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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

A few thoughts on Torchlight

1:25 PM / Games / 1 Comment

For many people, the greatest casualty of the demise of Flagship Studios in 2008 was not its A-title, Hellgate: London, but rather Mythos, a side project headed by Fate designer Travis Baldree. Originally intended to test the servers that were later to be used for Hellgate, Mythos' following grew steadily, with many who felt disillusioned by the flagship (sorry) title's shortcomings turning to this colourful, charming, free-to-play MMO to satisfy their action-RPG cravings. The shuttering of Flagship was a bitter blow to those who had enjoyed seeing Mythos take shape and participating in the game's open beta test, for the title became lost in a squabble over copyright ownership. The result: all the hard work of the Mythos was essentially for nothing. The game will never see the light of day.

Well, not quite. After the shuttering of Flagship, the team behind Mythos hastily rebranded under the banner of a newly formed studio, Runic Games, and set about building a new game from scratch - one that followed the same basic philosophies of Mythos. Released on October 27, Torchlight, built from the ground up in under a year, looks set to satisfy the ARPG itch that many are feeling, particularly now that it has been confirmed that Blizzard Entertainment's juggernaut, Diablo III, will not be released until after 2010.

Costing a mere $20, Torchlight is a download-only, single player affair (a free-to-play, microtransaction-funded MMO version will follow at a later date), but if like me you normally play solo anyway, that won't matter. True, it may not have an original bone in its body, and there's no mistaking its pedigree - Max and Erich Schaefer, designers of Diablo and Diablo II, and Matt Uelmen, composer of those two games, are part of the team responsible - but the whole thing is polished to such perfection that its derivative nature is easy to overlook. Light on plot and heavy on action, Torchlight is a time sink in the best possible sense: it's incredibly easy to tell yourself that you'll only play five minutes, and next thing you know you're still clicking away hours later and promising you'll stop once you've cleared out the next dungeon/gained another level/completed the current quest.

You'd never mistake it for an "A" title (polished though it is, certain aspects, such as the presentation of the wafer-thin story, have an almost fan-made feel to them), but in much the same way that not every movie you watch is a billion dollar blockbuster, not every game needs to be a cinematic epic that features photo-realistic graphics that would choke a supercomputer and takes 100+ hours to complete. It's true that many people will simply use Torchlight to kill time until Diablo III comes along, but its makers seem to be fairly comfortable with their game filling this niche. It has superb replay value, thanks to the multiple potential character builds and randomly generated level layouts (a Diablo staple), not to mention an endless dungeon in which to lose yourself once you've completed the core game. Most importantly, it's relentlessly fun and deeply satisfying (it's hard to put my finger on why, but whumping half a dozen zombies with a single click has that inherently pleasing feeling that so many other action games lack), and gets a hearty recommendation from me. Now, please excuse me while I go off and wear out another mouse.

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