:B: - Titan Quest - Immortal Throne

As you may well be aware, Diablo III came out last month. And, if you've read my previous article on the game you might also be aware that I have not and will not be purchasing it. However, I'm not immune to Diablo fever, so I've devised a scheme.

Meet the Ginormous List of Diablo Clones. This is, as far as I know, the most complete list of Diablo-like games on the internet. Games where you clicky-clicky loot and monsters, perhaps with a heavy story structure, but mostly just "here are some things go kill them now plx". If I can get a max-level character and beat the highest difficulty setting on each of these games (barring inability to load game on 64-bit Windows or the game being absolute crap), I can buy Diablo 3. And by the time that happens, always-online issues probably won't matter anyway.

Enter Titan Quest. I got this a couple Christmas's ago in the THQ pack in the Steam sale. I played it way back when but gave up about 3/4s of the way through Act 1 due to framerate issues. That isn't a problem on my new laptop so I've been having a great amount of fun.

I felt a bit of fatigue towards the end of Act 3 and throughout Act 4, so I stopped doing sidequests and powered through to the end. I felt like by the end of the game there was a lot less imagination in the monster design, I had stopped picking up any item drop less than Green and I ended up with way more than the caravan could hold just in set items and artifact recipe ingredients.

After playing a little bit of Epic difficulty and receiving a higher level of ingredients I went back to Normal to farm lower level ones. I'd like to finish all the artifacts I have recipes for before getting a bunch of higher level ones as as far as I can tell some higher level ones need lower level artifacts as ingredients. And it's kind of nice now I'm not feeling the pressure to see the end of the game, I'm just killing dudes and watching their bodies fly for miles.

4/5 stars.

:B: - Dungeons of Dredmore

Indie darling Dungeons of Dredmore has been out for a good while and I've been playing it off and on since release. I still haven't managed to beat Dredmore, indeed, I usually die to monster zoos on Floor 2/3, but I'm happy to mark it as :B: as I don't know if I'll ever kill Dredmore. I have even been playing on the easiest difficulty and can't do it so this may never get a :C:, but I'll keep trying on and off for the rest of eternity, probably.

I think the game is totally hilarious (though YMMV) and I still haven't even seen everything. There are whole skill trees I haven't even selected yet, never mind put points into. I don't know what the Lutefisk statues do. Crafting still confuses the crap out of me and I keep drinking poisonous potions by accident even though by now I should know the differences between potions. If it isn't clear, I've been avoiding guides and wikis which might be part of my problem. Roguelikes are notorious for requiring wikis to get to the bottom of the dungeon - has anyone ever beaten Nethack without help? - and I am sure Dungeons of Dredmore is no different.

But where's the fun in knowing what to do? My dudes will continue to take their random skillsets into the dungeon and die horribly to Diggles in the first room, and I wouldn't have it any other way. 5/5 stars.

:B: - Fairway Solitaire

Fairway Solitaire is a free game on iOS - it's a solitaire game with a golf theme which lets you pay £1.69 to unlock about a billion levels, and also has a bunch of other in-app-purchases which I have totally ignored.

The idea is thus - you have to get rid of cards to below a par, a certain amount of cards, by selecting cards on the field which are one higher or lower than the one you are holding. You can draw cards from the deck to get a new card, or you can use a golf club to change number, say using a 9 iron to get a 9 card. There are water hazards and sand traps which make certain levels tougher, and there are 3 stars to get depending on how below par you are.

This game gets into your brain. For a number of weeks I just could not stop playing - every opportunity I'd whip out the phone and knock a level out. And I have not even managed to finish all of the levels. It gets really, really hard later on and I tapped out a couple of sets of levels before the end. I totally intend to go back and earn enough points to buy the bonus levels but I have enough iPhone games to play without spending all my bus time on Fairway Solitaire for months on end. 5/5 stars, you should get this if you like solitaire, golf, or have a bunch of free time sitting around waiting to be sucked up.

Operation Titan Quest

With the recent release of Diablo 3 I have been feeling the call of the dungeon crawler. Unfortunately, I won't be buying Diablo 3 as my internet connection is not reliable and I will not knowingly buy games that force the player to be online when the game has a large single player component. So instead of supporting Blizzard's choice to force me into socializing, I've made a long list of games that have the same gameplay and I'm playing through that first, and by the time I'm finished, the entire country will probably have always-on internet and it'll be less of an issue.

First up is Titan Quest: Immortal Throne which I've had for a couple of years already but never got particularly far in. I still had my old character, but having imported it from the base game to Immortal Throne, the expansion, it started me back from the beginning so I just started a new character so as to refamiliarize myself with the game.

Titan Quest is a Diablo clone that is based in ancient history. You start off in Ancient Greece and fight all manner of beasties including harpies, gorgons and Minotaurs, and continue onto Ancient Egypt in Act II. It has all the loot you'd expect from a Diablo clone and it's really cool seeing all the different areas and monsters based around mythology.

I've put about 12 and a half hours into this character so far and I'm having a ton of fun, but that might be because I'm a bit of an ancient history and a mythology nut. My guy is Warrior/Defense and I think maybe I should have picked something else because he's really overpowered right now. Pretty much nothing touches him and I've picked up 200+ health potions so if something did hurt I'd be able to heal it right back up. Still, this is only normal difficulty, which is always easy in these sorts of games, so maybe the tides will turn once I'm onto Epic difficulty.

 Find the Ginormous List of Diablo Clones here.

:B: / :C: - Life Quest 2: Metropoville

So it turns out I never learn. I played the original Life Quest here, and apparently that wasn't enough mediocrity. I like the idea so much that when I saw there was a Life Quest 2 on BigFishGames whilst trying to spend two credits I decided to take the plunge. It seemed like it had learned from the mistakes of the original so I went for it. That was a mistake.

You are a new citizen of Metropoville and you are put in their 12 steps to success program which gives you 12 sets of goals each split into three smaller goals. You can race against other characters to beat these goals which gives you extra money. You have to increase your stats, work, socialize and generally live life.

My criticisms of the last game by and large continue here. You can still do everything without having to specialize and while this game is more structured there's still not a great amount to do. It's longer than 1 by about threefold but a large part of that was doing the same thing over and over to get enough money for things. It's not challenging even at the beginning and never really evolves. It is kind of funny at times so there is that.

It is better than the original and if you were picking between them I'd recommend it, but there are better life simulators out there. If you can get it for free I'd say go for it if there was nothing else up your alley but otherwise save your money. 3/5 stars

:B: - Viva Pinata

This is not the first time I have beaten Viva Pinata, and it will not be the last considering I lost most of my achievements from this game whilst switching 360's.

Viva Pinata is a pretty simple game. You have a garden, and you have to attract and breed pinatas for fun and profit. You get experience for pretty much everything, and sometimes badguys come in to mess stuff up. It is also a pretty easy 1000 gamerscore points.

I played this when my 360 was offline, and somehow messed up getting back online so all my achievements were overwritten by the gamertag stored in the cloud. But I'm not so mad, I don't mind playing through it again. It's nice and relaxing and I like seeing my pinatas do their stuff. 5/5 stars.

:B: - Rayman Origins

Before Rayman Origins, the last platformer I really got into was the first Rayman so many years ago. I had high expectations of this game because of my really fond memories of the first, and I can happily say that it smashed them.

Rayman Origins is a 2D platformer of the type that was so common in the SNES/Mega Drive era. It's also pretty much the only 2D platformer released for a home console in about 10 years. I'm not sure which I think is better, the graphics or the sound design. Both are absolutely phenomenal. The characters and environments are hand-drawn and high resolution, having been done with a new type of engine built to do exactly this and the animations are very fluid. And the sound design is incredibly good - so good it makes me sad that I didn't get the Collector's Edition to get the soundtrack.

Rayman and his friends control really well, they are very responsive and the only times I got frustrated was when I was being an idiot. The game starts off slow and builds up until it gets really rather hard but never too hard - I always felt like the challenge ahead of me was just within my reach if only I wasn't being stupid.

I really cannot recommend this game enough. Seriously, go buy it right this second if you like fun. It's beautiful, fun, has a well-balanced difficulty curve and best of all is four player. 5/5 stars.