3D Vision 2 brings a new level of immersion to Batman: Arkham City and Trine 2
Trine 2
Trine 2 was released last month by indie Finnish developer, Frostbye, as the follow-up to their 2009 fantasy-platformer, Trine. The original sold over a million copies as it featured beautiful graphics and a fun three-player cooperative mode. The new sequel also features improved three-player coop that allows PC gamers to play against console and Mac gamers.
Here are the three classes you get to play with – Wizard, Thief and Knight. If you choose single player, you can switch between them effortlessly and instantly as they are bound to each other by the mysterious Trine.
The Wizard found sleeping in his bedroom in the introduction is weak in battle but can conjure planks and boxes (for the player to stand and walk across on) and levitate object and eventually enemies.
The Thief – or “entrepreneur”, as she likes to be called – can sneak past enemies after leveling up and has the ability to shoot arrows and cross by means of a grapple that affixes to wood and allows the player to rappel across chasms the other players cannot.
The Knight is of course the first choice for battling enemy NPCs He carries a sword and defends himself with a shield. Leveling up allows him to carry a hammer and eventually throw it with good effect against the breakable elements of the environment as well as against enemies.
The Knight is often the first choice for battle although he is not nimble like the Thief, nor does he possess magic like the Wizard. The mysterious Trine that appears mostly in cutscenes is what allows the single player to switch between the three adventurers to progress. There are many puzzles, traps and pitfalls of this beautifully rendered side-scrolling platformer that requires the player to switch between the three adventurers to be victorious against the many NPCs and the bosses they will have to face.
Some of the puzzles are quite obvious while others require some thought. Here is an immobile frog that you will have to pass by dropping fruit and timing your jump to the outstretched tongue and over and past him. Timing is essential.
Trine 2‘s story is nothing special. Like Batman, it deals with the terrible effects of sibling rivalry taken to insane levels. It is very much in the manner of a light fairy tale but the incredibly varied and beautiful level design, artwork and graphics lead the player on much as a beautifully illustrated storybook does for children.
The player wants to pass a scene just to see what lies ahead. And it is possible to play this game in Surround mode although there is a bit of stretching.
The outdoor scenes are well-lighted and the fantasy settings are the backdrop for beautiful graphics art. The player will find themselves repeating the mechanism for traveling over-and-over, such as riding bubbles, without getting tired of the game because of the fantastic art and level design.
Much as in a children’s fairy tale, there are poems to be found and art to collect. There are many hidden areas that at first seem impossible to reach. The physics implemented in this game is also top notch and is an integral part of solving puzzles.
The journey is itself the adventure and there is much enjoyment to be had by figuring out how to complete a puzzle or reach a nearly inaccessible area to progress.
As the player progresses, and by defeating enemies, one is treated to the “Level Up” message in the upper right corner of the screen, where either the Wizard, the Thief or the Knight will be able to upgrade a single skill.
The bosses are a lot of fun and some of them are invulnerable to attack by the player …
… so you will have to lure them into environmental traps.
But most of the time, the player will be timing their jumps and enjoying the fantastic scenery.
Riding bubbles and steam pipes that the player has to assemble or activate makes this game a true platformer.
And of course, jumping pads are mandatory.
There is also a lot of humor to be found in the game which breaks up the monotony of the narration.
And more bosses to defeat.
You finally learn the purpose of your adventure, who the enemy is and why, and have a big fight.
We won’t spoil it but …
… there is a satisfying ending and you will be able to start over with all of your upgrades in tact and of course may have a coop adventure with family or friends and also online.
3D Vision 2
Frozenbyte has taken Trine 2‘s stylized graphics to a new high level that gives even the most powerful PCs systems a workout when using the highest possible settings and stereoscopic 3D Vision effects.
There are five settings that affect performance and we played on the highest level because there is little performance difference between them with the fast video cards that were used in our evaluation while there is a real difference in the visuals. The real performance impact comes from Anti-Aliasing.
We used maxed out settings plus FXAA to play with 3D Vision 2 as the performance impact was minimal and the mild blurring is not as evident in S3D as it is in 2D.
FXAA and SSAA
Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA) is a NVIDIA-developed post-processing technique that selectively blurs the in-game graphics to minimize jagged edges and high-contrast pixel deviation. It is becoming popular in new games due to its low performance impact and its ability to anti-alias transparent textures and details. FXAA is highly recommended for low-end and mid-range systems and also for 3D Vision.
Some gamers prefer the sharpness of a scene and dislike the blur effect that FXAA applies to minimize aliasing. Nvidia recommends to disable FXAA in Trine 2, open %APPDATA%/Trine2/options.txt and change setOption(renderingModule, “PostProcessAntiAliasing”, true) to setOption(renderingModule, “PostProcessAntiAliasing”, false).
Supersampling Anti-Aliasing (SSAA) is a high-impact, high-quality technique that improves image quality and sharpness, and rectify sub-pixel errors by rendering extra detail per pixel of screen data and then downscaling the image back to the chosen resolution. Normally, Multisample Anti-Aliasing (MSAA) would be the counterpart to FXAA instead of SSAA because of Multisample’s smaller performance hit, but it can’t be used in Trine 2 due to its rendering method.
The Very High Anti-Aliasing option (not shown) also applies both FXAA and SSAA techniques simultaneously to maximize image quality. Be warned, this is extremely demanding and therefore only suitable for the fastest GPUs. For example, at 1920×1080:
- 2xSSAA will render a 2550×1430 image, apply FXAA and scale the image back down to 1920×1080.
- 3xSSAA will render a 3180×1790 image, apply FXAA and scale the image back down to 1920×1080.
- 4xSSAA will render a 3840×2160 image, apply FXAA and scale the image back down to 1920×1080.
Using 4xSSAA+FXAA with 3D Vision at 1080P brings the GTX 580 to a crawl and is probably best suited for multi-GPU.
Performance
Trine 2 is GPU-limited which means that your CPU will have little impact on your performance as long as it is capable. The minimum required graphics card for this game is a GeForce 7600; the 8800/9800 can expect to play at Medium to High settings when AA is disabled.
Using Very High graphics detail levels for all testing, the stock GeForce GTX 570 video card averaged around 80 frames per second with 1 character on-screen using the High AA setting (FXAA+2xSSAA) and 31 fps with 3D Vision enabled. With Very High AA setting (FXAA+3xSSAA), framerates dropped to around 55 frames per second and 24 fps with 3D Vision. Extreme AA setting (FXAA+4xSSAA) could only average 38 fps, and 17.5 fps with 3D Vision.
Generally we played with Very high graphics detail and usually Medium AA (FXAA) since 3D Vision does extract a serious penalty when playing with SSAA enabled. Playing with a GTX 570 at Very high details and Medium AA (FXAA only), we easily hit our framerate cap of 100 fps but with 3D Vision 2 enabled, we averaged 50 fps and the experience was fluid. We saved Very high details and High AA for the GTX 580. FXAA only took about a ten performance hit over no AA at all.
However, when playing with the VSync option enabled (in 2D), framerates are limited to 60 and it also enables Triple Buffering to counteract input lag. It will also eliminate tearing.
3D Vision
Out of the box, Trine 2 includes stereoscopic S3D support for 3D Vision and it is rated “3D Vision Ready” which means it has Nvidia’s approval as one of the top games which supports it.
When the player loads the interactive main menu in 3D Vision, all elements appear properly paced in the foreground and background in their own respective depth layers. Entering the game, the effects and details move about in perfect relation to each other which enhances the game’s spectacular graphics.
The only 3D Vision shortcut supported in-game is the 3D Vision On-Off toggle (Ctrl+T). Hitting Escape allows the player to get back to the in-game Visual Settings menu, where Brightness, Separation, Convergence and UI Depth can be adjusted or reset to Default.
Conclusion
Trine 2 is a exceptional platformer/puzzle game that will keep the entire family entertained, and the children can enjoy playing with the adults together in Co-op or over the Internet. The graphics are amazing and enhanced further by 3D Vision 2. The story is light but the level design and artwork beckons the player onward, and solving the puzzles – alone or cooperatively – brings a lot of satisfaction. And there is replayability for those who want to get all of the game’s secrets.
Trine 2 is a solid 8 and 8.5 enhanced by 3D Vision. It is not expensive at $15 and has been on sale recently. It is a lot of fun and highly recommended.
Let’s move on to Batman: Arkham City where the 3D effects are supposed to enhance gliding and aiming.
