[PARANOiA]

Any impressions? I'm looking forward to this one... hoping for Diablo in 3D at greater than 800x600. Reviews so far have been ok, not great.

[Xentropy]

Hmm, doesn't look bad. Nice trailer and the graphics are decent. Mentions you can "build your own worlds" at the end of trailer #1, which seemed to indicate a map editor, which would be nice.

I could use a replacement for Diablo II, and looks like Blizzard is never going to get to Diablo 3. Does this have the massive variety of item drops that Diablo had?

[Goragoth]

I've also been desperately looking for a decent Diablo replacement. Been playing a lot of good old Diablo 2 lately but you can certainly feel the age (probably the main thing is that avatar custimization is... somewhat limited, not to mention the 800x600 res). I've tried Dungeon Siege 2 but it just doesn't feel right (besides, I've never liked the whole idea of having to look after a whole party, I much prefer just a single hero). I haven't played a lot of that game yet though, so I'll reverve judgement.

At the moment I have high hopes for Titan Quest or Hellgate London to make a decent, modern Diablo 2. I'm sure Diablo 3 will come eventually, there's just far too much money in the franchise not to do it but I just really hope it doesn't end up being an MMORPG. I really like something I can just play on the LAN or single player. I've heard that Guild Wars is very Diabloesque but again the MMO thing has kept me away (mostly because of my shitty Internet connection out in the sticks in NZ, woot for satellite latency! -bah).

I guess what I'm trying to say is: I would be very interested in a first hand report on this game. That's all.

[Fodder]

The demo has been out for a few weeks.

[Corwin_B]

The demo is awesome and reviews so far range from good (for those reviewers who really can't stop comparing it with Diablo2) to excellent (for those reviewers who took the time to evaluate this as a standalone product).

I'm really looking forward to this one.

[Gollum]

Yeah, the demo is quite enjoyable. Graphics are very good, gameplay and settings are Diablo 2.5 with sandals. I'm not exactly holding my breath for this game TBH, despite its quality production values. I'm more excited about Hellgate London I guess...

[Rolf N]

Originally Posted by Corwin_B

The demo is awesome and reviews so far range from good (for those reviewers who really can't stop comparing it with Diablo2) to excellent (for those reviewers who took the time to evaluate this as a standalone product).

Reviewers absolutely love to do that. And I simply don't trust these folks anymore, not since Sacred happened to me.

Having played just the demo, let me put it this way: IMO Titan Quest looks like a pretty nice game, it just immediately feels better than Dungeon Siege and Sacred combined, but there's absolutely no way I'll ever replay it. Anyone who seriously compares this to Diablo 2 is just rattling their cage.

On a more constructive note, I had issues with the interface lagging out on me, especially when pressing one of the "highlight loot on the ground" keys. On top of that, loot is often visually obscured by the ... pretty ... grass
Because of this, despite of combat being good straightforward fun, I found it to be a tedious excercise to pick up my loot afterwards, and I always thought this is what a true *drumroll* "Diablo 2 replacement" should be all about. Something like 10 seconds combat, two minutes to pick up a couple pieces of loot. My system might be considered weak (A64 3200+, Radeon 9600), but I did play at 800x600 with minimum details. That's just totally unacceptable as a playing experience and I also insist it's technically unneccessary, because "the game itself" (combat that is) runs fine enough.

++++++++++

Looking forward to Hellgate: London and a proper Diablo 3 announcement from Blizzard. This one will be good fun for a while but not more IMO.

[Zaphod]

Originally Posted by zeckensack

Reviewers absolutely love to do that. And I simply don't trust these folks anymore, not since Sacred happened to me.

Didn't like it? It was eventually a rather decent action RPG, I thought (although, admittedly, I didn't play it until the latest patch when it was finally stable and paid only $5, so that might have influenced my opinion). The Titan Quest demo reminded me a bit about Sacred, in fact, and I never played Diablo 2.

I might pick this up (just have to find the time to play ToEE first).

[Rolf N]

Originally Posted by Zaphod

Didn't like it? It was eventually a rather decent action RPG, I thought (although, admittedly, I didn't play it until the latest patch when it was finally stable and paid only $5, so that might have influenced my opinion). The Titan Quest demo reminded me a bit about Sacred, in fact, and I never played Diablo 2.

Oh I do think I like it, it's not a bad game at all, it's just that ... the genre already has a king and anyone who enters will be compared, deliberate or not, and TQ doesn't compare well.

Diablo 2 is an exceptional and truly significant game. People still play it today. Diablo 2 is the type of game that 95%+ ratings are meant to be reserved for.

So please don't get me wrong. TQ isn't bad. It's just not as good as its most obvious competition.

Btw I played Sacred too, fully patched, and I agree that it was a solid game, but I just never touched it again after finishing it. All the while reviewers insisted that it was "better than Diablo 2" or "finally a replacement for Diablo 2" or other similar hogwash, and that just didn't work out for me, not by a mile.

[John Reynolds]

Swung by a local store to pick this one up but it didn't arrive today. Should be in stores tomorrow. Tom Chick's review at Yahoo is very encouraging, so this should be a nice summer filler game until stuff like NWN2, Gothic 3, and maybe Dark Messiah arrive.

[Tim Murray]

From what I hear, the game is okay, provided you ignore the god-awful itemization and incredibly bad multiplayer (Diablo 1-esque).

[digitalwanderer]

I like the zoom in/out feature, and at least it has in-game AA control.

[Cartoon Corpse]

can you zoom all they way in to 3rd person perspective and leave it there?

i don't much like isometric or top down perspective (haven't been gaming that long i suppose is why).

give me 3rd person or 1st with the usual camera control that goes with it...mouse look, etc. like gothic, gta, hl, etc

[John Reynolds]

Just picked up a copy of the DVD version. Is it a bad thing when the local EB manager recognizes your voice on the phone?

[digitalwanderer]

Originally Posted by Cartoon Corpse

can you zoom all they way in to 3rd person perspective and leave it there?

Pretty close to it, but not quite all the way to 3rd person.

I just like how quick/smooth it zooms in/out using the mousewheel, freaked me out the first time I did it.

Not really my type of game though, but it looks pretty.

[Sobek]

I played it so far for 10 minutes...absolutely loving it all the way.

Then...I go to talk to some old story-teller in the initial area, Helos, and the game just pauses. 5 seconds later, he starts talking again, but only for 2 seconds, then another 5 second pause, then 2 seconds more of speech...this continued for about 5 minutes until it just seized up entirely and automatically rebooted my system.

Pissed me right off. When I was reading about all the issues people are having with this game I thought to myself, as usual "silly people with their codec packs and poorly installed drivers and whatnot, no right to complain like they do, tsk tsk. ". Unfortunately for me, I suffer from the same problems now.

Thankfully i'm 100% confident it's merely an issue with the game itself, something a patch should clear up. Seems to primarily affect Nforce3/4 chipsets, with VIA and Intel chipsets remaining mostly unaffected. I keep my system as lean as it gets really, 13 running services at any time (including Taskmgr, not including MSN), drivercleaned to hell and back, and defragged often, so I generally almost never have an issue with a game unless it's got a logical, realistic reason for having one.

I've really enjoyed my 10 minutes with this game so far, so i'll keep playing and just save often. Can't wait for an official patch, though I suspect it's a long way off...