Zero Punctuation: Torchlight

[Chasmodius]

Sorry, this is going to be kind of off-topic, and rather specific to something Noelveiga said. Also, I will kind of be proving his point by trying to disprove his point. Ah, irony. (is that Irony? Some people really seem to care)

[PC Gamers] get angry at or talk down to death to anybody who dares... Do anything to prevent pirating of games, unless you're Valve, in which case you're allowed to set up an entire digital delivery system to do just that.

I actually thought that the primary concern of most PC players with regards to Anti-Piracy measures is that many of these programs are either broken (that is, they make the game broken at best, and at worse they make your computer broken!), intrusive of privacy, or asinine, and a very few are all three (I'm looking at you, SecuRom). Which isn't to mention that they are ineffective against people who know what they are doing and can download or create workarounds themselves, they are only really troublesome to the average or casual gamer who doesn't understand why the thing is borked and gives up on the PC as a viable game platform for (actually not unreasonable) stability issues.

What many PC gamers like about Valve's solution is that it is a simple (well okay, it's actually really complex) redefinition of how players get games in the first place, obviating the need for much of the intrusive and destructive parts of dedicated anti-piracy systems (or really just internalizing it in a way that makes it work better), and it really only seems to be an ancillary part of what Steam is.

I guess my main point is that most anti-piracy programs are stupid, and Valve gets a pass because what it made isn't an anti-piracy program, but a content-delivery program which happens to eliminate most of the ability to pirate games as a side-benefit.

Which isn't to say that Steam is perfect. I still have to wonder what will happen to the game "licenses" I have purchased in 10 years when they retire the system?

 

[Dr. Wily III]

You pretty much sum up how it is to play Diablo 2, (With few expections) but unlike you, I enjoyed it.

 

[deplorable]

cost me £4 in Steams Jan sale.... money will spent, kept my godson quiet for hours better than any dvd lol

I actually found the netbook and the low spec thing really good considering but then Yat has lost his edge, he's more console than anything. Shame really i'm sure he was brought up on games that needed rewinding by pens when they came loose.

As much as i love my consoles (wii and 360 gathering dust or melting eggs to crispness) and my ps3 (most played recently). My PC [desktop and laptop] will always be my favourites when it comes to games... they aren't just about how many FPS's you can fit on the market before said market starts being morons or making poorly made puns and pretending to be more british than he actually is...

*waves at Yat* you're not british... deal with it... enjoy your australian fun with mmo's.. i hear you get.. "great" connections... lol

 

[SgtFlaman]

Another tears-inducing laugh-fest in the form of a ZP review.

Thank you very much. Keep them coming.

 

[Esha]

This is one of those areas where Yahtzee really shows his ignorance toward certain genres. When it comes to shooters, he's some sort of mad savant on a mission, a superhero of refining that particular genre, but given just about any other type of game, his wit tends to falter from my perspective because Yahtzee is at his best when he's in his own element.

It's sort of like being a Professor of geology, and encouraging a lay-person to speak on the topic when they don't have a clue, the effort is endearing, and it can be entertaining for a half hour if you can get past your own empathy, and feeling for them in regards to all the painfully obvious mistakes they're making, mistakes which they quickly compound with errors of even greater magnitudes. The humour value of this increases exponentially if the lay-person happens to be drunk, or at least sounds like they're drunk, or failing that--very angry.

That's sort of what this review of Torchlight was like. Funny in its own way, and it's going to get yuks out of anyone who doesn't understand the genre, but anyone who's familiar with even a small amount of Western action RPGs is probably going to have their face planted in their hands, laughing raucously for all the wrong reasons.

I think that next Yahtzee should review Borderlands, get the man talking on something that he's familiar with, so we can all be entertained again without having to feel heinously guilty for it after (well, except for the clueless ones, who'll be earnestly entertained anyway, Q.E.D., ignorance may very well be bliss).

That or we could have him review Solium Infernum, but I think the screens of numbers and complex tactics in that would have his head impacting his desk with such force and unrestrained anger that Murphy's Law would probably see his brain quantum tunnelling it's way to freedom, so that it might never have to experience something like that ever again.

So yes, let's see him review more shooters!

 

[Chasmodius]

For the record, I don't understand why Valve gets to present itself like a struggling small developer when they own the bastard child of Gamestop and Xbox Live. Surely, if you're the owner of the world's largest digital distribution platform, in practice making you a major publisher AND a major retailer, that makes you a corporate asshole, does it not?

I kind of thought that being a privately-held company meant you were less beholden to shareholders and "the board," which is what makes corporations particularly asshole-y. At least, in a cyber-punk kind of we-own-people-damn-consequences-only-the-bottom-line way. Being big isn't necessarily bad, it's acting big that's the problem, and I think that Valve does a good job of only falling into that trap on a few occasions.

Anyway, your other points are all well-made, and well-taken, though I thought I could use Steam in "offline" mode if my internet connection was down? Regardless, good points.

 

[Skweebl]

Am I the only one who was totally weirded out about how all of the music and sound effects were taken exactly from Diablo II? Seriously, I thought I was coming down with some kind of Post-Traumatic Clicking Disorder.

Hm... maybe it's bad taste to make PTSD jokes?

It sounds similar to Diablo 2's music because the same person that did D2's music made Torchlight's.

On another note, I disagree with pretty much everything Yahtzee said. Yeah, it's a clone of D2, but it's a well-polished one. Although it suffers from the same ailment pretty much every Diablo clone does: the more I play Torchlight, the more I want to play Diablo II, simply because as good as Torchlight is, D2 just does most things better. Let's hope Diablo III lives up, yeah?

 

[Chasmodius]

Am I the only one who was totally weirded out about how all of the music and sound effects were taken exactly from Diablo II?

It sounds similar to Diablo 2's music because the same person that did D2's music made Torchlight's.

It doesn't sound "similar," it uses exactly the same music and sound effects. At least in that first whole section, which is as far as I got before having too many Diablo II flashbacks and decided that I really didn't want to play it again.

 

[Sifer2]

Why does every "rpg" nowadays need a dog?

Misguided game devs believe that the Dog was Fallout 3's secret to it's success probably...

I never heard of this game before and I guess that's a good thing.

It definitely wasn't cause I missed the Dog in Fallout 3 an had beaten the entire game before I decided to check out a FAQ an was like "WHAT there was a dog? Aww man".

As for Torchlight its a good cheap Diablo clone. If you like Diablo you will like Torchlight if not then you wont. An if you never played Diablo you might as well go back to hugging your console since your probably don't own any PC games anyway.

 

[ParGellen]

If you're not careful, console RPGs will start requiring you to plug in a keyboard and mouse just to have enough buttons...

That would make me actually buy a console if the games on them were written to use a mouse and keyboard. I can't use those *ahem* (and I use the term loosely) "controllers"...

 

[koolgool]

"... or for someone who has spent most of their life chained to a basement wall." Was this a 5 Days a Stranger reference? :B If so, do more. lawl

Cool video, as usual.

 

[Ambitious Sloth]

Why does every "rpg" nowadays need a dog?

The idea started with Nethack an old rpg/rougelike that use text symbols to represent everything ingame purely because there were no graphics to use, or no way to make them. besides that tangent though they started off with a back story, your character, and your constant companion forever your dog, this was one of the first videogame rpgs. Since then giving your character a dog or cat companion has been seen as a nod toward the first really successful rpg.

 

[WorldCritic]

You know if it is only $3 then I might play just for the hell of it. Or I could buy a couple slices of pizza, tough choice.

 

[JamesR]

Amazing that after 9 pages of comments nobody seems to really get the point of Torchlight ... Not even Yahtzee did, guess that wasn't a helpful start.

 

[Dommyboy]

Could never finish Torchlight, it just became so incredibly dull and repetitive.

 

[Lusulpher]

Why does every "rpg" nowadays need a dog?

Misguided game devs believe that the Dog was FABLE's secret to it's success probably...

I never heard of this game before and I guess that's a good thing.

Fixed your post.

I dislike all RPGs, they are all like this. looking at your Final Fantasy. It's like taking Neverending Story 5 and making a series of games of them.

Girl likes boy, Girl gets kidnapped. Or town is built on Satan.[exception being ICO]

 

[Auric]

Seems fun to me

I love blowing things up with super kickass spells of awesome.

Though in my opinion, every game like this should give me the option to autoloot EVERYTHING (AKA, not just gold)

 

[enthend]

lol, as soon as i heard: "... this is something the game is similar to diablo, along with everything else", i went and got the game the next day.
diablo had done the impossible by making grind fun, or brain washed me successfully.

 

[antymattar]

torch light is made by the makers of fate and by wild tangent(fuck! they ripped of 75$ of me!)
I think that fate had some better stuf than torchlight!

 

[Z(ombie)fan]

this was my first ZP review.

not a bad start, really.