Torchlight is an Action-RPG/dungeon crawler/spiritual successor to Diablo - made by Runic Games, a company consisting of many of the team that worked on Mythos, Hellgate: London, and a few people from Diablo II. Torchlight Runic's first game, and a free-to-play Torchlight MMORPG sequel-o-matic is in the works. Torchlight is probably the best game to have been released in the past several years, so the safest move for you would probably be to stop reading this right now and buy several copies. I'm tempted to just leave the review now, but I like to think I'm a little more professional than that so let's get rolling.
[http://gamesunder20.theitcorner.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/dungeon-e1276736078128.png]
You wouldn't want your roasting spider to get cold.
The Premise
The premise behind Torchlight is that it'sthe best game ever about a little mining town called Torchlight, residing right on top of an Ember mine. Ember is vaguely defined as some form of rock that's expensive, has magical powers, and also tends to drive plot-centric people insane.
The Ember mine is also very adept at attracting and/or spawning hordes of monsters which you will be fighting throughout the course of the game. In fact, the entire game takes place either in the town of Torchlight, or in the depths below it. (It didn't seem to phase Torchlight's founders at all that their town was built on top of an underground hive of monsters.) You'll travel through all sorts of environments, such as mines, castles, sunken temples, other castles, and more castles. All of which are underground. And built on top of each other. Which conveniently happen to be right below a flourishing little mining town. Don't ask me how that happened ? the video games industry seems to thrive off uncanny coincidences.
Monster are, as with any other RPG, more than willing to provide you with the weapons and armor you'll need to continue murdering them.
[http://gamesunder20.theitcorner.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/roomcleaner-e1276736110726.png]
With a name like "Speedy Roomcleaner," It's god to be good.
You choose a character ? either a Destroyer, which is a medieval Ahnold Schwarzenegger whose muscle mass roughly equates to that of about a house made of bodybuilders, a goggled, steam-punk looking mage character called the Alchemist, and the trio of generic fantasy heroes is rounded out by the rogue/ranger woman called the Vanquisher, though how she accomplishes being a rogue is beyond me since it seems a slim young woman in a bright red corset would draw exponentially more attention than a sneaky spy of any sort.
[http://gamesunder20.theitcorner.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/combat1-e1276736153313.png]
This is "women in the workplace" according to Torchlight.
You also get to choose a dog or a cat as a pet, though the only real difference between the two is appearance. You can find fish throughout your adventures - either on the ground in hidden treasure caches, or in fishing holes (the old-fashioned way), and these transform your pet into a friendly (to you) version of some of the monsters you fight throughout the game ? such as elementals, goblinhounds, or mimics (treasure chests that eat you.) There have been multiple hilarious occasions in which my pet mimic has engaged in a mandible-clashing battle to the death with an inferior enemy mimic.
[http://gamesunder20.theitcorner.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/mimicduel-e1276736121661.png]
I don't know which one is mine, but I hope he's winning
The Good.
Everything. I consider this game to be an incredibly well-polished masterpiece. Smashing monsters using a variety of skills and weapons is about as intuitive and fun as action-RPGS are going to get (at least until the release of Diablo III). In fact, it seems the developers did everything they could to keep you in the mines below torchlight, smashing monsters and getting loot ? potions drop frequently enough for the skilled player never to have to buy them, and your pet can hold items and sell them for you, so a lack of inventory space is never an issue. In fact, if you ignore the side-quests, you can pretty much spend the entire game without ever returning to town at all, because of how conveniently the monsters provide you with provisions that happen to suit you perfectly. The visual style is light-hearted without being too childish or cartoony, and everything is stylized, vivid, and well-animated. There is a huge variety of items, with all sorts of unique visual appearances and effects. Each character class is well-rounded and some experimentation is obviously encouraged, because every class has roughly the same basic passive skills, meaning they can be adept with any set of weapons. The monsters are all visually appealing and well-animated, and there's a pretty good variety of them for you to shoot, stab, slash, smash, burn, freeze, shock, crush, explode, poison, or pummel to death (or any diabolical combination thereof.)
[http://gamesunder20.theitcorner.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/combat2-e1276736141826.png]
As an added bonus, Torchlight has provided me with the means to vent my arachnophobic frustration.
The maps are randomized arrangements of level "chunks," and, while you may see the same chunk a few times, the levels all generally feel new, if a little familiar. This adds to the replay value immensely. For the truly hardcore, you can, upon creating a character, designate it as "hardcore" - meaning that, once the character dies, it's gone forever. There is a good variety of difficulties, ranging from Easy (for people new to video games), Medium (for people new to Action-RPGS), Hard (For people who have played Action-RPGs before and don't want the monsters to be quite as laughably squishy) and Very Hard (which should be self-explanatory).
There are also a few easter eggs in the game, including an achievement about a horse (it has nothing to do with Old Spice commercials) and a very strange weapon called the "Sword of Adam." (with magical properties such as "18 jauntiness," "42 futuristicness," "5 socks," and "2 noodle arms.")
The Modding support for this game is astounding. The modding tool - TorchED (you see what they did there?) is very versatile and there are countless mods and additions of all sorts made by http://forums.runicgames.com/ , including skins, weapons, armor, skills, level packs, and full-fledged character classes.
The Bad
Lack of multiplayer is very apparent, and there is nothing I would enjoy more than to collectively loot and pillage the mines below Torchlight with a group of friends. Loading times can be a little frustrating, but they're much better than they were when Torchlight was released. Some people may not like the cartoony style of Torchlight, though these people are probably the same people that are complaining that Diablo III has colours that aren't in their palette of contemporary emo self-portraits.
The Price:
Torchlight is $19.95 and available as a digital download in a huge variety of places, most of which are on the Internet.
A boxed copy is available in retail stores (if you can find any that carry it.) and you can also order it online.
The Verdict
Are you still reading this? Go out and buy several copies of the game already, because they'll only grow in value and eventually become the official currency after the nuclear apocalypse.
[http://gamesunder20.theitcorner.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/dungeon-e1276736078128.png]
You wouldn't want your roasting spider to get cold.
The Premise
The premise behind Torchlight is that it's
The Ember mine is also very adept at attracting and/or spawning hordes of monsters which you will be fighting throughout the course of the game. In fact, the entire game takes place either in the town of Torchlight, or in the depths below it. (It didn't seem to phase Torchlight's founders at all that their town was built on top of an underground hive of monsters.) You'll travel through all sorts of environments, such as mines, castles, sunken temples, other castles, and more castles. All of which are underground. And built on top of each other. Which conveniently happen to be right below a flourishing little mining town. Don't ask me how that happened ? the video games industry seems to thrive off uncanny coincidences.
Monster are, as with any other RPG, more than willing to provide you with the weapons and armor you'll need to continue murdering them.
[http://gamesunder20.theitcorner.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/roomcleaner-e1276736110726.png]
With a name like "Speedy Roomcleaner," It's god to be good.
You choose a character ? either a Destroyer, which is a medieval Ahnold Schwarzenegger whose muscle mass roughly equates to that of about a house made of bodybuilders, a goggled, steam-punk looking mage character called the Alchemist, and the trio of generic fantasy heroes is rounded out by the rogue/ranger woman called the Vanquisher, though how she accomplishes being a rogue is beyond me since it seems a slim young woman in a bright red corset would draw exponentially more attention than a sneaky spy of any sort.
[http://gamesunder20.theitcorner.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/combat1-e1276736153313.png]
This is "women in the workplace" according to Torchlight.
You also get to choose a dog or a cat as a pet, though the only real difference between the two is appearance. You can find fish throughout your adventures - either on the ground in hidden treasure caches, or in fishing holes (the old-fashioned way), and these transform your pet into a friendly (to you) version of some of the monsters you fight throughout the game ? such as elementals, goblinhounds, or mimics (treasure chests that eat you.) There have been multiple hilarious occasions in which my pet mimic has engaged in a mandible-clashing battle to the death with an inferior enemy mimic.
[http://gamesunder20.theitcorner.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/mimicduel-e1276736121661.png]
I don't know which one is mine, but I hope he's winning
The Good.
Everything. I consider this game to be an incredibly well-polished masterpiece. Smashing monsters using a variety of skills and weapons is about as intuitive and fun as action-RPGS are going to get (at least until the release of Diablo III). In fact, it seems the developers did everything they could to keep you in the mines below torchlight, smashing monsters and getting loot ? potions drop frequently enough for the skilled player never to have to buy them, and your pet can hold items and sell them for you, so a lack of inventory space is never an issue. In fact, if you ignore the side-quests, you can pretty much spend the entire game without ever returning to town at all, because of how conveniently the monsters provide you with provisions that happen to suit you perfectly. The visual style is light-hearted without being too childish or cartoony, and everything is stylized, vivid, and well-animated. There is a huge variety of items, with all sorts of unique visual appearances and effects. Each character class is well-rounded and some experimentation is obviously encouraged, because every class has roughly the same basic passive skills, meaning they can be adept with any set of weapons. The monsters are all visually appealing and well-animated, and there's a pretty good variety of them for you to shoot, stab, slash, smash, burn, freeze, shock, crush, explode, poison, or pummel to death (or any diabolical combination thereof.)
[http://gamesunder20.theitcorner.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/combat2-e1276736141826.png]
As an added bonus, Torchlight has provided me with the means to vent my arachnophobic frustration.
The maps are randomized arrangements of level "chunks," and, while you may see the same chunk a few times, the levels all generally feel new, if a little familiar. This adds to the replay value immensely. For the truly hardcore, you can, upon creating a character, designate it as "hardcore" - meaning that, once the character dies, it's gone forever. There is a good variety of difficulties, ranging from Easy (for people new to video games), Medium (for people new to Action-RPGS), Hard (For people who have played Action-RPGs before and don't want the monsters to be quite as laughably squishy) and Very Hard (which should be self-explanatory).
There are also a few easter eggs in the game, including an achievement about a horse (it has nothing to do with Old Spice commercials) and a very strange weapon called the "Sword of Adam." (with magical properties such as "18 jauntiness," "42 futuristicness," "5 socks," and "2 noodle arms.")
The Modding support for this game is astounding. The modding tool - TorchED (you see what they did there?) is very versatile and there are countless mods and additions of all sorts made by http://forums.runicgames.com/ , including skins, weapons, armor, skills, level packs, and full-fledged character classes.
The Bad
Lack of multiplayer is very apparent, and there is nothing I would enjoy more than to collectively loot and pillage the mines below Torchlight with a group of friends. Loading times can be a little frustrating, but they're much better than they were when Torchlight was released. Some people may not like the cartoony style of Torchlight, though these people are probably the same people that are complaining that Diablo III has colours that aren't in their palette of contemporary emo self-portraits.
The Price:
Torchlight is $19.95 and available as a digital download in a huge variety of places, most of which are on the Internet.
A boxed copy is available in retail stores (if you can find any that carry it.) and you can also order it online.
The Verdict
Are you still reading this? Go out and buy several copies of the game already, because they'll only grow in value and eventually become the official currency after the nuclear apocalypse.