Trifox review for Nintendo Switch, PC, Xbox

On both the Switch and the Steam pages for Trifox, its developers describe it as being inspired by the Golden Age of 3D platformers. This is very true: it?s very clearly inspired by the likes of Crash Bandicoot, Spyro the Dragon, and, to some extent, early Ratchet and Clank.

Unfortunately, this inspiration is both a blessing and a curse.

First, the blessing part: you don?t have to look very hard to see that inspiration play out. If you?ve ever played any of those games from the early days of 3D platforming, you?ll know pretty much what to expect here. Everything about Trifox borrows very, very heavily from that era, from the way the character moves, to its visuals, to the barebones story (the eponymous hero?s TV remote was stolen, and he wants it back).

The bad news is that Trifox rarely tries to look beyond its inspirations ? and when it does, the results are kind of mixed. The levels generally feel a little too cramped to be fun, the collectibles are plentiful but rarely worth it, and it often feels like you?re just whacking away at the same enemies over and over again. Even in boss fights, your offense doesn?t feel like it has much heft behind it ? which is kind of a drawback for a game that focuses so much on its combat.

Trifox tries to solve this by giving your character a tonne of options for optimizing your offense ? as you can see on its website, there are three character classes, each of them with a wide range of options for your loadout. The problem, as noted above, is that none of the attack seem all that effective, so you end up spamming your attack buttons and hoping that you?re making contact.

Still, even if it?s not very original, Trifox captures its influences so well that it carries with it a lot of residual charm. It?s not going to make you forget the games it?s borrowing from, but it?s a solid enough entry in the genre that if you miss those games, you could do a lot worse than trying it out.

Big Sugar provided us with a Trifox Switch code for review purposes.