First-Person Shouter

I think I want this.

Two posts in a week? Holy schnikies! Torchlight looks lovely, but I still think that if I really want to run and hack and pick up loot I can just fish out my old copy of Diablo 2? No?

The first point has convinced me to give it a go. I’ll probably stay for the fishing.

Stop making me want to try this game, darn you good sir, darn you.

Thanks for this, because I have also been on the fence about the game. Now that I beat Borderlands with at least one character, and DAO is looking like more work than fun, I’m not gonna wait to pick it up, I think.

I’m at work while Torchlight is downloading at home.

The time is not going terribly quickly.

Woo, back up and running. I have the Torchlight demo, too. It’s hard for me to pay $20 for an upgrade of Fate, which I bought back in the day. Torchlight is better, but it really is an upgrade. Plus, I have the last 3 weekend deals to get through, but I’m pretty sure I’ll eventually get Torchlight. You can definitely spend 20 minutes on a level, but it has that “one more level” addictiveness that 20 minutes turns into an hour and a half.

Some of those things sound like they are taken straight out of Dungeon Siege 2(and maybe even 1, but I haven’t played that one) - like town portals, shared chests and loot-springing-face biting chests. And that’s a good thing!

Also, this is my first post since I’ve started reading FPShouter. Hello.

I grabbed the demo after Valve posted that news article showing off some of the characters. The depth of the character customization is great, I’ll definitely be buying this soon. The demo is also loads of fun, I played it for a few hours and never hit the end, it just seemed to go on, and on, and on, but in a good way ;)

>Town portal scrolls let you leave a dungeon and warp back to town to store items or buy new ones. When you’re done, warp right back to where you were.

>Holding down the Alt key will bring up labels for any loot or interactive objects on the screen (like barrels and levers). No need to hunt around or look for the glowing objects to know you’ve picked up everything.

Hey, just like in Diablo! In fact, exactly like in Diablo. Have you not played Diablo?

I still cant believe they didn’t just add multiplayer into this game. I realize they’re making a separate MMO later on, but this game would be the new messiah if me and a few friends could loot together. That’s my only complaint about this game.

Never played Diablo. Or Fate. If they’re like this, I’m sure I would like them.

I’ve been playing the demo for the past couple of days, and bought it last night. I agree with just about everything you said, though there’s actually a difference between the hardest mode and the one where death is permanent. Permanent death is the “hardcore” checkbox, “very hard” is just… well, I wouldn’t call it really hard, just a lot more kiting and using health potions than in normal, since everything has more health and does more damage (except for you :P ).

But from the dragon age post, about Mass Effect: it’s better the higher the difficulty. I’m serious here, combat gets much better on Insanity :D . It really is worth a third playthrough (you have to beat it once to unlock hardcore, and then beat it on hardcore to unlock insanity… fucking stupid design decision, reminiscent of its being meant for consoles…).

Actually, I should have said I agree with your sentiment, looking at it again I realized you were just listing facts about it, specifically things that you liked. And yeah, they’re cool, so… yeah.

Bought Torchlight over the weekend and I’ve been playing it every free chance I’ve had all week. One suggestion: If you’ve played any action RPG’s before, skip right over easy and normal difficulty levels. I started on normal just to learn the game, and maybe that helped for my first run through but by the time my character got up to level 10 or so I was absolutely obliterating the enemy. Even bosses took very few hits. So while I can appreciate Chris’s mentality that playing on an easier level is fun and relaxing, I have found some skills to be so overpowered on the easy levels that they just ruin the game.

One thing I love: Adding enchantments to already high powered weapons is very easy, but comes with the chance of losing ALL enchantments. Risk vs. reward, I love it!

This game borrows just about everything in it from Diablo. It is, essentially, a clone. A nice, pretty 3D clone that has a lot of charm and flare.

Several of the fine gentlemen in charge of Diablo and Fate made Torchlight. If it inherits from them, it’s largely as a result of these guys knowing precisely what the hell they’re doing in this genre.

Personally, I’m waiting on this one until Christmas, but all the fun people are having with it now is making me antsy. Who wants to give me twenty bucks?

I’m surprised the word clone gets brought up so much in relation to the word Diablo rather than spiritual successor.

Two blog posts in less than a week?

Who is this and what have you done with Chris!

Should have also mention how friendly this game is to mod and it already has an active modding community. Also anyone thinking to buy should just just get it from devs direct. Since each distributor uses a different DRM the version of the game from the devs is always going to get updated first.

Ok, 2 posts one week? whats next another post tomorrow? 1 post per day? I think these 3 posts ( yes i’m including your future one) are a rare occurance that should be treasured.

Do you guys even remember the times when Chris updated almost daily, sometimes posting twice a day? These were good times.

acctually, i do.

I miss those days.

Also: There’s a bunch of new episodes of Freeman’s Mind.

I agree with Out Reach, who are you and how did you manage to hijack this blog?

All kidding aside, okay, forget Borderlands (since I have no one I’d wish to co-op with on the internet) -instead I’ll get Torchlight.

Speaking of your “faithful” pooch, who here has seen the comic on PA about his “shady dealings”? Hilarious!

Sounds like Diablo II to me!

Which isn’t a bad thing, either.

I played the demo. I am going to buy the full game now.

I wish there were more games like this one. Quick and easy to play, but not necessarily a casual game. I’m sure there are a lot of gamers that want to take a break, just relax and have some fun, rather than playing an insanely difficult and time consuming game all the time.

I actually didn’t like torchlight that much. Most of your time you will either be clicking away (well, that’s the genre, but it bores me) or inspecting loot (and making me confused). I found all the stats and attributes confusing, i simply did not know what i would benefit from. Not that I could tell from switching weapons and trying them out either, pretty much everything dies on one hit anyways, regardless of gear, making me feel that i dont make any impact on what’s happening on the screen. I also didn’t like the skill-trees. 10/10, and only level restriction on the best spells? As an old wow-geek, it felt very frustrating to either have to choose between filling up your spells to max or getting the high-level ones.

Thats hilarious.

You just described Diablo. No, seriously, its the same damn thing. Thats what Torchlight is, a Diablo with updated graphics.

You should check out some of the mods for Torchlight here http://forums.runicgames.com/viewforum.php?f=20 if you haven’t yet done that.

So, this is like an updated version of Fate (itself, a derivative of Diablo)? Awesome. I played Fate back in the day, but then I found out the the online arcade I downloaded from had managed to inject a virus into EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN FILE of the game, and was promptly deleted, never to be spoken of again.

If this is Steam, then I shouldn’t have that problem. I’ll get the demo and probably buy it some time after I get bored of L4D2.

Fate was distributed by WildTangent, so yeah. WT is kinda bollocks.

Anyway Paranoid, I understand your view on the game. I was reluctant to try the game out because of that. But I found myself having fun and not caring after a while, and it’s a lot more inviting than Diablo/DiabloII is.
The stats were not too hard though. STR(Melee) DEX(Range) MAG(Magic/Elemental) DEF(Armor).
Basically: Up the stat of the type of weapons and abilities you plan on using. Ability that deals damage from weapon, STR or DEX, Ability that has elemental damages, MAG. And of course DEF for armors. Some abilities also have things like 50% DEX or whatever.

i played the demo, and its awesome.

I’ve also played diablo II all the way through, and despite it being very similar(its made by a lot of the same people that made diablo), its much, much more fun.

Borderlands is also fun, when there’s 4 people playing, WHICH IS HARD TO DO CAUSE ALL MY FREINDS WOULD RATHER PLAY WoW…*cry*…gawd i hate WoW…

Tried the demo last night thanks to your post; yeah, instant fun! I’ve never played Fate or Diablo, though I’ve read enough reviews of Diablo to get the comparisons. It’s gonna be difficult to keep the $20 in my pocket once I’m done with the demo.

a lot of those points are exactly the things they kept from diablo but there are a few improvments like the shared chest and being able to sell loot without having to portal back to town. A couple of the guys making this are the guys who founded blizzard north so an awesome diabloesq game makes sense.

Based on this recommendation (and the fact that it was made by the Diablo guys) I bought the game and I’m loving it, it’s like a clone of Diablo 2 but with a ton of new stuff and updated graphics. Still prefer the style of Diablo but Torchlight still has a great, crisp look to it.

The feature that lets you tell the dog to go back and sell your stuff for you is a stroke of genius.

Your comments Chris have made me want to buy this game now.

Also, Nondrick, just in case you forgot

@ New site idea from twitter feed: If it means updates, then not pissed at all.

I am not sure about this game. Started as the wizard class on easy for the demo. Was super fun for a while and bought it. The farther I got the more disparity there was between me and the monsters. Usually I just sit back with my beam of death and shred rooms. Got boring. Started over as warrior class on hard difficulty. Monsters got hard quick and I died for the first time. It is fun again but I will see as I progress. One thing I hate is stopping in every room to see if the loot is better than what I have. Hate traveling back to town to recover gems or buy 15 identification scrolls. Alt is the best button ever! Lots to like about the game but sometimes too much to manage for as brainless as it is.

@Chris’ Twitter Feed: I don’t think your fans would be pissed. They’d prolly be happy, if it means more updates.

@FPS_Shouter twitter feed because I’m too lazy to register on twitter:

$190 a YEAR!? How the hell would anyone pay that much for the mag?

Well it’s only 110 British dollars so I’ll just pay in those and SAVE BIG

You mean British pounds right? Because people with British accents do not spend dollars, the spend pounds because pounds are superior to dollars in every way.

Shift-clicking an item will tell your pet to go and pick it up.

I think I used up all my dungeon crawler love on diablo 2, I played that game for years. Battle.net was the shit. Couldn’t get into torchlight. ARE YOU GOING TO POST ABOUT BORDERLANDS? It was pretty enjoyable.

Seriously, if you’ve never played d1/d2 you’re missing out big time, d2 still has a fairly active battle net community last I checked. I’d suggest picking it up, it’s probably about 2 bucks for a set of cd keys these days.

For any fellow Australians here, some guy made a program to get l4d2, both the demo and full game, running uncensored. That means full gore and uncommon infected.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1009307
I use it, its fantastic, but check the comments first in case you are worried about viruses. Enjoy.

There’s a game called FATE, which is very similar to this one. You can check that one out as well.

With L4D2 out I can’t be bothered to do much more of anything else.

*falls off chair

Chris, you’ve never played Diablo II? I urge you to get a cheap copy and play it, just for the pixelly retro goodness of the graphics and the music and Deckard Cain saying “Stay a while and listen” and you trying to attack him with your big sword only for your character to say “Not in town”.

I actually went and got Torchlight because of this. Its actually turned out to be pretty fun.