TRI: Of Friendship and Madness

I have heard of this game before and so i thought it may be a good idea to buy it... I am now 4 levels into it and i could barely take a break (my hurting hand seems to be the only thing to stop me). It is in a cool style, the levels differ a lot and the story is ...well there is one. BUT what i think makes this game awesome is the possibility to make TRIs(triangles) on which you can go, build further TRIs and so on. This is the best equipment/weapon/whatever(/why does my hand still hurt) in a game I have seen in a long time. And if you like riddles and hide and seek this is a must play!!! Would recommend!

Tri is a very solid puzzle game with original enough gimmick and the main theme (magical fox gods). The gimmick is the TRI device, that allows the player to create triangles on almost every surface and in every angle and to walk on them (this leads to breaking the law of gravitation required every now and then). Levels and puzzles involing TRI are wonderfully logical and trivial. Eg. you need to get rid of some crates blocking the lasers you need to go into certain direction. The problem is, you can't get crates out of the room, since it's blocked with a transparent barrier. I know a guy that was struggling with this for 10 minutes. The solution is both clever and idiotic in its simplicity. However, I doubt I will ever finish the game. A few levels are left to be finished, but with an each boot up, I dislike this game more. The performance is awful, you will loose frames more often than not, there are mouse accelleration issues and, even though it can be manipulated, fov at every value creates a strange fish eye effect that gives me nausea. The necessity to delete and make a next triangle from the scratch due to a ridiculours cursor hitch and/or a slight headache from loosing your orientation by walking the walls and ceilings make this game unbearable for a long (and "long" in this case means more than 15 minutes) run. Still, it's a must buy for an every puzzle gamer. It's a competent game and more power to you if you didn't encounter the same issues as I did.

Tri, the game where you do more with a few triangles than you ever expected. Given the texts, screenshots and Portal comparisons one may expect a game of similar challenges but different tools (triangles instead of portals). Given the success of Portal this is fair enough but I want to take the time where Tri goes above and beyond the expectations of a "Portal with triangles". 1. Compared to Portal, Tri is very non linear. Instead of working from puzzle to puzzle and room to room you have to consider the whole 3-dimensional construct of the level. You are usually free to choose which of the statues to collect first and there are multiple solutions to many puzzles. 2. The Tri is so much more powerful than the portal gun. You can fill the Level with insane numbers of triangles and create elaborate constructs to achieve your goals. The limitation of the portal gun limited the possible solutions. The Tri allows you to achieve anything thinkable... and the game requires you to think it. 3. While Portal is already known for requiring a lot of 3-dimensional thinking Tri pushes this to a whole new level. You don't just have to consider position and momentum in 3D-space you need to consider the level in many wildly rotated states to think your way to the harder to reach places. Tri requires you to truly change your perspective. 4. Again contrary to Portal this game offers so much to do beyond completing the levels. In Tri there are so many Idols to find in the most unimaginable and unreachable places. Often you wonder if it is at all possible to reach a certain spot ... and when you finally do there is an Idol waiting. Someone actually expected you to get there! To appreciate the true genius of the level design you must push yourself to collect as many idols as you can. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that Portal is a worse game than Tri. It's just that Tri has unique qualities that can't be underappreciated.

For most of this game the puzzles are so easy that it's basically a walking simulator, and you spend most of your time trying to find hidden collectibles for no reason. Towards the end the game starts to challenge you with clunkily placing triangles in very specific angles which require extensive trial & error-ing. And all of this drags on for way too long for its own good.