Torchlight II Preview

The hack’n’slash genre seems to be seeing a resurgence lately, and as much as most of the spotlight is on Diablo III, other titles, like Runic Games’ Torchlight II, have attracted attention from gamers and press alike, as this preview courtesy of Eurogamer can testify. Here’s a sampling:

Torchlight 2’s major addition – and the one that elevates the game from being a straight loot-’em-up to a more fully-fledged action RPG experience – is the addition of an overworld. An expansive waste, the new continent of Vilderan lends the game a sense of scale that was previously absent, and does away with much of the claustrophobia that defined the original.

Despite that, it’s as colourful as ever, and a descent into one of its randomly-generated dungeons reveals that its hypnotic metronome of combat is still there. Enemies are numerous and more varied, and they’re more dynamic in their behaviour; skeletons now come pouring in through wells, and corpses impaled on walls spring to life to get involved in the boisterous action. Naturally there are bosses too, and in true sequel tradition, there are more of them and they’re more impressive in size.

But what’s providing the real spice for the sequel is the addition of co-operative multiplayer, in which – in the vanilla version of the game – up to six players can go looting together. True to the breezy nature of Torchlight, griefing has been kept to a minimum: players will only ever see their own loot on screen, making it impossible to steal from others and negating an awkward scramble to molest a corpse.

And, as Torchlight 2 squares up to the imminent release of Diablo 3, there’s its generous feature set, addressing the areas that Blizzard has notoriously stepped away from. LAN play is supported alongside the ability to go online, and mods will be supported through the release of Runic’s own powerful creation tools.

“I think that some of the publicity around Diablo 3 recently has helped us quite a bit,” admits Max in what’s more an acknowledgement of recent events than fighting talk. “They’re not doing single-player stuff and we are, they’re not doing LAN play and we are, we don’t need you to have an online connection and they do, they’re doing a real money auction house and we’re not doing any of that.”