Torchlight
Platform - PC
Rating - 12+
Players - 1
Relase Date - October 09
Format - CD, Digital Download

Remember back in the day... Diablo 1/2. Addictive dungeon crawling. Level 95+ Hardcore characters that took a year to develop. Yes, that massive timesink, that anyone who's anyone in PC gaming has sunk a few weeks at least into. It's back.

Well, sort of.

Max and Erich Schaefer (Diablo 1 and 2 co-designers) are back. And joined by the Mythos team, then lead by the great Travis Baldree (Fate). All under the banner of Runic Games.
Their return to form is epic, and most importantly, true to the spirit of Diablo.

The story is set in a mining village called Torchlight (Funny that, mining... torchlight... I'll get my coat...), which just happens to be the richest source of the mineral Ember in the known world. Unfortunately, Ember also appears to attract a massive amount of monsters, who have recently taken to attacking Torchlight, stopping them from being able to mine properly. Your character arrives in Torchlight to find it under attack from the mine, and are quickly dispatched to discover the secret of the Torchlight Ember mine.

Gameplay wise, it plays as a mix up of Diablo 2, and WoW. You've got a skillbar of 12 functions, and can assign left and right mouse button mixes. You then get a Tab function, where hitting tab will switch your RMB skill over. Pretty standard stuff. 2 sets of weapons, switchable by W. Skill trees, unable to be reset (so far), different skills for different situations, etc etc. Further complimented by a basic warrior class, a basic ranged class, and a basic magic class.

So far, so formulaic.

The difference comes in with the pet. Everyone has them, and they're basically your walking mule. Except this mule fights. And can pick up items on the floor (Dungeon Siege 2 fans will recognise this). And has it's own equipment slots, albeit limited to 2 rings, 2 spells, and a necklace (You'd think it'd be 4 rings, but I digress). The pet itself can carry you through the first 10 odd floors without the health bar not even moving, and when it's set to aggressive, will pretty much tear a floor apart by itself, all you need to do is follow the carnage. And this is with it set on Hard...

The staples of a dungeon crawl are all there. Randomly generated floors, randomly enchanted items, town portals, waypoints, randomly powered up bosses every now and again.

Graphics aren't that bad for something with such low system requirements, the only exception thing is a DX10-compatible sound card. Other than that, it'll run on largely anything, so don't expect too much here. Plus, crank those graphics up, and when you're killing 30 enemies at a time, and it'll cripple anything. Physics are turned up to 11, but remarkably, the latest Aegia PhysX software drivers keep CPU load down, even offloading it to the 3rd core on my PC, which is something I've never seen in a game with such low requirements. Massive kudos for Aegia for multi-threading PhysX, and actually giving me some use from that quad core CPU...

Controls are very much a simple thing. You can actually go through the entire game using nothing but your right hand (steady...), but the real beauty comes from stringing combos together. My Alchemist (basic mage class) is currently freezing mobs in place, giving them a frost DoT, then Aoeing the piss out of them, all from the safety of behind a wall of imps. Combat flows nicely, with long strings of attacks being made possible through the simple controls. Spells and attacks have a nice heavy thud on impact, and everything sounds very meaty. Screen shakes when unleashing some heavy hits are a nice touch, but get a little old very quickly.

Not much to say about the story, as in any dungeon crawler, it's largely there to progress you into the harder floors. So far, I've saved a damsel in distress, saved her adventuring partner, raided a few temples, and discovered 3 civilisation changes in the mines underneath Torchlight, which means they're not the first, and probably won't be the last encampment there.

Even though it's a single player experience, there is a free-to-play MMO in the pipeline, which sounds like a great addition to it, bringing it right up there with Diablo 2.

Scores time!

Gameplay - B. Let down by the repetitiveness, but easy to pick up and play
Graphics - A. Don't expect Crytek levels of graphics, but for the genre, the graphics are great, and fit in very nicely.
Sounds - A. Great soundtrack, keeping you on edge, but not intrusive.
Replay Factor - B. Dungeon crawlers generally have a long lifespan, and 4 difficulty levels with 3 characters keep things fresh. Let down by no multiplayer, but there's an MMO tie-in in the pipeline.

Overall - A-

Verdict: A great little timesink for those times when you just can't face online play. Excellent for those looking to kill some time until Diablo 3 comes out.

A part of me wishes it was online. I haven't heard of the game until now though and got very interested in it. I may check it out.

I've heard that modders are working on getting co-op into the game.
although i might have imagined that.

They are, and in 16 months (I think they said) they intend to have the free mmo version out.