Obviously, there will be spoilers ahead.

THE ILLUSIVE MAN (MASS EFFECT 3)

The Illusive Man is perhaps the best villain in the entire Mass Effect series – and when you consider that the likes of Saren, Sovereign, and Harbinger are all Mass Effect villains as well, you know that that isn’t light praise. Mass Effect 3 specifically builds him up as one of your ultimate foes, so the fact that you never actually get to fight him is all the more disappointing. Indoctrinated as he was, going up against a much more powerful Illusive Man would have made for an excellent battle. And though the dialogue exchange between him, Shepard, and Anderson is intense, it’s still a bit deflating that you never actually get to fight him.

The Nintendo Switch is undoubtedly a weaker console than the PS4 and even the Xbox One, let alone the more powerful PS4 Pro and Xbox One X variants; however, it remains a marvel of engineering for what it is, especially given how much power it packs into its size, while also managing to deliver at least somewhat reasonable battery life.

This is a sentiment echoed by Frozenbyte, the folks behind Trine and the upcoming Nine Parchments, which is also coming to the Nintendo Switch. Speaking to WCCFTech, Frozenbyte said that the Switch is a powerhouse, and extremely easy to develop for, with great documentation on the hardware and its features readily available.

“We’ve been enjoying development on Switch a lot,” they said. “The architecture, documentation and everything has been very well put together, Nintendo has done a great job. Nine Parchments is quite demanding visually, so we’re running at 30fps, 1080p in docked and 720p in portable mode. The Switch is definitely a powerhouse considering its size, and the portability really works well for many games. You can even play Nine Parchments in co-op on a single Switch system where each player only uses one Joy-Con!”

When they were asked about the possibility of their older games coming to the Switch, they said that chances for Trine coming over generally look good- Shadwen might be a bit of a stretch, though. That said, they did drop a tease for next year, suggesting players should wait to see “what [it] brings”, so who knows? You could soon be playing Trine on your Switch, if things turn out right.

The original Trine has been enhanced with its ‘Enchanted Edition’ which essentially reworks the game into the Trine 2 engine (making it look that much prettier and magical in the process). This will offer the original game, alongside Trine 2 multiplayer.

The Enchanted Edition is still in beta, but in the modern market, when has a game being unfinished prevented anyone from playing it? It is currently on Steam, and anyone who owns the original game can play it for free right now.

To play the game, right click on Trine in your library, and select properties. Select ‘Beta’ and enter TrineEEBeta2014. Trine: Enhanced Edition is then enabled as a new option for you to boot up in the game’s launcher.

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Finnish game developer Frozenbyte has announced today that their  platformer game Trine has been released for the Mac today via Steam. Trine has been transformed into a full SteamPlay game where users get access to both the PC version and the Mac version with a single purchase.

“We’re thrilled to release Trine for the Mac with SteamPlay support. Mac has become a viable gaming platform even for games that require a lot of processing and graphics power, such as Trine,” said Frozenbyte CEO Lauri Hyvärinen, and continued: “Call me biased, but I think Trine is the perfect game for the Mac.”

CEO  Lauri Hyvärinen said in the press release:

“We couldn’t be happier signing our new game with Atlus. As an independent developer we felt that partenring with a publisher who is flexible and shares our vision of the game was the best way to bring the game out to a large audience. We can’t wait to unveil the mystery – I’m confident that we’re creating one of the best titles of 2011.”

Considering Trine was darned awesome, I think they have me as a believer.

We’ll keep you updated on this.

GB:  Where did the original idea for Trine come from?

The original idea of a platformer game was our producer’s, and that came in 2006 and was based on some very old MSX game. What Trine is now was re-designed in early 2008, including three different characters and object conjuring. All the visuals have also been created during the last 16 months of development.

GB:  What were the main challenges your development team faced?

We usually ask ourselves “what didn’t go wrong”, because there were so many problems involved. Most of the problems were funding-related, as we worked most of the time on the edge (and sometimes past it), but there was also numerous problems coming from the fact the scope of the game was changing all the time, and adding a console platform in the middle of the development didn’t help either. However, although the road was very bumpy and virtually all

mistakes were made, we are very happy with the end result.

GB:  Why was the game priced more expensive for the PC version?

It’s a complex situation and related to the retail side of things (which we can’t influence). We couldn’t really do as we wanted, because there were so many partners involved. Our goal is always to be fair in pricing (between platforms and also between currencies) and I think we’re now getting a little bit closer.

GB:  Will we be seeing a sequel or expansion at some point in the near future?

There certainly will be more Trine at some point, but when or what kind, we can’t tell yet. 🙂

GB:  When can we see the PSN version come out and how different it will be as compared to the PC version?

The European PSN release is on Thursday 17th of September! North American release is hopefully not far behind.

GB:  Are there plans for an Xbox Live version?

We have lots of plans and a version actually running on the development tools, but again this is something that is not in our hands. We don’t really know what’s going to happen.

We would like to thank Mr. Lauri Hyvärinen and his team and wish them all the best. Checkout for the full review of Trine this week on GamingBolt.com.