Team Fortress 2 has been on sale on steam for $2.50 on and off, so be on the lookout. I was fortunate enough to grab it, though I haven’t played it yet. It’s been one of those games I’ve been meaning to get around to, and since that’s less than what I pay for a sandwich I figured why not.
Torchlight is basically Diablo “II.V”. I’m really torn on whether to laud it for being such fun or deride it for being such a ripoff. There are several improvements over DII (many of which I know from previews will be in DIII) but the core gameplay identical, as you can tell from this Youtube trailer. I’m actually really tempted to list all the similarities but I’d run out of room. Diablo wasn’t exactly a unique game in some ways, but still. Anyway, Torchlight fills the void of waiting, and I wound up getting it after playing through the demo. It actually gives a serious taste of DIII (having 3D animated enemies fly through the air from your powerful attacks instead of just doing The Death Animation is even more satisfying than I thought it would be). All it needs is a horadric cube. Or… wait… no, it has one of those too, actually. Nevermind. [Edit: Single player only, though supposedly an MMORPG version will be coming out in a year or two.]
ooh, I’ve been meaning to mention Torchlight to you for a little while now. It seems like it would be pretty cool if you’e into the diablo thing, so i’m glad you like it. (I have not played it, but I was never really a diablo player).
I read a review that mentioned it had actually made some substantial improvements to Diablo in terms of needing to click less and easy inventory management (something about being able to send your pet in to town to sell your junk loot for you?). Have you noticed anything like that that is worth mentioning? I’m always a fan of games that dispense with the annoying repetitive stuff like that.
I’ve been meaning to check out Team Fortress 2 for years purely becasue I love the graphical style, but I just can’t see myself getting into a shooter on the PC. But it is oh so prety, and 2.50 is an awesome deal.
Yeah, there are a couple small things like that. Lemme think of some of the improvements…
The inventory system is greatly improved, each item takes up one space and the inventory is split into different tabs per item type (which they are doing in DIII). Also your pet can carry as much as you can, and yes you can send it into town to sell your stuff (though that means you go without your pet for a while, not usually very long, but it can suck as they are surprisingly useful). Picking stuff up is also less repetitive, gold is automatically picked up if you walk near it. There is a stash of course, there is also a shared stash which (I think) your different characters all have access to. This saves one the trouble of having a “Mule” character which would hold stuff for everyone else, etc.
Potions are stacked in your quick keys, so the #1 will be mapped to your 50 health potions. No pointless ammo for ranged weapons (also a DIII feature I think). A mixed victory is having two skills at a time assigned to your right mouse key, then using the tab key to switch between them. Awesome for those two spells, but can get confusing (F1-F12 will replace the currently selected right mouse spell with the mapped spell, leaving the other one as-is, so fast and furious mouse spell switching will sometimes leave one forgetting which two spells are currently assigned).
Those are some of the definite improvements, other things are just similar. The graphics are of course just hugely improved, I usually discount that sort of thing in favor of gameplay but I’ll admit it adds a lot too, as mentioned in the main post.
I’ve been playing Borderlands since last week, and it is all the fun of Diablo loot whoring with FPS butt kicking. If you haven’t checked it out, I would highly suggest it. The art is cool, and so far the game play switches around enough to keep you interested.
Hrmm… I had heard of that, and largely good things. I thought it was more of a Fallout clone than a Diablo clone, not that either is necessarily bad.
Speaking of Fallout and gaming news, I’ve heard a Fallout MMORPG is on the way…