Torchlight Review

Loot whoring now in analog mode.

What happens when you leave one of the biggest game companies in the world and decide to make a game of your own? Well, for some, it turns out to be Hellgate: London, and ultimately, a flop. But in Runic Games' case, their 2009 game Torchlight was a hit. It had a lot going for it, from the Diablo meets Warcraft art style, to its perfect measure of the "carrot on a stick" character progression system. We now get an XBLA port and your only question should be, if you were a fan of the original, is "How's it looting?"

[image1]Well, for the most part, they did a bang up job of bringing Torchlight to Xbox 360. Gone are the annoying click-click-click of mouse movement in favor of analog controls. This is by far the most dramatic improvement to the game. It gives you a lot of more options for maneuvering around hazards while casting your spells or comboing your attacks. Your offensive and defensive skills can be mapped to some of the face buttons and triggers, and there's an option to change sets of abilities on the fly.

You get to pick from the same three character types from the original game. Each excels in a form of combat: melee, ranged, or magical. As you progress through the game, you'll be able to find some scrolls that can help mix up the classes a bit, like giving a warrior the power to use fireballs. Not only that, but your pet can also learn spells, use certain accessories, and even transform into different beasts that will most likely save your hide in a tight spot.

And tight spots are all around this dangerous world. Repetitive worlds, sure, but beautiful to look at, if you can spare a moment of your attention away from the hoards of enemies coming for you. The constant feed of new items and quests will drive you deeper and deeper into mines, caves, and abandoned cities in search of more powerful enemies to take down. The more monsters you dispatch, like in any RPG worth its salt, the more powerful you become and thus, more famous around town. Fame does little to your game other than give you an Xbox 360 Achievement at a certain point, but experience points are a whole other matter.

[image2]Character development is huge in Torchlight and it takes a lot of cues from a certain Blizzard game. Each of the character archetypes has three "specs" in which you'll be able to put points into, unlocking both active and passive skills and thus powering up your guy or gal to your liking. Items also contribute to better stats and the rarer of them even award you with special skills. Further down the power hole, you'll be dispatching foes with extremely powerful and screen-filling attacks that still look incredibly nice and are very colorful.

This is the area, though, where the Xbox 360 version stumbles a bit: performance. There are numerous points in the game where it'll stutter and slowdown to a crawl. Strangely enough, I had more slowdowns during the beginning of the game, when I was killing few enemies and had weaker powers than when I reached the end of the mines. Still, at the end point, my alchemist's crazy lightning bolts and the constant barrage of attacks still slowed the game down a bit, which was still annoying to encounter.

This version of Torchlight is still haunted by some of the same problems from the original. Enemy encounters can get repetitive and there are just so many types of monsters you'll run into in a finite number of backgrounds. Sure, they look very nice and are fun to hack at, but Torchlight is played best as a 20- to 30-minute spurt game. If you play it for longer stretches, you'll run into "oh, the witch teleports right next to me and summons a million skeletons and, oh hey, here comes a big dragon" a few too many times.

[image3]The interface has gotten cluttered as well. Granted, the original Torchlight was no navigational marvel, and due to how streamlined the controls have gotten in this port, you'll get into a few snags during your downtime in town, trying to sell, enchant, or just plain compare your loot. One button does way too many things in too many instances and you'll likely sell or destroy things accidentally if you're not careful.

Your pet can still run to town to sell your things, showing an impressive sense of direction that is utterly destroyed once he starts getting stuck in the environment. It's not that often of an issue, but it's still an issue that you'll run into the further you get, when the level design throws tight and narrow paths your way. Enemies are also pretty dumb and usually "set their phasers to kill" as soon as they lay eyes on you, in a mad dash to see who gets killed first… if they don't also get caught in the level geometry. Hey, some things can work in your favor too!

It's extremely funny to jump back into this game even though, as I said in my review for the original Torchlight, that it'd be a nice hold 'til Diablo III. Even so, here we are, still waiting for Diablo III and with Torchlight II coming soon and probably ways before the former. Even though this version of Torchlight has its fair share of recurring issues, it's likely to hit the loot hunger spot for Xbox 360 owners. If you're a veteran of the original, though, there's very little here that you haven't seen before.