Anywho, after reading a rather comical Cracked article about Dishonored that really rang true, I decided to give this game review blogging business another shot. And what better game (other than Dishonored, Borderlands 2, Dark Souls, Spiderman: Web of Shadows, Ninja Gaiden 3, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Bayonetta, Marvel vs Capcom: Fate of Two Worlds, Prince of Persia: Forgotten Sands, Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and...uh...those games I'm too lazy to stand up and look at) would be better to get back into the groove of critiquing my well-wasted time with? For those of you who have never heard of Torchlight, it's pretty much like a condensed, purified, more fun-intensive, less-farming-intensive version of Diablo II. For those of you who haven't heard of Diablo II, it's an exercise in futility and rage management as you control a small character that fights lots of demon guys in a 2-D plane of existence.
But. I liked the game.
For those who have ever explored a dungeon crawler before, the concept should be familiar: beat baddies, level up, choose skills, get badass weapons, then fight bosses. Repeat. Everything that Torchlight does for you, it hands to you either on a silver platter if you're a casual player, or it shoves down your throat while kicking your balls with dynamite-laden steel toe boots...if you're not so casual that is. The degree of customization that can occur as you approach varying builds to get through the game can either make your character a god known far and wide as a magnanimous (big word!) hero or that-one-guy-who-got-his-ass-handed-to-him-by-an-exploding-barrel. Stacking this onto the huge differences in difficulty that are offered to players can make for a truly challenging free-for-all dungeon crawling experience with friends online or a quick blitz when you're alone.
I guess that the impression I got from the game was kind of like if you merged Halo with Left 4 Dead with a dungeon crawler, you'd get something like Torchlight II on elite mode.
Either way, it was a fun game, and for 20 bucks, it runs surprisingly smoothly on my computer, has offered me many dozens of hours of gameplay and several characters worth of interesting build manipulations. This is one of only a few computer games I have recently played that I would earnestly recommend to any who have stumbled upon this blog and slogged through the review. Also--if you play--beat the shit out of Cacklespit. For me.
Cacklespit is such a [censored] if you don't have a way to escape its doll cage!
ReplyDeleteHahahahaha, ain't nobody ever gon' stumble upon our shit.
ReplyDeleteSeriously though, I admire your newfound motivations to revive this mausoleum of unrealized aspirations. I do not, however, have any admiration left for yet more dungeon crawlers.