Make Torchlight the game of the year!
The end of the year is nearing and the usual holiday slowdown has begun, but today I am happy to interupt that silence with a few awards Torchlight has been nominated for or awarded with. Let’s start with the awards:
Gamasutra gives Torchlight 5th Best PC Game of the year!
5. Torchlight (Runic Games)
Torchlight offers proof that a game’s pedigree makes a huge difference. When you put the founders of Diablo creator Blizzard North in the same room as the guy responsible for Fate, you get the most fluid and addictive action RPG since the mighty Diablo II itself. (Well, first you apparently get a public beta of another game. Then you get a new studio and Torchlight.)
What makes a good loot-driven action RPG is hard to pin down — there have been several solid efforts in the genre over the last decade, but until Torchlight, none of them resulted in the same satisfied, sleep-deprived nights to which Diablo II subjected me beginning in 2000 and lasting longer than I would like to admit. And it’s certainly not a complete coincidence that neither of them have featured the wonderful music talent of original Diablo composer Matt Uelman until now either.
Impressively, Torchlight succeeds even without a multiplayer component, an omission that was worrisome when first announced but which ended up detracting little from the game’s charmingly cocaine-like old-school dungeon-clearing. And its system requirements are soft enough that the game’s option screen even includes a “netbook mode”!
Torchlight makes MSNBC’s Top 10 PC Games list for 2009!
This is the perfect game for those who enjoy the thrill of role-playing games filled with dungeon crawling, treasure looting and critter fighting. But the great thing about this downloadable title is that it’s very likely to thrill even those who don’t think that action RPGs are their thing.“Torchlight” (created by the talent behind the beloved “Diablo” and “Diablo II” games) is one of those rare titles that both hardcore players and more casual players can thoroughly enjoy. Its easy-to-use interface makes it friendly to those who don’t typically play RPGs, and yet it is deep enough and so thoroughly engaging that it will steal the hearts of seasoned gamers as well.
Torchlight makes it onto The Escapist’s Holiday Buyer’s Guide:
At $60 a pop, buying the holiday season’s biggest titles for the special gamer in your life can be kind of expensive – which is why Torchlight is such a rare gem. A hack-and-slash dungeon-crawler in the style of Diablo or Fate, Torchlight tasks players with venturing into the caverns beneath the mining town of Torchlight to unravel the secret behind a mysterious corruption plaguing the lands. But that whole “plot” thing can wait, because what you’re really after is the acquisition of sweet, sweet loot and treasure.
With a charming cartoonish art style and a fluid rapid-click combat system that feels incredibly intuitive and natural – not to mention endless randomized dungeons – Torchlight nails what made Diablo and Diablo II so addictive, and throws in a helpful (and adorable) fuzzy companion to boot. It’s a relentlessly good time, it’s scalable enough to run on the lousiest of computers, and at $20 you can pick it up and order a pizza to eat while adventuring, and still be well short of what a “regular” game would cost you. With Torchlight, your favorite gamer and your wallet will both be thanking you.
And onto potential awards, Colony of Gamers has nominated Torchlight for Game of the Year, and you can vote to help it take number 1! Just make yourself a forum account over there and then vote for Torchlight!
Finally, if you are a member of G4 or X-Play, head on over to G4’s Best of 2009 Page and throw your support in for Torchlight for best Role-Playing Game of the year! The results will be announced in 4 days, so hurry on over!
