The three heroes of this particular piece are back, living their separate lives prior to The Trine (a mystical artefact) showing up and whisking them away.

One of the most important parts of this game is its characters. I personally didn’t, but knew enough about it to recognise it instantly. For people slow on the uptake, the ‘left to right’ comment indicates that this is a side-scroller and should feel immediately familiar to anyone who played the prequel Trine. Trine 2 allows the player to reprise the multiple personalities of Amadeus, Pontius and Zoya as they move from left to right, fighting monsters and solving puzzles. I’m talking about those emotion-invoking ones that take you back to being a child, and remind you just how much fun you can have with a video game. I’m not talking about good games there are plenty of those. Great games are rarer to come by these days. To say that I’ve become cynical and devoid of all hope at the ripe old age of twenty-five is something of an understatement. Not only that, but your one refuge, your one bastion of solitude – the humble video game – has been bastardised to the point where every Tom, Dick and Harry is waving a white oblong penis around, making your favourite plumber jump through hoops and calling it entertainment. You work long hours, put up with more shit than a sewage worker, and have to pretty much take whatever’s flung in your direction without question.

The world is an evil place totally and utterly crammed full of bastard coated bastards with a hard-bastard centre. Fast forward twenty-five years and by Christ, have we had a wake up call. You may have been young and naive, but you already knew that games were supposed to be fun. Remember that time when you were still really young and you were given a video game? A brand spanking new one, all shiny in its wrapper, full of promise, joy and utter brilliance? Nothing could dissuade that feeling that you’d achieved total Nirvana (no, not Kurt Cobain… Google it, kids) just by playing a video game. Mac OS X, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Linux, Windows PC (reviewed)

Download free trine 2 xbox