Titan Quest

The Good
Iron Lore and THQ have taken the action-RPG concept and dropped it right in the middle of ancient Greece. All the usual trappings of hack-and-slash gaming are present and accounted for -- you'll single-handedly slug it out with hordes of mythological creatures, chug more health potions than the human body could possibly assimilate, grab more loot than ten dump trucks could ever hope to carry, and do it all again in the name of somewhat repetitive, but still undeniably addictive dungeon-delving action.

As the hero, you'll be spun into an epic tale that spans from the shores of Sparta, through the Tombs of Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the Great Wall of China, on to the eventual final confrontation on...er, well, no sense in spoiling anything now, is there? More to the point, the locales you visit in Titan Quest help keep this game fresh with a nice variety of environments to explore, as well as solid level design within each locale.

The monsters are also pretty interesting, from the lowliest satyr to some of the larger and more brutal animals like minotaurs or dragonkind. What really helps to differentiate Titan Quest's bestiary from other RPGs is that most of your opposition will don weapons and armor the same way you do, and if you see a piece of equipment on a creature, that piece will drop to the ground when you kill it. As well as equipment, some of the more powerful monster you face will have access to the same spells and abilities as you, which is a unique take on enemy design in this type of game.

The way your own skills are handled in the game is pretty unique as well. Instead of picking a class from the outset, you choose from one of eight completely independent skill trees when you gain your first level. Another tree of your choice will become available at level 8, giving you a total of two to play with. These trees are categorized by conventional RPG terms, and anyone who's ever played this type of game before will know what to expect from masteries like Hunting, Storm, Rogue, or Warfare. For the less initiated, there's a brief description of what each mastery is capable of so you can make a informed choice.

Those of us who have walked Diablo 2's hallowed ground for any significant length of time knows all too well how stale the graphics of that game were getting in the later years, and by comparison, Titan Quest is a serious breath of fresh air. Everything, from your character, the environments, your enemies, and even the items that drop from each kill are meticulously modeled in beautiful 3D. The effort on the part of the design team shows -- every facet of this game is gorgeous. If you're lucky like me, and you bought the Gold Edition of Titan Quest, you'll get treated to a book of the concept art for the game, and it's well worth tracking down.

The sound department deserves a nod as well -- there's lots of candy for the ears here, especially the soundtrack. There's a main melody which follows you closely throughout the game, but changes instruments and style depending on what part of the world you're in. The sound effects do an excellent job of adding to the experience in their own right - every roar, impact and spell effect hits with enough clarity to be effective.

The Bad
While Titan Quest manages to do everything right in terms of being a solid Action RPG, it just doesn't do anything to move the genre forward. In spite of some innovations in terms of character development and presentation, this still feels very much like a by-the-numbers hack and slash game. In essence, this is Diablo 2 with better graphics and a few different features.

The voice acting, though not outright bad, does come off as over-the-top at times. This becomes especially evident when you start conversing with folks from Egypt and China, who try their very best to speak English while still maintaining as much of a foreign accent as possible. With some characters it's not too bad, but others are downright laughable, which puts a jarring chord in an atmosphere that Titan Quest works so hard to build.

On a more personal note, I really wish single player RPGs could structure a storyline in such a way that everyone isn't just sending you on random errands until you finish the game. The number of times someone said to me "You're our only hope!" during the course of this game seems to suggest laziness on the part of the writers. I know there's only so much you can do with the "one man against an army" storyline, but surely to God there's some writers out there that can pitch material that hasn't been recycled from Diablo 1.

The Bottom Line
Titan Quest is a solid and very playable action RPG, but aside from the source material, there's not a whole lot going on here that we could classify as "new". Anyone looking for something fresh and original probably shouldn't even look twice, but fans of this sort of game who aren't completely bored by the conventions of the genre will have a great time with Titan Quest.

The Good
I’m going to put this out there and say that the graphics are utterly charming. There is a crispness to them, and the attention to detail such as swaying corn and fluttering birds. This, coupled with some beautifully ambient sound effects, can make simply leaving your character standing still in the wilderness a really soothing experience. With all the effects cranked up water looks great too. As an aside it was sitting looking at these scenes for a few seconds that made me turn off the computer and haul my housemates down to the beach for a random excursion. Not that that has anything to do with the game or anything…

The main thing that really attracted me to the game was the setting. Anyone who watched Troy or knows a thing or two about legends and ancient history will be pleased with the aesthetics of the weapons and armour, although the Egyptian armour often looks silly. While many infamous heads from legend pop their heads in to say hi, they’re rarely much more than things to bonk on the head.

Yup… that’s about all I can manage.

The Bad
Imagine this was a movie. Better yet imagine if the big-thighed protagonist were you. What the hell are you actually doing? You rampage across the countryside, silently bashing absolute hoards of creatures over the head again and again and again, never tiring, never sleeping, day in day out.

I’ve always had trouble with RPG’s in my head (though calling this an RPG is misleading), namely the principle of a group of people (occasionally made up of sassy teenagers) ganging together to go and massacre entire species of sentient animals, often by simply standing in front of them and swinging their weapon once, then stealing their clothes to sell for minute profit. Titan Quest has taken this formula completely to heart. It is, as it were, the embodiment of it.

Yet you really need to take a step back and observe what you’re doing. We’ve all played Diablo II, and this is essentially ‘Diablo: The Sunny Years’. We’ve all seen how addictive, though not necessarily fun, it can be.

But where are you going with this?

The principle driving force in RPG’s is the advancement system, although this is another idea that has always seemed peculiar to me. In Morrowind I started off with a certain numerical representation of my strength, lets say 20, presumably similar to what an average person can bench press, or whatever. By the time I stopped playing I had 100 “strength”. 100 what strength? Am I five times stronger than I was? Am I incapable of lifting something someone with 101 strength can?

The idea of advancing in Titan Quest is similar, but utterly flawed. The goal is to presumably get stronger in order to carry better weapons to do more damage. Yet from the very beginning, armed with a knife made of jelly and throwing custard pies, I slaughter the enemies with ease, often with one hit (save the occasional boss character, who you just hold the mouse button on for a bit). I continue to kill enemies throughout the game with one hit. Have I advanced?

Sure there is a choice of magic and archery and various buff spells and whatnot, giving you an option for replaying a game that got boring ten minutes in. But these do nothing different, save for some spangly effects, than just bonking the monsters over the head. Click, dead. Click, dead. It’s almost as bad as Dungeon Siege. One of my favourite things to do in the game is killing the crows (crows?!?) as they just leave a puff of black feathers and a disembodied “crawk”. Oh how I tittered.

I’ve mentioned Diablo, and much of its influence lingers here like morning-after breath on a girl who’s renewed your subscription to beer goggles.

There are the same non-descript, randomised weapons, each factoring up in newer, swishier models in tiny damage increments. Yet rather than the “Sword of the Badger” and other daft paraphernalia found in Diablo, these are Bronze, Copper, Iron etc. But what’s the difference between hitting someone over the head with a Bronze or Iron mace??!? A lump of rock will cause significant concussive damage to anyone wearing the thickest armour.

As in Diablo the enemies respawn upon reloading a saved game. Yet the town I emancipated from the terminally weak hoard of enemies, now reincarnated in the field next to the town, is ignored by the locals, who spout their repeating phrases of thanks for infinity. Also the Greeks speak in a Russian accent.

There are technical failings also, aside from the occasional crashes I suffered.

The hoarding aspect of Diablo was its main reason for playing. Yet Titan Quest’s makers somehow deliberately mar it here. There is no auto-sorting inventory, leaving you to carefully arrange each piece Tetris-style. The button you press to highlight the items literally piled around you doesn’t work, rarely showing every item. Even worse was the idea to include a physics engine! Profitable items such as rings are almost life-size for the character, therefore invisible to the player, often tumbling away into thick grass or hidden underneath the torrent of useless weapons and armour. And they truly are useless. The majority of objects will sell for pittance, even a big lump of Iron armour.

The game is relatively seamless and quick to load, but for some reason the occasional cave and indoor area would suffer awful stuttering.

But worst of all of this is that Titan Quest is boring. It takes you nowhere, does nothing new, and does established things badly. It is probably the most soulless game I’ve ever played.


The Bottom Line
If some of you terminal hoarders need another dose, you're presumably still replaying Diablo II. Otherwise there is zero I can say to encourage you to buy this. Unless you like men in skirts of course.

The Good
The class advancement system is by far the best of any of the Diablo-style games that I have played. You get to combine two different classes (from a wide selection) into one of many hybrid character types. I also liked that I really felt like I got a real improvement when I leveled up an ability. The ability increases are usually linear and not diminishing like in Diablo II, so most of the time, it really matters whether you have 1 point or 5 points in an ability.

The graphics were also excellent compared to other games I've played in the genre. This actually caused some problems before they patched the game a few times, since performance sometimes suffered in intense fights. After the patches, though, these problems were mostly solved. I really enjoyed the physics effects, too. It's fun to get a critical hit and watch your enemy fly back from the impact.

Titan Quest also gets rid of a lot of the boring parts of games in this genre. You don't have to manage Town Portal scrolls, identify scrolls, or potions, for example. The caravan, where you can store unused but valuable equipment, is sharable between characters, so you don't have to resort to opening multiplayer games just for the purpose of trading items between your characters unless you never throw anything away.

Finally, the game is tuned to be a little more forgiving than Diablo II. The best items in the game are much more attainable than in Diablo II, where some items were nearly impossible to find even if you played 5 characters to level 99. In addition, single-player and multiplayer were created equal. There were no multiplayer-only items like in Diablo II. This is great for people like me, who don't want to play multiplayer that often.

The Bad
My main criticism of Titan Quest is that the game is too easy, especially in the Boss fights. Don't get me wrong, some of the bosses are quite tough until you learn how to fight them or you get the right resistances, but none of the bosses are as challenging as those in Diablo II. This is especially true of the randomly-generated bosses. Some of the random bosses in Diablo II were truly fearsome. In Titan Quest, they just take more hits to kill.

The Bottom Line
Titan Quest is a beautiful hack-n'-slash RPG that is very entertaining, even if it is a bit easy.