Torchlight

So recently, I’ve been playing this game called Torchlight. I haven’t played it that must (just maybe 4 hours yesterday) but I gotta say its an amazing game.

Torchlight is a Hack-n-slash “Diablo clone” (no duh, its made by former employees of Blizzard North, the CREATORS of Diablo). In the vein of Diablo there are three classes, melee smasher, ranged sniper, and magical dude. The game is set in the village of Torchlight, a mining community that operates around a mine near the village where a mystical crystal called “Ember” is found. You arrive at the scene to find monsters have overrun the mines and a two other adventer types (Brink and some girl… forget her name) fighting back the monsters. And there the game begins.

So… it’s a hack-n-slash. This means that the basis of the game revolve around one thing: kill monsters, loot them. You run around, fighting hundreds of different monsters (so far I’ve encountered rat-men, trolls, constructs (harder trolls), zombies, skeletons and various magical types) and then you loot their bodies and open the treasure chests they were guarding.

What I find so amazing about games like this is how stupidly unrealistic, yet amazingly satisfying they are. In a good story, the protagonist as a good reason for going on dangerous quests and often had lots of help along the way. Frodo never would have made it to Mt. Doom if it wasn’t for Gollum, Sam, Gandalf, Aragorn et al. But yet, in this game, besides I think the two levels, I, basically, am alone (you have a “pet” that helps you, but it’s basically a tank/low damage dealer) the entire game. In Lord of the Rings, Aragorn had a special sword, just one, and he used it throughout the book. He didn’t walk through orc corpses saying, “hey! That looks shiny! Who cares about this old sword, I’ll use this one!” Granted, Aragorn already had an amazingly good sword, but I’ve never heard of a single hero who fights through hordes of unnamed creatures and then takes whatever random weapons they were using for himself.

Furthermore, there is the whole question of “Why is this monster guarding a chest of weapons that he doesn’t use himself?” Question that I find myself asking. I mean, think about it: If that sword is a “OMG! UBER RARE TOTALLY AWESOME!” weapon, why isn’t the rat-man guarding it using it? It doesn’t make sense.

So anyways… yes, it’s unrealistic. Yes, its kinda stupid. Yes, its not that original in gameplay (the setting is a fun steam-punk type world. My character has a sword and shield and some PISTOLS! w00t!). But darnit, this game is amazingly fun.

Oh, do you know what the best part is? It'll run on just about any machine out there. It even has a special "netbook" setting if you're running one of those. Awesome, no? (Obviously its not that big a deal for me and my Duo Core CPU, Geforce 8 and 2 gigs of RAM, but hey, not everyone is like me. :p)

Website is www.torchlightgames.com its $20 off of Paypal, and the game designers claim 10-20 hours of gameplay every play through. I dunno about you, but with 3 classes, randomly generated dungeons, and gameplay this addicting I could play this game forever and ever. Assuming of course, I don't find another really fun game (like for instance... Dragon Age Origins or Borderlands, both of which seem like they're really good) *nods*