Review: Torchlight!

I wasn’t really sure where Torchlight came from, until it suddenly appeared all over Steam, and my friend told me he was making a mod using the engine. Released in October this year, developed by Runic Games, “Torchlight” is a brand new Action RPG with a – you guessed it – fantasy theme – y’know, swords, shields, big scary monsters – all that jazz.

The game is set in the town of Torchlight, which is set up over and near to winding mines and vast chasms which obviously have been over-run with beasties and all kinds of evil demonic ritual, which you, as one of three different player classes, must smush and vanquish.

Overall this game is sticking to the theme of Blizzard tributes, being very similar to the very popular Blizzard role playing series “Diablo”, where the player explores through randomised dungeons to fight monsters, collect gold and loot/gear to upgrade your character, and level/skill up. It really is as simple as that!

Torchlight is the brainchild of a super talented team, including Max and Erich Schaefer, the designers of Diablo, along with with Travis Baldree (Designer of “Fate”) and the team that developed “Mythos”.

I am writing this review mainly because it was one of the many gems in last week’s awesome Steam game sale – at the lowest price being $4.99 – well worth it for this surprise success.  From my point of view, this game was definitely a good catch, especially since it includes the Editor, allowing you to create your very own levels – if that’s what floats your boat!

Furthermore, for you achievement junkies like me, there is like 60 achievements on Steam for Torchlight, which (I don’t know about you but) always makes me super addicted to games…

Torchlight also has a “Laptop Mode” which means you can even play this little lovely on the move – and will run perfectly well – at least on my laptop, which is by no means flashy. It also works with Steam Cloud – meaning you can carry on your game save from wherever you are – really taking advantage of that laptop compatibility there.

Torchlight is set in the town of “Torchlight” as I said before, and follows the character as they venture into the mines and chasms below the town to explore and kill monsters and things. But that is about it. The story is about as simple as…I dunno, something really simple. I have read somewhere that the quests can be likened to World of Warcraft, but apart from the fact that new quests have an exclamation mark above the NPC’s head, and the completed ones have a question mark, I can’t really see the resemblance. Okay so WoW sends you off on needless missions to slay boars, but at least it pretends that theres some ulterior motive. I’m level 30+ and so far the main missions I’ve been sent on have been from a robot who keeps sending me deeper and deeper under the town to slay various monsters so he can, um, sing songs about them. Hmm.  I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this, but if you’re looking for JRPG-stylee story complexity, best to just leave it here.

The player takes on the role of the town “Hero” – picking from three classes at profile creation. The three classes are named the “Destroyer”, the “Alchemist” and the “Vanquisher”.

The Destroyer is the beef of the bunch, providing the melee combat with his massive muscles and bald head. That’s not to say he can’t produce magical effects at all, he can call upon spirits to produce “magical effects”, but obviously not as strong as the other two.

The Alchemist is the spellcaster of the group, and my personal favourite. He uses his specialised armour to blast foes with magic, and can summon minions with necromancer-like resourcefulness. These little critters are why I love this class so much. The starter minions are purple and have little glowing eyes and prance around all cute and cuddly, like they’re totally not gunna melt your face off at all. The next set of summons includes a couple of steam-punk style robots, who make a lovable (if slightly annoying after 30 levels of play) “clunk clunk” noise when they walk around, and they’re pretty helpful for beating enemies too!

The Vanquisher is the eye candy – sent undercover to investigate the goings-on in the town of Torchlight – and acts as the hunter of the group – with ranged attacks and traps to ensnare the enemy.

All three have 3 different talent trees to follow, much like WoW or any RPG, which means you can specialise your character however you see fit – for example for my first Alchemist character I put all my skill points in my minions – so I could sit back and watch them smush everything! Muhahaha…

Gear and equipment is another major factor in this game – being the main way in which you upgrade and improve your character. Pretty much every enemy you fight will drop something, which could be seen as a good thing, but then again characters only have so much bag space. One thing that I haven’t mentioned so far is the fact that each character has their own Pet when they start – choosing from a Dog or a Cat (although they look more like wolves and tigers to me, but y’know…) which has their own bag, equips (such as rings and necklaces) and – probably the best point – you can send them off back to town to sell all the crap you picked up on the way down there. It means about a minute of downtime while you wait for him to get back, but at least it means freed up bag space for those all important rare lootz.

The battle system in Torchlight is also pretty simple, just using the mouse to control the character – and also the primary spells, which you can set by just clicking and dragging the spell onto the bar. The rest of the spells are dealt with using another toolbar, which you can also set keybindings to.

In addition to the class/talent tree build skills you have, you can also teach yourself spells with scrolls which you pick up. This is really useful for specializing even further and making your character stronger. You can only learn up to 4 of these custom skills, so sometimes you may have to replace a skill which you don’t want to – which of course can be a shame. It seems as though they tried to keep it simple with few skills set up so a set of keys, but sometimes it’s difficult to tell which skills you’re meant to be using.

The one thing which really lets this game down is the lack of multiplayer. As soon as I’d played a couple of hours of the single player I really couldn’t wait to get on the multiplayer, or even just a quick LAN game – but as soon as I went back to the main menu, I couldn’t believe there was no multiplayer option there.

I know I can’t expect amazing fulfilling online multiplayer for £5, but at the end of the day the multiplayer gameplay is what made Diablo 2 so successful.  The only thing that I’ve heard anyone complain about is the lack of multiplayer. As part of the modding and addon systems for the current interface, there are rumors of them adding a multiplayer option, but at the moment this is all based on hearsay.

What is confirmed, however, is the development of an MMO based in the Torchlight world – which at my guess is going to either be very good, or very very bad. Not much is around at the moment about this project except that it should be around in a year or so, but all I know is any multiplayer at all is better than what it has right now.

The main thing that the lack of multiplayer affects is the lack of replayability that Torchlight has. Once you’re so far in the game, it does just become repetition of quests, and the fact that the character advancement is very minimal means that there is a risk of the gameplay becoming boring. It could be argued that the “meta-game” is a  vital part of any game to increase replayability, but it seems as though in Torchlight there isn’t much else to focus on. The “Retirement” mechanic is an interesting one, where once a character reaches a certain level, they can “retire” and pass on some of those attributes onto a new character. This would be cool, if there was actually anything in Torchlight which required a super-powerful multi-generation character. Fishing is fun, for about 3 casts until you get bored when you never fish up anything good except fishes which turn your pet into some ugly mutant, and enchanting your weapons in the town is good (although expensive), but can add multiple confusing attributes to your weapon which can make it difficult to see what is better than what, and can also make dungeon running useless, since the items you can enchant in town are way better than anything that drops in the dungeon itself.

In a similar way to “League of Legends” from the last review, Torchlight goes for the cartoony/stylized approach which works well for developers who are looking to create a game which runs on a wider range of computers without producing a game which looks bad graphically and seems outdated.

The models, whilst low poly, are efficient and pretty – though some of the monsters seem a bit dull in color compared to the rest of the game environment and this seems a shame since this makes all the enemies seemed to blur together and make them somewhat faded into the background. A slightly wider range of colors used for enemies would make a massive difference in the experience, and perhaps even make it a little more exciting.

The skills and spells look pretty, especially the enchantments on weapons and the subtle differences between the spells is quaint and the attention to detail is impressive. The gear is nice, especially noticeable at the welcome screen where it shows you character in all his/her glory. It does seem however that most of the gear looks very similar to each other, and there is a lot of brown and murky colors used, which does tend to clash with the stylized hand-painted feel of the environments.

The music is nice, although a little generic again – but then again one could replace the word “generic” with fitting – since it is the sort of music you can expect from this type of game, which could make it more dramatic and immersive. The spell sounds can sometimes be a little overbearing in heated combat situations, but of course there is the settings menu where (if you’re fussy like me) you can change it to however you like.

Things I Liked

• It’s cheap – at the time of writing it was on the Steam deal, although I’m aware it’s gone back up to £14.99 now.
• Simple to pick up – based on an already existing concept which is easy to understand
• Interesting choice of classes which have an original twist on classes which already exist
• Hand-painted/stylized feel to the environments which is a breath of fresh air
• Very addictive! Good use of Steam (Achievements/Cloud)

Things I Disliked

• No Multiplayer!!
• Gets repetitive after a while
• Lack of intuitive character advancement
• The story is thin and unoriginal – although still holds the attention and provides a good background for the game
• Based on an old idea so nothing really that new or innovative going on here.

Target Audience

RPG Fans, Diablo Fans, Single player game fans, People looking for something a bit different, but based on a traditional concept.

OVERALL: Definately recommended if you’re a bit of a Blizzard fanboy, all the loveliness of Diablo, but brought up to todays standards – if anything just to tie you over till Diablo 3. The lack of multiplayer though, makes me really really sad.

TORCHLIGHT

PLATFORM: PC

DEVELOPER(S): RUNIC GAMES

PUBLISHER(S): PERFECT WORLD ENTERTAINMENT, INC. & ENCORE, INC.

Yeti’s Super Awesome All-Platform-No-Holds-Barred Favourite Games of 2009

It is true that every year we look forward to the next, wishing that next year’s games were this’s – making us somewhat under appreciate what we already have.

2009 has brought with it some top titles packed with lots of excitement and drama – and despite the so-called “Credit Crunch” we seemed to find money from somewhere to fund our habit. XD
Perhaps trade-ins aren’t so bad after all, despite the ridiculous mark up…

Anyways,  despite this being my last year of uni, I have found time for some (albeit guilty, stress-filled “I SHOULD REALLY BE WORKING”) gaming – and this year perhaps more than any other I have found that my interest in games has spread across more platforms than ever before. Since I got my lovely computer, PC has been my main gaming platform, but I suppose working in a game store where all the staff are Xbox gamers was bound to alter that slightly.

I’m not a total raving Xbox fangirl now, however, I still do pretty much use my 360 for a media centre, but I guess in a way it has opened my eyes.

Okay so what I’m gunna do is give a countdown of my favourite (exclusive) games on each platform!
Then I’ll undoubtedly have decided by then what my favourite game  is XD

So here goes

First up, Xbox 360!

LEFT 4 DEAD 2

Okay so I know it’s not strictly Xbox exclusive (it’s on PC as well), but if you know me at all you’ll know I’m a massive L4D fan girl. Gotta love them zombies. I was a bit dubious when the sequel was announced. I loved L4D so much, played it constantly and made loads of friends online. I loved the original line up, and was a bit worried that the new one would be rubbish, especially the girl – Zoey was amazing.
But it was all awesome! Theres something quaint about the way everyone yells “ROCHELLLLLLLLLEEEEEEE” everytime I friendly fire, or the patronising way Nick says “Stop shooting me, sweetheart..”

Yes, the game is basically the same as the first but is that necessarily a bad thing?

And chopping zombies’ heads off with a samurai sword is particularly awesome.

Next: Playstation 3!

Okay I’m going to resist going all girly for Eyepet on this one and say: UNCHARTED 2

Although to be fair, choosing Uncharted 2 is not really resisting the girly-ness all that much, with totty like Nathan Drake on the cover. It’s like what we’ve been waiting for all this time – a Lara Croft for the ladieees.

Neither is it much of a surprise to see it up here as the favourite for 2009, it is, even ignoring all gameplay, a beautiful game. When I saw it at Eurogamer 2009, when I finally managed to cram my head in a gap between two sweaty guys to see it in all its splendour, I let out a little gasp. It’s the first high end game I’ve seen in a while which doesn’t use too much Bloom.

I HATE BLOOM.

Anyway yeah, again carrying on with an already successful franchise, but in this case making it much much much better, Uncharted 2 is deservedly my favourite PS3 game this year, simply for doing something really well and perfecting something that was always there but we never even thought about.

Shame Idon’t have my very own PS3 to play it on. Taking donations as of now

NINTENDO WII

Okay I’m not a huge fan of Wii, but I am a huge fan of 4 player co-op…so it’s gotta be…

NEW SUPER MARIO BROS. WII

For my fave Wii game, this has just GOT to be it. It encapsulates everything the Wii stands for, but without being a douchey “Imagine”-esque party game.
This game is basically what it says on the tin. Classic mario. But with 4 players. I don’t know why this hasn’t been done before tbh. I’ve always wanted to push my friends down holes on Mario and make them rage

The only one criticism I  have is the selection of the 4 players. Okay so we’ve got Mario and Luigi. Thats two. Then….erm….two toads! Yeah! That’ll work. No-one wants to be the toads, especially the blue one.

But apart from that its awesome, great fun, restores some faith into the dubious old ninty fans – although it is just a rehashed Mario game, so I’m not holding my breath.

NINTENDO DS

There have been some great releases on DS this year, some of which making me somewhat regret trading in my DS, but then again theres still alot of drivel still out there.

Was a battle between this and Professor Layton: Pandora’s Box, but in the end it’s gotta be:

SCRIBBLENAUTS

I’m not normally a fan of puzzle games (Plants vs. Zombies doesn’t count, damnit) but this is AMAZING. So much so that I’ve covered my laptop in stickers of items from Scribblenauts so it can make me smile when I don’t have the opportunity to play it.

Basically each level you have to solve a puzzle by summoning basically anything you can think of.

I loved it from the first time I played it when I had to summon something to make Santa happy, and I accidently punched Santa in the head and left him cowering in the corner. I totally didn’t mean to punch you, Santa!

Another favourite is when I’m demoing it at work, and I whisper in the customers’ ear to summon a T Rex, like some crazy imnipotent devil on the shoulder, then watch their faces in glee as the T Rex noms everything on screen

Scribblenauts is awesome for that mischievous evil streak that lurks in all of us, but allows us to vent it without using one speck of fake blood, or any sort of “HEADSHOT!” nonsense.

Utterly. Awesome.

PLAYSTATION PORTABLE

Okay I got this for Xmas and haven’t put it down since, so it’s gotta be:

LITTLE BIG PLANET PSP

When I asked for this for Xmas, I was slightly worried that the tiny PSP wouldn’t be able to contain all the love and happiness that had come with the PS3. I thought the creation tools would be lacking, if there at all.

I was wrong.

This game is so good, and as I said in a previous post, theres something about having your own mini Marilyn Monroe sack girl running across the screen, on the move, that makes it totally worthwhile.

The gameplay is essentially the same as the PS3 version, but the levels are different and yet transfer wonderfully over to the portable version of the game. Some elements are missing, but the main points of the game are so good, you hardly even notice.

The creation tools have been compacted into a tiny toolbox of fun, which, despite this, are no harder to use.

All I can say is, all the awesomeness of the PS3 version, but on the move.

What could be better?

OKAY

So those are my fave games of 2009.

What are yours? Disagree with mine? Lemme know

Still holding out my overall top, I’ve submitted them to the guys over at www.crushfragdestroy.com , and I wouldn’t like to spoil the surprise

Hope you’ve enjoyed reading,

Peace, Love, and Restored Faith in Nintendo

xxx

Review: League of Legends

First of all I’d just like to point out that this game’s acronym is “LoL”. That makes it amazing to me, no matter what the game is like!

But, I should probably tell you what the game is like anyway, in case you’re not as easily amused. On a very basic level League of Legends is a shiny new strategy game, inspired by (and when I say inspired by I mean pretty much EXACTLY THE SAME AS) the classic, very popular Defence of the Ancients map for Blizzard’s Warcraft III – which, despite being released over 8 years ago still has a very loyal following of active players.

Overall, this game is a Blizzard fanboy/girl’s dream – with the classic gameplay of DoTA, seasoned with a sprinkling of that RPG magic that we’ve come to know and love.

This one is, however, not made by Blizzard, but comes from an independent LA games co – Riot Games, co founded by a couple of guys who worked with the masterminds who created DoTA to create this “Multiplayer Online Battle Arena”.

I am writing this review mainly because I’ve played alot of it this week, and also because everything I read on the internet says that its “not for the faint hearted” or that it’s not very good for the easily confused. I don’t think I could disagree more! This type of game would normally never interest me as a day to day gaming experience; my brain capacity usually can’t handle that much strategy in one game! D: League of Legends however, manages to hold my interest for at least an hour or so each time, a feat which hasn’t been achieved by many games this year.

League of Legends has a very simple concept – for those of you that haven’t played DoTA – at a very basic level the aim is to use your team’s champions and minions to attack the champions and minions of the other team, with an ultimate aim of destroying their base!

At a glance, League of Legends doesn’t really have much story to it. The player takes on the role of “The Summoner” – a sort of God-like being with strong magical presence, allowing them to summon a champion to act as an Avatar for them on the Fields of Justice. Both the Summoner and the champion have their own aspects which work as sort of “power ups”. For the champions there are shops, which can be accessed from the UI, which allow you to buy upgraded armour, and consumables such as potions etc. You can also decide in which order you learn your skills as you power up through a match, a sort of specialisation system in short. The Summoner in turn has the Rune system, and masteries which affect the overall power of the character, and finally a set of Summoner-only powers which can do things like teleport the character back to their friendly base.

The battle system in LoL is pretty simple – point and click control of the character with a bar for the avatar/Summoner skills, with key bindings for each skill which can be edited obviously. The main aim of the map is to use the spawned minions to your advantage to push through the opposing team’s defenses to destroy their base. So essentially you simply have to use your chosen champion’s skills to destroy the opposing team’s minions, champions, turrets and finally, their base. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well yeah. That’s pretty much all there is to it. The main thing to remember is that it is all about the team. Facing anything alone, you will probably get smushed. The only way to defeat enemy turrets is to attack from behind a line of minions. The AI isn’t great in this sense, the turrets and NPCs attack pretty much just the thing next to them. But this doesn’t change the fact that it’s really fun – and pretty intense in parts! This game really does show that simplicity, and reworking an old idea can sometimes be a good thing.

I think the main thing going for League of Legends is the multiplayer – it is very much built on the foundation of people who have played similar games in the past and are looking for something similar. It’s really good fun to play with friends, and because of the huge online following of DoTA, you’re never short of people to have a quick game with. Actually I take that back. You can’t really have a “quick game” of League of Legends. It might just be me, but every decent game that I’ve had has been at least an hour long (at least if you’re playing with evenly matched people), which means despite it being totally worth it, it’s not really a game which you can just sit down and take a break playing – it’s usually much better when planned with a set team at a pre-arranged time. There are plenty of people playing, but it’s difficult to judge which will be a good match for you. It’s easy to be fooled into a game with someone who appears to be a noob, but then it turns out he’s had 5 years experience at DoTA! This means that if you have never played this type of game before, you are more likely to be at a disadvantage when you first start. There is a match making system, which in theory is supposed to match you with the most equal team, but it isn’t great at the moment, and is restrictive in the sense that you can’t filter game creation – for example a “friends only” game etc.

Once you have the right team however, don’t get me wrong, its amazing fun! It’s fast paced, exciting and, as I said, the first game in a while to hold my attention for more than an hour. Simply for the fact that it is good clean simple multiplayer fun, and – something that hasn’t been mentioned so far that much and I don’t know why – but IT’S FREE! Especially in this season where we’re all a bit short on cash! Obviously there are always ways for them to make money, and in this case it is through a cash shop – where you can purchase new characters and upgrades. There are so many different characters to choose from – giving good choice for teams who want to work tactically – and this choice means you are likely to fight against different champions each time giving a new and exciting experience each battle!

The art style of League of Legends is pretty much similar to Warcraft III, if only upgraded slightly. It still captures that stylized vibrant feast of cartoonery that is refreshing in this world of brown and grey shooters with too much bloom. It also manages to keep relatively low spec in terms of system requirements – which is great for people who have older PCs – but at the same time, when the graphics are turned all the way up, the detail in some of the more advanced spells is really awesome. The animation of the characters is also pretty smooth, and the character models themselves are effective and original – one of the criticisms of Warcraft 3 being that the character models were too simple. This would probably not impress you if you’re into realism and high end gaming, but for a good balance of detail and aesthetic appeal, and performance, League of Legends hits the nail on the head.

It can start to get annoying however, when further into the game where everyone has their advanced skills, with so many people on screen at once, the skill effects and animations can be overwhelming. Furthermore there are so many minions on screen at once, not to mention the other champions that in high traffic areas it may be difficult to control the avatar and his spells – or more specifically who they are aimed at.

The music is pleasant and fitting, but very much what you would expect from this type of game, and in some parts you would be forgiven for thinking it was completely ripped from WC3. Kind of generic but still, playing it safe was probably the best bet for this one. The fact that each character has their own unique voice is pretty neat, but at the same time, they only have a few set phrases which they repeat in an almost creepy dead-behind-the-eyes way every time you tell them to attack. It gets kind of annoying once you’ve heard the same thing a few times.

Things I Liked

• It’s free!
• Simple to pick up – easy to learn, hard to master
• Wide selection of original characters to choose from
• Awesome for multiplayer, especially with friends

Things I Disliked

• Restrictive and ineffective matchmaking system
• Difficult to see what’s going on at later stages in the game in high traffic areas with many champions and advanced skills.
• Somewhat simple AI which is easy to manipulate.
• Based on an old idea so nothing really that new or innovative going on here.

Target Audience

Strategy game fans, Warcraft 3/DoTA fans, Fans of games focused on online multiplayer, anyone looking for some simple FREE (!) fun.

Overall: Recommended! At least give it a go, there’s nothing to lose!

LEAGUE OF LEGENDS

PLATFORM: PC

DEVELOPER(S): RIOT GAMES

PUBLISHER(S): RIOT GAMES, GOA, TENCENT INC.