So…Torchlight.  You guys all know how excited I was for this game, my preview was gushing, and I couldn’t wait to get my tiny hands (I really don’t have very large hands, but I suppose they aren’t tiny) on the review copy.  Runic was kind enough to let us at it a few days in advance, so I’ve been spending every spare moment until my eyes glaze over picking up loot for my glorious Destroyer.

How is the game you ask?  At the risk of In order to sound like the huge nerd I am, I shallt decree “Read on adventurer, for in Torchlight shallt thou findest what thou seeketh.”

Torchlight is great, visceral fun; it is everything I could have hoped for.  At $20 this is a 100% must-buy game.  It boils the best parts of the action-rpg genre down into a great little package that is easily attacked by veterans of the Diablo series and those completely new to this type of game.

For those of you not familiar, here’s an explanation. (Also you can check out our preview for more info on stuff not covered here)  You are thrown into the small town of Torchlight as one of three character classes, the Alchemist, the Vanquisher and the Destroyer.  Torchlight is a town, like so many others in gaming history, in which something mysterious has been going on, and of course it’s up to you to solve it.  Like I wish so many other things could be solved, this mystery progresses by furious left-clicking (which of course is a normal attack), as well as queuing up powerful skills. These two things combine for a glorious effect; you slaughter countless thousands of enemies, all of which drop varying degrees of phat lewt for you to equip.  If you’ve ever heard the term “loot crack” and wondered where you can get your hands on some, Torchlight is the best place.

Torchlight - Randomly generated dungeons done right.

Your class automatically gets a pet – you get to choose between a dog and a cat when you create your character.  This lil’ guy can grab loot for you and run back to town to sell it while you continue bashing faces, though he also contributes in battle.  There are also various fishing holes scattered throughout the game where you can grab fish to feed your pet, turning him into a different critter for a set amount of time.  The actual transformation mechanic is fun and adds variety to the pet, but the fishing mechanic is really kinda…boring.  If there was one thing I could pick on in the game, it’s the fishing.  Waiting for the two circles to come together and clicking a button is just not really amusing.  The mechanic is so minor in the game, I don’t want to make too big a deal out of it as most players will spend probably 2-3 minutes fishing…but I really wanted to see all the different kinds of fish!

In addition to the aforementioned main quest, the game offers small side quests such as “kill this guy here, or get me this item on this floor”  It also has a guy who constantly opens portals to small mini-dungeons, begging you to clear them to get this item or that item.  These are fine, not super innovative, but you can mostly complete them on your way to finishing the main quest line driving the game.  I beg of you players to read the text from these NPC’s.  It’s quite amusing, wittily written, and very dorky (I did a real life LOL at the bard-robot).  All things I enjoy, and you’ll miss out if you play this game like WoW, grinding quests to get XP and the (usually crappy) loot reward without reading the bit of flavor that goes along with it.

"Oh my! Steampunk mage!"

The voice over work is generally well done in a sort of campy style that fits great within the world of the game.  Crazy people sound sufficiently crazy, heroes sound sufficiently like heroes, and so on.  The music is great, and will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has played the Diablo series, especially the twangy guitar while you are in town.  I was going to criticize it for being too much like the music from Diablo, but hell, it’s by the same composer.

Runic Games recording session

The art style in Torchlight is unmistakable, and the technical side of things behind it work to support it well.  This game is not Crysis, and it doesn’t try to be.  There are no shaders and no crazy bump-mapped textures; you’ll be able to play this comfortably on your laptop, probably even if it’s a few years old and is not really meant for gaming.  Great for sneaking in a few hours of dungeoneering whilst on the bus or on a blind date/wedding/other gathering you don’t want to be at.  Saying the game doesn’t use the latest in technical graphic technology is not to bash on the graphics, Torchlight looks beautiful and colorful, with lush environments and neat enemies.  It scaled up nicely to play at 1920×1080 on my 24″ widescreen monitor, though the sprites in the action bar and on the mouse did look a bit grainy.

The main complaint I’m sure people will have is…where’s the multiplayer?  Yes, I do wish I could show off my leet armor on my Destroyer to everyone else online, but Torchlight was designed to be a single player game laying the infrastructure for a future MMO.  Basically, it’s a delightfully tantalizing bit of single-player-meat dropped for us while they work on the multiplayer.  There are other little nitpicky things I can get into about the game, the icons of the ember gems are too small at my resolution, for example, but overall the package is great so these small things are easy to overlook.  The fact that Runic put this out in little over a year builds my confidence for their future endeavors.

To sum it up, Torchlight is a blast.  Little refinements, like being able to run over piles of gold to pick them up, really show the care put into making this the best iteration of an action-RPG to date.  You will get WAY more than $20 worth of fun out of this title, guaranteed.  I haven’t even gotten the chance to play around with the level editor that comes with the game, and I’m sure some brilliant people will come out with amazing fan-made levels in the months to come.  Stop reading and log onto Steam, you can be playing this game in minutes.

Take #2 from ClassicMoments: I was really surprised when I saw Spencer’s article because few parts were just word-to-word similar, and I’m not a very good RPG player unlike he is. It plays like a classic textbook action RPG, well, because it IS (mostly) made by the classic RPG developers. But Torchlight doesn’t stop there; with fantastic features such as pet system while sticking to the RPG basics, it feels like Torchlight raised the bar, showing us what creative minds can do even with a small, low budgeted team.

They used a Rock Band microphone on a laptop, recording voices under the mattress for god’s sake! As I stated months before, I’m not a huge fan of things being too shiny, and I completely agree with Spencer on his technical analysis. I’m so glad that Torchlight doesn’t have over-done shiny shaders that make everything look as if it was licked by a cow. I just love the art and audio of Torchlight. It feels like they’re in a perfect balance, giving the players solid 60+ FPS flow.

The one thing I wish Torchlight supported is customizable keymapping. Though I had no problems with the default controls, I wonder if using a controller would change the gameplay experience. I still prefer mouse and keyboard combination, but sometimes I just feel like grabbing my controller. But nonetheless, Torchlight has one of the easiest control schemes I’ve experience with an ARPG. I really don’t see why you wouldn’t want to try this game out. Such a big  accomplishment for an entire development team which was smaller than a typical QA team.

Our Score: 9 /10

Stop reading and go buy it now, unless you hate playing excellent games.

The Saboteur, an action/adventure game based on Nazi-occupied 1940s Paris, just showed off a new screenshot. I use the word show off because it looks fantastic. Um.. One of the pictures might contain an animated partial nudity so make sure you’re alone over whatever the legal age you are to see the animated partial nudity.

And the feature list interests us even more.

• Live the resistance in an open-world Paris – Fight and sabotage your way through a uniquely stylized open-world 1940s Paris – from the top of the Eiffel Tower, to the riverbanks of the Seine, the cathedral of Notre Dame or the prestigious Champs-Élysées.
• Be the Saboteur –Use a broad range of weapons and explosives to perform your blockbuster sabotage as you single-handedly hunt-down your enemies to dismantle and destroy the Nazi occupation.
• Use the rooftops – This version of Paris was designed to leverage the unique abilities of The Saboteur. Being a Saboteur is all about surprise attacks and Paris’ rooftops are the perfect path for your secret operations. Anything that looks like you can climb it, you can – even the Eiffel Tower.
• Will to Fight – The Saboteur introduces an innovative new feature that is both an iconic visual style, and a compelling gameplay element. See and feel Paris change around you as you progress through the game. Go from a dark and oppressed black and white policed state, to a bright and inspired world where the citizens fight back.
• Hijack any vehicle – Sean is a racecar driver and a daredevil by nature. From high performance racecars to military vehicles, as the Saboteur

The title will be released for PS3, Xbox360 and PC, and will be available on late 2009/early 2010. You can also visit the official website for more upcoming info.

Fantasy world strategy game, Elven Legacy is getting three expansion packs.

The first of the trilogy, Ranger, will be released on October 20th, 2009 featuring 16 new campaign missions, two new heroes with new artifacts and spells.

The next chapter of the trilogy will be Siege. It will be released on November 17th, 2009 with 19 more campaign missions (plus unlockable bonus missions), two different armies and three new heroes.

The final chapter of the Elven Legacy will be called Magic, and will be available on December 1st, 2009. This expansion will add 15 new campaign missions (and bonus missions), a new hero and the return of some older heroes, additional tactical system plus new artifacts and spells.

Each expansion for Elven Legacy trilogy will be priced around $9.99. You can also check our Elven Legacy review if you’ve never heard about the game. And you can purchase the original Elven Legacy at Amazon.com.

The official title of this game is “Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim.”

But it is categorized under the RTS genre.
Then which one is it, you ask?

It’s actually little bit of both.

The player gets to run a fantasy kingdom called Ardania using some RTS fundamentals. However, the player does not have control over each unit that has been created. Sounds interesting enough?

If you love the fantasy kingdom themed games, you’re probably interested already. But for Sim and/or RTS fans, we can’t say for sure that you’ll like the game, because it diverges a bit from the traditional RTS or Sim genre. Let us explain.

The goal in this game is to run a successful kingdom; slaying demons while running a successful economy. And like many RTS games, it’ll let the player build and upgrade the buildings necessary to protect the land or enrich the economy. But as we told you before, that’s going to be as far as your control extends; trained units from the buildings you’ve built have their own free will. You can’t make them go here or there. So how do you control them? You give them a “quest” to lure them to do what you want.

Let’s look at an RPG or MMORPG as an example. The objectives and stories are usually progressed through chains of quests, and when the player finishes a quest, he or she is rewarded. Majesty 2 uses this concept, but this time, you’ll be the one giving people the quest, and designating the reward in gold. For instance, if you see a bear running around killing peasants, how do you get rid of them? You flag the bear with a “attack and kill” quest, then set the price of the reward. If you set the reward too low, no one might take on the quest to kill the bear. But if you set the right amount of gold as the reward, perhaps a few warriors and rangers might be interested. The decision of which units participate in the quests are for the AI to decide.

Thankfully, the AI is pretty smart in this game. Of course, the AI can’t read your mind all the time, but this is where the “sim” kicks in. If you were able to control each unit, then it’ll just be another RTS. But getting involved indirectly makes you feel like you’re managing a kingdom as a whole, not just the military.

To make it all happen under your control, you need gold, lots of gold. And this is where the economy system kicks in. How do you make money? You collect taxes from the marketplace, inn, blacksmith and from everyone that lives on your land. You indirectly sell items by making a marketplace, and let them do research of necessary items such as potions or magical accessories that can boost your hero’s abilities. And when you build guilds such as a Warriors Guild or a Rangers Guild, the trained heroes will voluntarily buy the potions from the marketplace as they prepare for upcoming battles. Brilliant!

It may sound like the player isn’t involved too much in the game, but the game proves otherwise. Because the player isn’t in direct control, there may be more micromanagement that needs to be done. Not that it’s going to drive you nuts, but with no direct interaction between the player and the units, players are forced to do extra stuff (like flagging the quests) to keep it busy. Unless you hate this kind of micromanagement, the experience is more pleasant than expected. We really felt like a king running a kingdom, instead of a military commander giving orders to everyone. As far as getting the feel for the controls, the learning curve isn’t too steep at all; if the you invest a good 30 minutes into the tutorial, you won’t have much problem later in the game.

The storyline is very well written. You’ll never get bored thanks to the clever lines from your Royal Adviser, explaining to you why the dragon was named a certain way; “The dragon with blue and gold wings-you know, the one that ate Ted.” And the voice acting is on par with the script. The music is nothing less than a fit, though you’re not gonna be hearing a diverse set of tracks after hours of gameplay. But nonetheless, overall audio quality is great.

The graphics and design is also nothing to complain about. It doesn’t have the latest ‘zOMG SO SHINY WITH AWESOME PHYSICS ENGINE’ graphics, but it runs very smoothly on mid-level PCs, which means that you don’t have to empty your pockets out for video cards to enjoy this game. And yes, there’s also multiplayer modes where you can compete online with people on the internet, or you can choose LAN if you want to play this at a LAN party or with your family members and friends at the same house.

This game is definitely fun, but we don’t know if this is for everyone. Even though I enjoyed it so much, later on you feel like it’s a bit repetitive; doing similar mission objectives, just with different names. And I’m not sure if I’m a good RTS gamer or not, but it feels like the game gets pretty hard later. The game will hook you up with a very forgiving difficulty at first, but it’s probably gonna take you just a little bit more than a few days to see the ending to this one.

But these complaints are only my personal wish to want more out of this awesome game. And even if you slightly enjoy this type of game, I’m sure you’ll be satisfied and have a great time with this game. With a good storyline, witty presentation, visual details and audio that successfully creates a middle age fantasy world atmosphere, you won’t be disappointed by Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom.

Our Score: 8.5 /10

RTS, Sim, they’re all good. At least with Majesty 2.

If you’re an avid FPS gamer, at one point you’ve probably wondered ‘What if I could use this BFG in a historic war like World War I?’ at least once. You haven’t? Oh…

Whatever. You don’t even have to wonder what’s it like to use modern weapons, or even futuristic weapons in historical wars. Darkest of Days is the title that lets you shoot these futuristic weapons in the American Civil War. Or maybe even better, Pompeii.

So is it all fun as it sounds? Well, that’s a tricky one for us as well. The vicissitude between the highs and the lows of this game is so great that we don’t know how to present Darkest of Days well. Is it a good game? Is it a bad game? We’ll just tell you what we saw; you decide.

The storyline of the game is definitely solid, at least until the end. We shouldn’t spoil you with more details, but it’s gonna be either “I loved it. Want more” or “WTF? I hate it!”. That being said, until the deciding point of whether you loved it or not, I’d say the storyline was interesting enough for me to keep playing it ’til the end. The player starts out as a guy who’s teamed up with a foul-mouthed partner named Dexter to go back in time and in an attempt to maintain the original flow of history as it is. Dexter has a few jokes up his sleeve, and has his cool moments here and there as well. The problem I see is the presentation. The story could have been so much more compelling and intriguing if the presentation was done right. Maybe a narration from the main character. Maybe a better explanation on mission objectives.

The mission objectives are explained on the map you bring along with you. The map in Darkest of Days is actually really cool; the paper and navigation marks change as you travel through different times. But then again, you can only see the mission objectives while you’re looking at the map. There’s no compass on the UI, which shouldn’t be a huge problem if you’re good with directions but others might find it a bit irksome. It’s a minor issue though, as you’ll be busy making your way around about a hundred bodies.

Best Map Ever

Yes; a hundred. This is possible thanks to the Marmoset Engine, created by 8monkey Labs, the developers of Darkest of Days. This shows how ambitious they were with this project, and I really admire the effort they put into it. The result is somewhat surprising, in both good and bad ways. The blur effect was somewhat different, and the animation of the characters looked somewhat…different. Maybe we were too used to common engines like Source or Unreal Engine 3. The details on the people were amazing when you look closely, but somehow the colors and lighting didn’t always look natural. The game loads surprisingly fast; I’ve never seen any game load this quickly, especially one that utilizes all the modern 3D technologies including Nvidia’s PhysX engine. My guess is that the Marmoset engine was optimized with a few tweaks here and there. Just to give you a frame of comparison, our fastest PC was equipped with a Radeon HD 4850, Intel Q6600 with 4GB of DDR2 RAM.

One of the coolest sniper rifles I've seen so far

The audio was pleasant, but a bad mix of quality voice acting disappoints the player from time to time. Sometimes you hear very high quality voice work, then another character’s voice jumps in with such poor quality voice acting that it even makes you wonder what’s gong on.  Some of the voice acting is pretty good!  But the ones that are bad can be a real pain to sit through.

Other than the random story and presentation hiccups, I think the game was very well done, especially for a new company with such a great vision. But on the other hand, I just can’t help myself from thinking, “what if this game had a bigger budget with hundreds of more staff to work with?”  With a vast range of weapons and eras, what if there were awesome multiplayer modes? There are just so many good and ambitious ideas, but not everything was executed correctly. There are many good moments, but no doubt bad moments kick in time to time as well. For about $40, this game can be a good purchase if you really like the key elements, such as time-travel and historical wars.

Our Score: 6 / 10

Story has good moments. Needed a better presentation though.

The time-traveling shooter, historical FPS is finally here.

You’ve probably already read our couple of previews, but just in case you forgot again, we’ll list the features:

• Wreak Havoc with Future Weapons in Antiquity: Something nearly every gamer that’s ever played a shooter based in the past has always wanted is the ability to bring a futuristic weapon back through history and kick some major butt. How differently would Custer’s last stand have turned out if the General was equipped with an M-16 assault rifle? You’ll be able to answer questions like this in Darkest of Days. While not every battle and situation will allow you to wield weapons from the future, there will be plenty of opportunities for you to unleash futuristic fury on your unsuspecting foes.

• Brand New Engine: The dedicated team at 8monkey Labs has created an all-new, groundbreaking game engine known as Marmoset. The Marmoset Engine not only breaks from the all-too present Unreal engine FPS clones flooding the market, but also allows for some amazing graphical capabilities. You’ll fight through epic battles filled with literally hundreds of NPCs on the screen at the same time, all with an advanced AI and all without a hint of graphical slowdown and all set against wide-open environments that are lushly detailed and dynamically lighted.

• Compelling Storyline: Darkest of Days is a compelling, action-packed first-person shooter to be sure, but it’s not just mindless run-and-gun, blow ‘em up gameplay. You’ll have to not only think about how to approach certain key battles and situations, but you’ll also have to take care when fighting – certain key people that were never meant to die will be marked with a special blue aura. If you kill them, you’ll face dire consequences…

And what else is better than the words from CEO himself, right?:

“For me and everyone else here at Phantom EFX and 8monkey Labs that have been working on Darkest of Days for the past three years, it’s almost hard to believe that launch day is already upon us,” said Aaron Schurman, CEO of Phantom EFX and lead writer for Darkest of Days. “We’ve put our blood, sweat and tears into this game, and we’re extremely proud of what we have accomplished. We feel that Darkest of Days is not only a fantastic game on its own merits, but that it will serve as a breath of fresh air into the somewhat crowded FPS genre and give players across the world a truly memorable, exciting gaming experience.”

Oh RLY?
We have editors already working on the review, so stay close and see if it’s worth your wait.

The price is set to $49.99 on Xbox360 and $39.99 for PC gamers. Soon enough, the digital distribution will be available as well.

We’ve seen it all with Sudoku-related game ideas. At least we thought we did.
Now there’s going to be a game called 3D Sudoku Ball with a detective solving puzzles.

Playlogic released Sudoku Ball – Detective today for PC, DS and Wii. It features:

• Challenging story mode with 20 levels
• Three difficulty settings from beginner to expert
• Unique 3D Sudoku Ball feature for an entirely new puzzle experience
• 240 Sudoku puzzles and additional story puzzles

The player starts as a small town detective, solving murder mysteries. You can also visit the Sudoku Ball™ Detective website for more information. The game supports 6 languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Dutch.

Here’s a screenshot for the PC version:

And screenshots for the DS version:

3D Sudoku ball that solves murder mysteries… Clever.

Best known for producing innovative controllers for the consoles, SplitFish announced today that they are working and plan to release two new controllers in fall of 2009.

SplitFish is mainly focused on making the controllers that mimic the precision controls of mouse and keyboard.

Dual SFX Evolution by SplitFish

The Dual SFX Evolution is wireless and its analog stick can be precisely tuned for your sensitivity. It also includes the Sixaxis for PS3 and can be used as analog stick emulation for PC. SplitFish told us that it’ll be upgradable, but no specific information on that yet.

The next controller is Dual FX Frag Pro.

Dual FX Frag Pro by SplitFish

The Dual FX Frag Pro is for the players who love the mouse-precision control for FPS gaming. With 2000 dpi accuracy and Sixaxis support on the left hand controller, the FPS players can enjoy the fragging on PS3 as they do it on the PC.

The prices are around $90, so with the shipping and all, you’ll be looking at around $100. Not a cheap price to pay, but if you give up about two games, you might be able to rank up your score on the leaderboard.