Titan Quest
Monday, October 6th, 2008I bought this several months back, about the time I bought The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but was saving it until I could play with friends. I have several games installed that I either haven’t spent much time playing or only really play multi-player. So I decided I’d go through and remove games/apps that I don’t use so my backups would be more manageable.
I nuked the last FEAR expansion as I haven’t beat the first one, I nuked Quake 4 as I already beat it, etc, etc.
Then I got to Titan Quest. I wouldn’t have bought it had I not heard good things about it, but I wanted to see if this was something I was going to shelve for another handful of months or something I’d keep installed for a while.
Here is how the description on Amazon.com reads:
* Includes all patches on disc
* Epic adventuring in the ancient world
* Stunning 3D graphics, with an amazing level of detail and realism
* Addictive, fast-action gameplay
* Custom, definable character classes and modifiable skills
Depending on the person, all of those could be true. It’s unfortunate for any game to be compared to it’s predecessors, but that’s the reality: you have to offer something new, something fresh or at least something just as good to keep the ‘buzz’ going after coming off of a great series.
With that said, how does Titan Quest stack up to other Diablo clones? I won’t try to review it in depth as there are far better reviews already out there.
What’s different
First off the story is different. As you’d expect, it’s a different game. Instead of a dark medieval fantasy story revolving around heaven and hell with demons and angels, the setting is of ancient mythical Greece. The Titans and the Greek gods.
As such, the various weapons & armor, storyline and bestiary match the setting.
The skill trees are varied enough which let you create your own custom class and you’re allowed to choose between male and female characters. The story begins in Greece so you begin the game as a Greek. No real surprise there.
Until you level up for the first time, everyone’s character plays the same. After that the skill trees open up and you get to pick how you advance: stats and skills are fully customizable.
The graphics are noticeably crisp and the water looks pretty good. I have yet to see a game where the water looked truly real (Crysis does pretty good in this area), but for what it is I liked the effects (ripples, reflections, etc).
When you or another being move through plant life it reacts accordingly. Spell casting effects are nice and impact effects are also well done.
I have to admit I was a little disappointed that fields didn’t catch fire when I ran through them with a lit torch, but that’s asking a bit much. 
If you’ve never read a review of Titan Quest and you skill your first monster wielding some wicked cool looking weapon, you may be expecting a Diablo style loot drop: a random item from a loot table based on your character lvl, difficulty lvl and monster type. Guess again!
Whatever you see the monster holding or wearing becomes yours for the taking! That is very cool.
Later on as you near a cave you may notice there is no doorway to click on or portal to take you inside. You uh, just walk inside. 
What’s the same
This is a hack-and-slash game directly inspired from Diablo 1 & 2. If you had someone play Diablo 1 on your left, and someone play Diablo 2 on your right while you played Titan Quest in the middle, it would be obvious they fit in the same genre.
The interface is similar and fighting is pretty much point and click. It does get a little more complex than that when dealing with crowds, but for the most part it’s the same.
What’s to dislike
There is a lot more I could say about what I like, but I’ll mention what I didn’t like so much about Titan Quest. This really has more to do with the company and less with the game.
One is the copy protection choice.
By choosing to have the game exhibit random “bugs” during use of an unauthorized copy (even for legitimate backups), Iron Lore received a lot of bad press from users of illegal copies which is believed to have seriously hurt their sales and reputation.
By using that bonehead method of “protection” they inconvenienced customers and earned a lot of bad press. I specifically mention the customers as I believe that many of the bugs that needed to be fixed were likely due to working around the copy protection.
Two is their response. No remorse for including the DRM at all.
Summary
This game is playing great so far (about 3 hrs in), and when it’s all said and done I can honestly see this game lasting 80+ hours as me and friends coop our way through another great adventure.
It’s a shame Iron Lore had to go and make the choices they did. It would have been great to have them around to make a TQ2.
