Trine - 2.5 hours (10/20 hours total)

My biggest fear going into Trine was that I would have to solo a game optimized for co-op play. The last time I did that was, I believe, Forced, which drove me to the edge of madness. Luckily, my timing happened to be such that I could play it with my friend, so I could put off facing that particular trial for at least a little while.

Trine itself is a decent platformer. The main challenge comes from collecting these glowing green experience point vials, many of which are placed in deviously hard-to-reach places. I suspect that if you played the game purely to get through the levels, with no regard for xp, it would turn out to be much simpler than it initially appears.

It's fine, though. I like convoluted platforming challenges in the pursuit of collecting doodads. That's like my third or fourth favorite video game activity. I would say it goes: voxel building, optimizing build orders, brawling through hordes of chump enemies, and then convoluted platforming. After that, it's probably dying of thirst, but the list gets real weird from that point on, so who's to say.

Since I don't want to wait another two weeks to finish the game, I'll have to play it on my own from here on out. The big worry here is that there were times in the game where the actions of the other player helped me advance, and while I don't think the game would allow me to play solo if it were impossible to finish, that doesn't mean it will be easy (or even fun).

The thing that gives me hope is that the version of Trine I have is actually the "Enchanted Edition," which upgrades the original Trine to the Trine 2 engine. Out of curiosity, I went back and selected the option that allowed me to play the original, unmodified Trine, and that version of the game doesn't even give you the option of playing multiplayer. This leads me to suspect that Trine was originally a single-player game and that the sequels seized upon its 3 character gimmick to make it a multiplayer experience, and then after that approach proved popular, went back and added multiplayer to the original. If so, then finishing the game on my own shouldn't be too difficult.

(Famous last words, I know.)