Our new friend Trifox wants to make himself at home, but is horrified to learn that bad guys have stolen his remote control. Some people’s cheeks! We all know how long it takes the average man to find a remote control, and Trifox is no exception. Why don’t you go buy a new remote control? Because to cry out loud you need a game to play, not real world common sense!
Trifox opens with a scroll of pictures from the title character’s life and a bandit stealing the hero’s prized remote control. The game then offers the player three options for her hero nature: fighter, mage, or engineer. Each has different abilities and playstyles. There is a kind of skill tree that can be used to add new abilities and attacks. New skills are based on the hero’s type, but the character is not limited to using only his type of skills. This opens up very interesting possibilities for strategy, tactics and replays. Intro One quirk he noticed in the movie was that he couldn’t find a way to fast forward it. I mashed all the buttons and tried the press-and-hold method, but it took me a few minutes to watch the video before I got back into the game. The good news is that you only have to put up with this when starting a new game. So not bad.
The visuals are a bit faceted (not realistic, not smooth), but not overly pixelated. The effects are almost comic book-like and well done. There are a lot of interesting visual elements with lots of bright colors and good use of light.The game allows the developers to show off a bit of their skills as the heroes go through different types of environments.
Audio is really well done. Everything sounds “proper” and works in tandem with the visuals to provide an immersive experience.
Dig into the gameplay and you’ll find a lot of good things and a few issues. Let’s get rid of the anxiety first. This game is a platformer, so there are a lot of jumps. The action is smooth, but the jumps are a little floaty. They seem to be happening mostly slowly. It’s not really offensive, it just takes a mental adjustment from other games that get a little closer to normal gravity effects.
Another concern is the camera. Some platformers and adventure games allow the player some control over the angle of the camera. Trifox does not have this feature. More importantly, the way the camera tracks your movements doesn’t always give you a good angle or let you see what you want to see. There are a few places where you have to, and camera angles can obscure your orientation or distort your perspective. This can get a little frustrating when you’re fighting creatures or needing to do tricky jumps.
Now let’s get to the better stuff. Trifox provides tutorials, but they are limited. In this case this is not a bad thing. The game is so simple that a bare-bones tutorial will do just fine. This game has a very useful feature. There is a target practice range available to familiarize yourself with aiming and controlling your weapon. You also get the aforementioned skill tree. As expected, you have to run around and collect coins to spend on new skills/weapons.
Lots of bad guys to shoot/smash/zap as you progress through each level, and clever puzzles to solve.
Between levels you’ll see cutscenes that advance the story or show you the target of the next boss. As the story goes, Trifox isn’t what we’d call rich, but he’s good enough for his purpose.
As you acquire new skills, you can assign your four favorites to the R, ZR, L, and ZL buttons. There are three basic character classes you can play with, but you can buy skills from all three, so you can mix things up a bit. Explore the surroundings and don’t forget to shoot some boxes. There are coins and potions hidden in some interesting places. Portion? Well, yes, there are potions you can use to restore health, and as a mage you can use them as weapons.
The only thing you have to watch out for is the fall. When we have to jump across a ravine to the other side because it’s not bridged (isn’t it always the case?), we foresee the perils of doom. After all, this is a platformer. What you might not expect is the ability to fall off perfectly good bridges, cliffs, or other precipices. You will respawn, but you will have to start over with your coin collection. Some bad guys fall (or get pushed) off cliffs, so even if you win the battle, you can still lose your loot.
The world our fox friends have to navigate contains some great scenery, fun villains to fight, and some good puzzles. There are things to do back and forth to understand the nature of and get the steps in the right order. time will be very long.
Anyway, now that I’m done with this, I’ll have to go find the remote. I think I fell on the couch… at least I hope so.
