Smash! Grab. Identify. Ooooo pretty colors! Smash! Click click click click. Health potion. Click click click click. 4am.
Smash! Grab. Identify. Ooooo pretty colors! Smash! Click click click click. Health potion. Click click click click. 4am.
Okay, it’s admittedly an odd comparison. To a degree. Some would point out the obvious similarities between Risen, Oblivion and Two Worlds, but scratch their heads at Torchlight being included. For those of you that are curious where I’m going with this, read on.
Of the four games listed above, I’ve played Two Worlds the most out of all of them. Now, that’s completely unfair to Torchlight, I know: I only got it yesterday evening and have only had time enough to log maybe an hour, wandering the mines beneath the title village.
But I’ve had Risen for at least two weeks and Oblivion (on my 360) for far longer than that. So why am I playing Two Worlds so much? It all boils down to the ways that Two Worlds is similar to Torchlight, and dissimilar to the other two games. And in my opinion, in this case, dissimilar = vastly superior. Yeah, so Two Worlds is … unpolished. That’s true. And many would argue the voiceovers to be the work of masochists, intent on forcing you into ripping off both of your own ears, in the style of Van Gogh. And that would sort of also be true. I say ’sort of’, because if you listen to/play the game long enough, it becomes one of those so truly bad, it’s good sorta things. And I mean TRULY bad. But I really do laugh at the ridiculous things your character says, and the reaches to which the NPCs attempt to stretch the believability of their blacksmith’s tragic flaws. It’s ridiculous, but it’s fun. Hey, when I’m in a cave surrounded by a huge group of grinning skeletons that are all intent on turning me into paste, and my character says “hmmm… looks like my in-laws.” in this awesome gravelly deadpan, I can’t help but laugh.
And that is why I love this game. That and a buncha other stuff I’ll get into in a minute.
Torchlight is the upcoming singleplayer action-RPG from Runic Games. Runic is the company created from the remnants of Flagship Studios West. The guys that were working on Mythos.
Anyhoo, they’re developing a single-player RPG first, followed by an MMO… which has just been announced to be published by Perfect World Games. This means that it will have worldwide distribution. Very exciting.
Below is one of the first screenshots of the game in action. It looks sweet – especially the enormous boss in the top left. For those of you that like Action RPGs, from the description of it, Torchlight sounds like its going to be essentially Fate 2.0. And that’s a good thing. I can’t wait to see what the MMO is going to be like.