All Shapes & Sizes: Torchlight II

.. there was only space for one of us on that bridge. I tried to ask nicely.

All Shapes & Sizes is a section about games of all types, formats, shapes and sizes. I'll be talking about anything from board games, to hardcore genres on consoles trying to cover everyone's tastes.

13 years ago, an Isometric Action Hack & Slash RPG called Diablo was released to the gamer community. A community much smaller than today's. When gaming was exclusive to geekdom. Where the difficulty of configuring sound card IRQs was on par with building a space shuttle. Where having a hard drive of 400MB was some serious space, because mp3's weren't really the norm yet, and you did most of your research using M'soft Encarta, because the internet was still in its infancy.

13 years ago, Blizzard released Diablo to the gaming community, and things would never be the same. 3 years after, the much anticipated Diablo II was released, and it took 8 years after that to announce Diablo III which was revealed in June 2008, but as all Blizzard games - "it will be released when its ready". Something Blizzard fans have come to accept, for they know that once released, the game will be as close to perfect as humanly possible. But, that doesn't make the wait any less painful.

Luckily for us, in October 2009 Runic Games (founded by some ex - Diablo designers / creators) popped out of nowhere with an incredibly well thought out game called Torchlight, that seems to be a more colourful, somewhat cheerier version of the incredibly popular Diablo franchise. In simple terms, since launch, this game simply exploded and sold 50,000 copies in a matter of weeks, which is not to be taken lightly when you think that this is an indie developer with no DRM system of any sort for their games.

More levels bring more abilities, which bring more fun

Torchlight was awarded RPG of the year, game developers choice award, and even best debut game for 2009. Now, some of you might be asking, that was last year, why are you bringing this up now? Well, after its explosion onto the gaming scene, and 500,000 sold copies later, Runic Games was bought up by Perfect World, a publisher that is huge on free to play (F2P) and micro transaction based MMO's. Which means, a Torchlight MMO is in the works, which is an amazing concept if they keep the feel of the original game, and also because Torchlight II has been announced, and is to be released in Spring 2011.

This second iteration of this jewel of a game, is adding a few things that the community has been screaming for at the top of their lungs. Mainly, multiplayer: Online, or LAN (which is a nice treat considering so many big publishers are taking away LAN play from pc games). There are other features that include a bigger world to explore, day / night cycles, and even player customisation - which was a bit lacking in the first game.

While Diablo III is looking absolutely amazing its taking its sweet time, and there is no concrete release date announced yet. So i have a feeling that before we get our thirst for Diablo quenched, we can have a good time playing Torchlight II amongst friends.

In the meantime, you should give the original game a go and see how good it is for yourself.

You can find a review of the original here

Support indie developers!!

thanks for reading

All Shapes & Sizes: Machinarium

All Shapes & Sizes is a section about games of all types, formats, shapes and sizes. I'll be talking about anything from board games, to hardcore genres on consoles trying to cover everyone's tastes.

As i've mentioned previously, i'm a gamer. I like games of all shapes and sizes, as long as they have heart. And this game i'm about to tell you about, is all about heart.

It was created by a tiny Czech company called Amanita Design that were the ones that brought us the cutest little flash games called Samorost and Samorost 2. Both of them were old school Point & Click games with astounding artwork and beautiful atmospheric music.

They took a system that works, and created Machinarium. Its the tale of a cute little robot as he tries to rescue his girlfriend from the clutches of a gang of wrongdoers. With some nerve wrecking puzzles and amazing atmosphere, i really think that this is a game everyone should try, but not everyone might have the patience to finish.

Well, if you're intrigued, you can try there game here, and if you like it, it is on sale for only 5$ till the 12th of August, and as a bonus you even get the whole soundtrack!

I really like supporting Indie Developers, as they are the ones that are not bound to push out mindless sequels just to cash in on the name of a product instead of making creative and different new ideas for games. So with your help, you could make a difference by keeping this little gem of a developer alive.

hope you enjoy it!