This weekend, I have been playing City of Heroes (Getting all the badges for the Halloween event), Champions Online (Roughly ditto). Today, though, I’ve been playing Torchlight and Monkey Island 5.5.
Torchlight
Torchlight is a game by Runic studios, who are formed from the half of Flagship Studios who wern’t working on Hellgate:London. This probably doesn’t matter to you.
It’s very much a Diablo-style dungeon raiding game. Left click to do one thing, right click to do another, head down the dungeon killing everything you see. Go down a level to go up a level. The gameplay is directly out of Diablo, but with a brighter and more cartoon aesthetic. Closest newer thing to relate the style to is probably Dungeon Runners. It has the same “Five more minutes” addiction level as the Diablos did, and a couple of enhancements on the genre (For example: You start with a pet, who also has an inventory. If your inventory is full, you can send the pet off to sell everything and come back). My main problem with the game – some twenty levels down – is that I’m kind of waltzing though the levels on Normal. You can’t change the difficult mid-game, and I may have to start again at a harder level. It also suffers from some of the weaknesses of Diablo-style games, the central mechanic being all there is. You get new tile sets and new monsters occasionally, but the plot’s not really stable enough to carry you though forever.
That said, it’s really easy to pick up for five minutes and resurface five hours later, and it’s £15 on Steam. There’s a demo up as well, which has the first half-dozen levels or so (and if you buy the full game, it converts your demo game into a full game save, so you can continue where you left off. This is Neat).
Tales of Monkey Island 5: The trial and execution of Guybrush Threepwood
Started playing it. Didn’t stop until it was complete. The ToMI series has been getting progressively better as the series has gone on, starting from somewhere just above MI4 and increasing. This, for a few things it does that subvert several graphic adventure tropes and then dance on them a bit, is the best one of the lot. I ended this, and now I seriously cannot wait for the next one. If you ever liked the Monkey Island games, you should probably be following this series.
Now, more Torchlight.
Torchlight is $20 (so £12.60) from the developer website – and the money will all go to them, none to Steam.
I played the first episode of the new Monkey Island when they gave it away for free. I decided it was nowhere near good enough to be worth paying for the next episodes. Now you saying it gets better is making me doubt my decision.
I had to cheat and look up the walkthrough too many times because the thing you were supposed to do was so unintuitive. Like when following the directions, halfway through you have to use the plant pot with the well, how the eff was I supposed to know to do that? It gave me no indication whatsoever about that, and even knowing the correct action I’m at a loss to explain the reasoning behind it.
I did like the monkey puzzle where you are stuck in the doctor’s chair though.
Dammit, you are going to make me spend money again. I hate you.
Robert: True, Though I believe that the price difference between them is almost exactly what Steam’s cut would be, and I’m prepared to pay that for the convenience of Steam.
Ghworg: They get better at the non-intuitiveness, although they do appear to have a blind spot for that bloody well (This episode happens to be in the same place as the first). The only time I was stuck for more than twenty minutes or so – I just avoided using a hint site – was when you have to use that well as a bath. In the first, I ended up having to go to the Forums for the plant thing too.
Sorry, aber das bezweifel ich ganz stark…