense of finality in gamer decisions. Aside from resetting a character, there are few ways to undo divergent choices, with game data being saved on the server and not being user malleable. However, games such as these are not entirely narrative driven. Although a decision may effect the direction or growth of your character, it’s not liable to lead to an end game narrative outcome.

So, is the responsibility of permanence and decision making something we should embrace, or is it adding too much weight to a past-time, that for the majority of gamers, is about throw-away fun, escapism and release? Heavy Rain looks set to bring this question to the forefront in 2010. The director, David Cage, has voiced his desire that gamers only play through once, in the hope that it will provide all decisions with a real sense of permanence. If your actions lead to the death of a character, that event will shape the narrative and ultimately affect, and make unique, your time with Heavy Rain. This certainly sounds very interesting, and I am eager to see if it delivers on its promise, but it does seem out of keeping with one of the defining aspects of a video game; being an infinitely recyclable experience.

Staying with 2010, the forthcoming Mass Effect 2 is set to take game-to-game permanence to a new level. Game saves and, more importantly, decisions made during the first game are transferable and directly affect the characters and narrative of the sequel, offering a real sense of continuity. But, will it leave gamers who missed the original out in the cold?

Many games completely do away with permanence and consequence, and at times it can be to their detriment. It never fails to surprise me when the latest FPS is heralded as the closest thing yet to a warfare sim. The regenerative health system featured in the vast majority of today’s shooters completely nullifies any sense of realism or consequence from decisions. Why take your time infiltrating that bunker when you can just barge in and then regenerate your health on the other side. The GTA series is another good example of a lack of consequence dampening the impact of the game. Once you realise that beating down that pedestrian, or shooting a cop has no real effect on the game, then it starts to gradually lose its appeal.

Personally, I like games where actions carry consequences and decisions weigh heavily, but not too heavily. I think most of us embrace the fact that decisions can be re-made, cherishing the ability to erase our mistakes, and it would certainly be very dreary and unappealing to play a game too grounded in reality. If we want to manipulate our games to introduce a degree of finality, just like the Far Cry 2 example, then that’s great. But it’s a decision best left to the player, not dictated by a developer who would prefer us to experience their game only once.

Mistakes, or unwanted decisions, are inevitably a load or a checkpoint away from being reversed. I for one enjoy the illusion of my gaming choices carrying meaning, but I can rest safe in the knowledge that it is, after all, just a game, and unlike real-life, most things are reversible. Unless of course your game saves are corrupted. Then you are stuck.

We’ve shown you a load of 3D Dot Game Heroes Trailers already, but this time there’s a major difference… It’s in English! Well American anyway, but close enough.

If you can’t quite puzzle out why this game has us excited, it’s because it looks to be a retro styled mix of Zelda-esque gameplay, music and graphics married to a charming 3D system and a bonkers storyline. It’s expected for release in the west May 2009 and will be a PS3 exclusive.

 The Megami Tensei franchise sees portable translation, the franchise existing for over twenty years. Atlus announced yesterday the upcoming Spring release of Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey for the Nintendo DS. The sci-fi, first person RPG plans to “tap into into mature themes of morality and introspection,” says Atlus. Heralded by Atlus as a “deep, rewarding RPG experience,” it may well be. Already released in Japan, coveted Famitsu gaming magazine gave the game the highest score the series ever earned, a 10/9/9/8.

The game takes place after a mysterious, growing black void appears at the Earth’s southern pole. An elite team of explorers endeavour to solve the problem. Shin Megami Tensei DS promises over 300 demons to bribe, coerce, and negotiate with to gain assistance in battle.

 Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey for Nintendo DS is currently scheduled for release in Spring 2010 and has not been rated.

• Format: PS3
• Unleashed:  6th October (North America)
• Publisher: Atlus
• Developer: From Software
• Players: 1 (offline) 1 – 4 (online)
• Site: www.demons-souls.com

We’ve already banged on about the difficulty in our preview, but suffice to say only the best, most dedicated gamers need apply here. The question is: would they want to?

Demon’s Souls is an RPG, and as such, you’re presented with a character creation screen before you can start playing. Which one of the several classes you choose is more important than usual – it will dictate your play style whether you like it or not, to begin with at least. Think carefully about how much emphasis you want to put on melee combat, magic use, ranged attacks, etc – because if you don’t, you’ll regret it later.

Once you’ve done that, you’re thrown into a tutorial stage that does a good job of showing you the ropes before braving the game proper. It’s possible – likely, in fact – that you will die fighting the boss at the end of the tutorial (yes, you read that right), and this will result in you losing your physical body and becoming a ‘Phantom’. You regain your physical body by killing a demon (i.e. boss), or using a very rare ‘Stone Of Ephemeral Eyes’. The only practical differences between body and Phantom forms are a reduced maximum HP as a Phantom, and some multiplayer functionality (more on which later). Whether you die or not the next area is the Nexus, essentially the level hub.

The Nexus is the only area in the game not full of things trying (and usually succeeding) to kill you. To begin with, there is one NPC who will look after items you don’t want leeching your weight allowance, and another who will sell, repair, and upgrade weapons. After defeating the first boss there is another who can upgrade your stats (health, magic, resistance to certain attacks etc) and two more who can ‘teach’ you magic. Most want payment for their services, and you pay with souls.

You may have an amusingly large sword lad, but I can still 'ave ya!

Souls are found on the bodies of fallen adventurers or, more often, taken from the people/things you kill – and killing even the weakest of enemies is nothing to be taken lightly. Attacking from a distance is always preferable, but the depletion of your magic bar and arrow/bolt stock will mean close quarters combat takes up most of your time. You’ll be observing and exploiting attack patterns, and making careful use of blocks and dodges. This is no button basher. Just a few mistakes, and you’re dead. And if you die in a level, you respawn back where you started – and all the enemies you killed (apart from bosses) respawn too. 99% of the time you’ll gleefully jump straight back into the action; but that one percent of the time you’ll be disheartened, and give up playing for the day.

You get to keep any items you picked up before death, but used items stay used; and if you die again before you get to the spot where you were killed, you lose every last soul you had at that point.

You reclaim your souls by touching your bloodstain, but it’s other people’s bloodstains you’ll usually be interested in. Each such mark represents a player who recently died in that area (presuming you’re signed in to PSN). ‘Touch’ it, and you’ll see a ghost play out their last moments before death. If you’re lucky, you’ll get a clue to an upcoming trap or ambush; if not, you’ll probably just see how some idiot fell off a high platform. Players can also leave messages for each other, giving warnings and advice. These are often useful – but there’s always some malicious oaf who tries to trick players into a needless death.

He'll have you licked in no time.

This idea of online and offline blending together as smoothly as Angel Delight is carried over to the multiplayer. You can’t actually play with others until you’ve defeated the first boss (which for almost everybody, means not until after a bare minimum of two hours play, and probably longer). Once you have however, you are given the ‘blue eye’ stone. When a Phantom, you use this to leave a sign on the ground indicating to other players that you are willing to help them in their game. When in your physical body, you can use such signs to ‘summon’ other players to help you. Blue Phantoms help players – but you can also choose to be a Black Phantom, whereby you invade another player’s game. Enemies in their game won’t attack you and if you kill the host player, you get any and all souls they were carrying at the time (if you die, your stats decrease slightly). This can happen to you as well of course, but you are warned when this happens. You can’t become a Black Phantom until….you’ve killed a Black Phantom. So it’s kind of a viral ability; but there are AI Black Phantoms to be found late in the game. Playing as one pushes ‘World Tendency’ toward black, which makes the game even more difficult.

We're not sure what that is, but it's not on your side.

Demon’s Souls has a wonderfully crafted bleak atmosphere, which this online/offline integration supports brilliantly. The other side to this double edged sword of an artistic decision however, is that there is no invite system. Who you play with is almost completely random, and playing with friends is very difficult, but not impossible (though bear in mind that the North American servers are cut off from the Asian ones). We also would’ve liked to see more levers that open up shortcuts, as you only get one level entry/exit point at the very beginning of each (huge) area, and one when you kill a boss.

It’s a game that punishes mistakes ruthlessly, but also rewards skill and tactics tremendously. The sky high difficulty level also means that when you finally kill the latest boss, you get a sense of achievement that its peers struggle to match.

This just scrapes the following score because ultimately, it’s as addictive as it is difficult. Ladies and gentlemen, allow us to introduce Critical Gamer’s first Critical Hit.

9/10

Demon’s Souls is hard.

When we say hard, we don’t mean ‘quite difficult’. We mean ‘the tutorial has a boss‘. Specifically, we mean ‘the tutorial has a huge boss whose sole purpose is to send you to the next area by killing you with humiliating ease’. So in case you were wondering, no; the game’s infamous difficulty doesn’t seem to have been tampered with for the North American release.

The first thing to hit you about Demon’s Souls is atmosphere, which it has in spades. The industry has been wading through more fantasy RPGs than is surely healthy for a long time now, but very few succeed in creating a sense of being in a unique time and space. The opening (visually impressive) cut scene sets the tone for a forlorn and damned city wonderfully, and this is maintained throughout gameplay. Exploring grand man-made structures, you’ll find that friendly faces are few and far between. Most of your time will be spent battling twisted humanoid shapes or strange monsters. Most disturbing of all perhaps, are the ostensibly normal people in these same areas who attack you on sight.

The Nexus, which is essentially the world hub, is the only area to offer a respite from attack; but even here hopelessness, bitterness, and lost glory remain. You first enter the Nexus after being killed (in the tutorial, did we mention that?). At any rate, we did. You’ll initially find an emo witch, a grumpy Scottish blacksmith, a man torn apart emotionally by his final memory of life before the Nexus, some chap bitter at being trapped in the Nexus after death, and, er, a woman sitting next to some candles. Most of this hub area is empty and lonely; but there are lines of corpses to be found upstairs. Not a happy place.

Did we tell you that this game is also extremely difficult?

The emphasis is most definitely on combat. Whereas many RPGs are happy for you to charge through waves of enemies bashing the controls like an alcohol fuelled game of whack-a-mole, Demon’s Souls will punish such a tactic. You must carefully watch and exploit attack patterns if you wish to have any chance at all of seeing more than five minutes of gameplay. Why? Because mistakes are punished ruthlessly, especially when fighting a group of enemies; and there are no checkpoints.

That’s right, no checkpoints. And the first level is a bloomin’ castle. And every single enemy you’ve killed (boss excluded) respawns every time you die. Used items, including healing items, stay used. You always respawn right at the start of the level. And you lose every last ‘soul’ (the game’s currency) you’ve collected from fallen enemies unless you can make it all the way to the spot you died without dying again. Which you won’t, if your weapons and armour have degraded from use too much. Oh, and we haven’t even mentioned the ambushes or the exploding barrels. Or, indeed, the fact that you can not pause the game. We must confess, we found this title to be none too easy.

Demon’s Souls has an online element, which is exploited in unique ways. Rather than choosing between single player mode or multiplayer mode via a menu, online play blends seamlessly into the single player experience. Your first sign of this is the occasional appearance of a ghostly player character; who will completely ignore you and go about their business. What you’re seeing here are the actions of another player in their own game. This idea is explored further – and more to your advantage – via the bloodstains system.

When playing whilst signed in to PSN, you will sometimes come across a bloodstain on the floor. Each bloodstain represents the death of another player in their own game, in the area in which you find it. Touching the bloodstain summons a ghost, who acts out the last ten seconds or so of the player’s actions before death. This is of course intended to provide you with warnings and tips about upcoming dangers – but for us, has often provided good comedy moments. So many times we’ve seen how a player has died in what we considered to be a relatively simple section, or how they’ve jumped to their death from a great height for no apparent reason. These players are almost exclusively American games journos. Score one for the British indie journo scene!

We’ll cover co-op and versus play in the full review (to be published in plenty of time for the October 6^th release). This is partly because you can’t actually access these features until you’ve killed the first ‘proper’ boss.

Did we mention this is a rather demanding game?

If for some strange reason you feel you haven’t learned enough about Demon’s Souls here, you could always visit the official site. Or perhaps you’d prefer the official blog, because it sounds cooler.

See what else Atlus U.S.A. have up their sleeves at www.atlus.com

• What: Demon’s Souls
• Who: From Software
• Where: PS3
• When: Now (Asian territories), 6^th October (North America)
• Why: To import or not to import, that is the question. By the time you read this, we should have received our copy of the North American version from the lovely sexy people at Atlus. Then we’ll be set up to answer that question for you…