• Torchlight – I’m a Mac!

    06/11/2010

    Posted in: PC

    We’ve already reviewed it, so what’s different? Fortunately, just what you play it on.

    Since Torchlight became available for Mac a few weeks ago, scarcely a day has gone by that I haven’t snuck in at least 30 minutes in the mysterious town. This is the first time I’ve gotten my hands on the game since PAX last fall. It was my first appointment at the event, and if I’m being honest my thoughts at the time went something like, “I want to play this game, I hope it doesn’t suck”. Sure, I’d heard of the game’s developers, but their game? Not much.

    When I was chatting with Max Schaefer I was struck with how well the game seemed matched to what I’ll call the adult audience. Don’t be dirty, I mean the adults that have jobs, families and need their games in more easily tackled and concentrated doses. Torchlight is streamlined, beautifully, and wonderfully keen on removing the things that make the typical dungeon crawler tedious. For example, you get a pet (wolf or lynx) that not only aids in battle but takes all your unwanted goodies and sells them in town, no matter where you are in the dungeons, and they’re back in less than a minute’s time. This is a fantastic way to eliminate a typically tedious part of loot collection – not just having to sell your loot, but the horror of becoming overburdened and having to choose. As it happens, I’m very pro-hoarding when loot gathering. If that wasn’t handy enough, there are chests for storing your extra loot as well as one to place loot you want to share across games with your other characters.

    Make no mistake, having your pet along isn’t a perpetual escort mission. They hold their own, and then some. Should you tire of their appearance just go fishing. Wherever there is sparkling water, cast your rod to haul out some very special fishies. When fed to your pet they transform into a monster (the type is specified in the fishy’s description). The average fish casts the effect for 120 seconds, a bigger catch for an hour and the biggest fish is permanent (until another fish comes along to change it up). The last option never appealed to me, though, I like my wolfie too much.

    You are given the choice of three classes with fixed character models: The Destroyer, a skilled fighter; the spell casting Alchemist, or the ranged Vanquisher. I chose the latter most, not just because the character model happened to be a foxy lady, but because I wanted to try the blend of ranged specialty, melee and trap setting. To quote our PC guy, “she deals a ton of damage from afar and looks bad ass with a gun”. Yes, please. All three can use at least a bit of magic, and the skills and spells are pleasantly gratifying – so much so that my next character will be an Alchemist.

    Story goes that having discovered Ember beneath the town of Torchlight, things start going terribly wrong. As the miners and ember-seekers head into the mines they discover civilizations in ruin, corpses, nasties and people corrupted by the tainted Ember. Enemies are pleasantly diverse, with each level of the mine introducing new threats. In addition to the descent through the mines, there are Portals you can travel through to tackle tougher monsters for bigger and better loot.

    Loot, experience points and fame are abundant from gold, to weapons and armor, to powerful accessories. Items have different colors to indicate things like their rarity, if they are part of a set, or if they are magical, and items with sockets can have gems added into them for bonuses (with Gorn and Furl in town to remove gems if you want to rearrange). Additionally you can find folks in town to combine items into new ones, enchant items, or a purveyor of as yet unidentified magical items. Many items are classified as “unidentified”, so place a premium on those Identify scrolls you pick up early on.

    Leveling up allows you to increase things like your strength, dexterity, magic and defense as well as spend points on upgrades across multiple trees. The latter was the hardest decision for me, having to choose between assigning a very limited number of points to my preferred magical attack skill, or my ability to land a critical hit. Fame is less fickle in the town of Torchlight, and as yours increases a title is added to your character name bringing with it those precious skill points.

    Control-wise, clicking an enemy prompts attack, right click for special skill, and tab allows you to swap between two preloaded skills. You can also load up a quick select with things like mana and health potions. I was cool with the mouse-mostly direction, but there were times (particularly the crowded battles) where I did long for the power of WASD.

    Dungeon crawling through and through, Torchlight has the trinity: accessible, beautiful and highly addictive. At next week’s E3 we’ll talk to Perfect World Entertainment a little bit about how the little indie that could caught their eye, and what their involvement in the MMO version means for the game.

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