Grim Dawn and ARPG [GRIM DAWN]

With Diablo 3 becoming more and more further than us, our souls have become weak. It’s heart-wrenching to hear that D3 is not schedule to release in 2010. It is expected though to everyone.

Some of us maybe searching for other alternatives ARPG, Diablo-clone in hope but sadly nothing comes around. Only cheap imitation or fail product. APRG is such a great genre but with lot of rubbish title.

I tried to play Dawn of War 2 since it has become an APRG approach with inventory and loot but sadly it is not as much as fun. It is just weak aprg. Inventory just available after your mission. Most likely it is a experimental hybrid of RTS and ARPG. Looting is not as much as fun. No grinding I would say. At least I wouldn’t call that grinding.

Another hope for us is the Iron Lore folks. Well, as you know, Iron Lore is history now. But their remains still dwell in our planet. Their leads, Arthur Bruno with several of his leads companion founded a new independent studio called Crate Entertainment.

This is already an old news. The founded early last year and on last September they acquired the rights to use Iron Lore engine, the engine which is use to develop Titan Quest himself. Only the engine though, not TQ intelectual property (arts, 3d model or anything that related with TQ and TQIM) which remains as THQ’s.

The latest news is that they just open the official website for their company and their new ARPG, Grim Dawn. Check out www.grimdawn.com. This is ARPG that will be developed using IL engine but the art still start from scratch. I have great faith in this project since they people are dedicated one to make their goals reality.

The project is currently not funded by any investor but from the fans! They received a lot of request from emails and at TQ.net forum about fans donation for their project. They response that with pre-order donation, which mean the fans put a pre-order of the game that will be released later. This kind of payment have made Natural Selection and NS2 successful without any investor funds (NS is made by Unknown World, their lead programmer is once lead engine programmer at Iron Lore).

Well that’s for now. Check out the GD website and you can put pre-order there by now. But you maybe want to check out their screenshot first. Since the shot still haven’t available, you might want to wait a bit until it comes out.

For those who searching for APRG, check out this titles.

1. Alien Shooter
2. Alien Shooter 2
3. Greed: Black Border

I want to what do you thinks about these post, about grim dawn and these 3 titles (if you ever played). Comments it down here. ;p

Well, that’s all for now. See you later! Happy New Year 2010!

Why haven’t Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 come out yet?

Good question. Something awful have made a list of jokes pretending to be ‘fake’ answer from Blizzard employes of his email to them.

Here is some of it.

Tom Drivingschool
Diablo III On-Site Anesthesiologist

“Our lead designer locked his keys in the office three months ago and he’s too proud to call a locksmith. I honestly don’t think that wire hanger is going to reach the elevator button, much less get to the third floor.

Until something changes, we’re just camping out front all day with our laptops and playing Torchlight.”

Eric Hiccupcure
Diablo III Speedboat Physics Consultant

“We were actually ready to send the gold master out last month, but it turns out somewhere along the line spellcheck turned every instance of ‘Diablo’ into ‘Dublin’. Right now we’re regrouping figuring out whether we want to start the whole thing from scratch or just roll with it and rework the graphics/story to go all-out Gaelic with what we’ve got.”

Melissa Owlavoid
StarCraft II Sound Unstabilizer

“After we decided to split StarCraft II into three separate products, there was a lot of extra work to make sure things went smoothly. For example, the company’s lawyers have been meeting with all the developers to draw up our last wills and testaments so we’ll have everything squared away when we turn senile and/or expire sometime between the release of the second and third StarCraft II installments.”

Check it out at Something Awful

List of RPG

I found this post at Listal.com, erm, last month I think. While this blog is dedicated to write only diablo-related game or game similar to diablo gameplay, this long list of RPG games is quite resourceful.

http://www.listal.com/list/rpg-world-pc-edition-johnny76

I recommended most of games in this list. Other than Freedom Force and Mass Effect, I think you should get yourself the top 10 in the list. By the way, I currently played Borderlands. It is an shooter ARPG with awesome gameplay. I will write about Borderlands sometimes later.

Follow me on twitter: http://www.twitter.com/alexx_tw

Finish Torchlight Last Night [TORCHLIGHT]

Torchlight is over last night but there still some more additional content to explore. This post gonna be quite a spoiler so just click away is you don’t want to spoil your game.

Torchlight ends at level 35 where you fight the last boss which is Odrak. Quite tough boss. Bummer though, it is not much challenging. Odrak is a huge monster, a dragon, and he summoning bunch of dragonkins. The dragonkin is the only part where it get hard cause I could died is they spray fire in group. Other than that, Odrak is nothing. Just click and slash him and keep your health and mana steady, than it is just a matter of time when he’s dead.

Compared to Diablo act boss, Andariel, Duriel, Mephisto, Diablo and Baal. All of them are quite tough to remember. Worst if you don’t have resistance to their attack type like poison for Andariel, cold for Duriel, lightning for Mephisto, fire for Diablo and.. I can’t remember Baal attack type;p

Well Odrak should thank me. At least I remember his name.

After killing Odrak, that means completing the main quest. Sylr comes to the dungeon telling about our killing and victory. She tell Odrak soul still dwell in the mine vein. So we can still explore level beneath the mountain. That mean to continue the play grinding for item and exp.

There is still other end option other than to keep playing. At the shared stash a new NPC appear. She said that we can keep playing or we can choose one item to give to a new character and play again. At the moment, I still not trying this.

There is also some more side quests like The Quest for Glory and Through the Portal quests. I’m not sure though whether this quest will be infinite or not.

Other than quest at the town, there are new two quest at the graveyard. Two NPC appear that are not there before. Both of them give a quest in a new dungeon of the crypt there. I’m not trying this yet.

So, thats Torchlight. Quite refreshing and not much of bummer. Overall it is quite good. Character is powerful and that’s make the game too easy. Maybe should try at least hard difficulty. Level area size is not much big. All is ok for me since I only want to finish it quickly.

If I should compare Torchlight to Diablo, it is Diablo 1 that’s the closest. Torchlight is not anywhere near Diablo 2, forget Diablo 3. Torchlight is just too small of ARPG. For the small price, it is not too bad. Diablo 1 have 16 levels and Torchlight have 35 level. But the fast gameplay make it just smaller than Diablo 1. In Diablo 1, I need to play it slower because, in Diablo 1, I usually cannot just face a lot of monsters at a time. That’s could mean instant. Usually most of us use the door tactic to make monster come one by one.

In Torchlight, my destroyer could just slash through the monster using ultimate skill in Might tree, the Devastate. With crit almost 5k, each monster only need 1 hit. That’s why it is so easy. I can even count the total time I died. And that not even because of monster strengh, but because I was careless.

Diablo 1 seems longer than Torchlight. That’s some memories.

Although I knew it is Matt Uelman that composing all the Torchlight sound and music, it’s bg music is too much like Diablo 1 or 2. You could say there’s Tristram living there. Well, at least that’s could, if not cure, lessen our diablo 3’s craving.

All is good. Good job and much gratitude to Runic for Torchlight. I hope Crate could make a decent game since they use the Titan Quest engine. And what’s the deal about Dungeon Siege 3 under development? Hey Chris, it has been over a year already and there’s still no news or hype about DS3? That’s killing your fans hope. At least release some screenshot

See ya later!

ps: Some Torchlight cook recipe here: Torchlight Transmutation Recipies

Grinding for Exp and Item Through Portal (Torchlight)

Now currently I’m at level 16. Torchlight is unexpectedly fun! They really have flow of interesting storyline. I still I don’t expect anything from the ending of the story. What could be happen?

Anyway, torchlight have some new game mech that turn out to be interesting. One of it is dungeon portal scroll. You can buy dungeon portal scroll from merchant at Torchlight town. As you can guess, this scroll open a portal to a dungeon, with different level of monster. Usually ranging from level 1-10, level 10-20, level 15-25 or many other. You can grind for item and experience there.

Other thing is, Torchlight is really easy. Not much challenging. Player skill is rather strong compared to monster. Even the boss monster. This make fighting boss monsters rather unsignificant. I don’t even remember any boss name, not even the strongest (and i don’t recall any strong boss). Playing this could be very much of smooth sailing. Stay tuned!

Torchlight is becoming fun!

Hey torchlight is quite fun! Turned out that this runic guys know what they’re doing! Still this is just several level since before. I’m just played for less than 2 hours by now.

There are story flow actually that going along with quest. That what’s I like it. Doing side quest is quite fun too. I like doing the portal quest from Hatch (NPC). Fighting boss is what an arpg is all about!

More Torchlight Gallery

Review: Torchlight First Impression

Torchlight have came out just several hours before. Runic also decided to release their game demo for prospect to try out their new arpg. So, I download the demo and go out for a play test.

Well, just as I suspected. Torchlight is just to similar to FATE. Look in the shot. The same fishing in the FATE. There are some more similarity to FATE.

• One central town where player take quest.
• Pet system is exactly the same.
• Their world sytem. You go outside the town into dungeon and proceed downward into levels of dungeon. Same like Diablo 1.

I would say, this is just too weak of ARPG. Same for FATE. I never like FATE.

New thing that I don’t like here is the way the camera move when opening a window or talking to NPC. I felt kind of dizzy to that. I hope there will be patch for it.

Other thing, the new game engine is smooth and pretty. Inventory system is quite good. All item have same size, no need to play tetris arranging item in inventory. Skill system looks good too, but I still haven’t explore much of it. Only level 2 by now.

See you soon!

Toward Torchlight Launch

Torchlight releases just around the corner. It’s one of the anticipated action-rpg since the annoucement of Diablo 3. Fans who craved for diablo 3 can buy this game for less than $20 to lessen your craving.

But I doubt Torchlight is any good of an ARPG. I don’t like FATE either. Seems like game of grinding to me. No real quest and story. Just a general reason about your role in the game. I bet it’s gonna be just similar to FATE.

I’d played Mythos in beta before, just a few level of play. But it also doesn’t catch my attention as I felt about Diablo 2 before.

We will see next week.

Torchlight Getting Steam Release on Launch

Runic Game announced today that it’s upcoming ARPG Torchlight will be available on Steam at lauched. As opposed to the previous statement that it will have 30 days wait to available at Steam, Runic CEO Max Schaefer stated that, “It’s important for us to make Torchlight as widely available as possible. Steam is an enormous outlet that many players use exclusively–we’re big fans ourselves–so we are really happy that it will be on Steam starting day one.”