I'm no average woman and I don't have an average woman's interests. In this blog I hope to share my interests with the readers, so expect posts about society, computer games, literature, movies and TV ... and a few others, probably.
And here it is, this week’s Weekend Update. What am I going to do this weekend? Well:
DVD to watch: “Dragon’s World” and, possibly, some of the third season of “Torchwood”
Book to read: nothing planned, but I’ve been browsing through “Knights of the Diner Table” this week
Game to play: I’ve started to replay “Mystery Case Files: Return to Ravenhearst” yesterday and will try to plot out a walkthrough; and I’m still playing “Plant Tycoon”
In addition, I’ll be writing. We’ll see what it will all add up to. Expect some reviews next week on “Writer’s Blog.”
Last week, I tried to write a post about the second season of “Torchwood” (and one day I will write something about the series – hopefully). But this is not a post about “Torchwood,” it’s a post about “Torchlight.” And those two have little to nothing in common.
“Torchlight” is not just the name of a computer game, but also of the town that serves as a base of operation. And what kind of operation? The monster-slaying kind.
“Torchlight” is a hack’n’slay role-playing game. To those of you not familiar with RPGs or hack’n’slay, a little explanation: role-playing games come in two varieties, mainly. There’s the big epic ones with a huge story, packed with emotions, interesting characters and unexpected turns. Then there’s the not-quite-so-epic ones. The ones in which the story hardly matters. Those are the hack’n’slay kind. You just move through the levels and kill everything that moves (and if it doesn’t move? Doesn’t matter, hack it to pieces anyway). The only things you’re interested in a game of that kind are levelling up and hoarding treasures (which means finding lots of great weapons and armour and making lots of money with the rest of the equipment).
The game “Torchlight” reminds me of the best of those games: “Diablo.” I already mentioned that game in my post about “Ultima” yesterday. So I’ll use the chance to give you a bit of background information about the whole RPG-issue.
The story actually begins long before computer games, in the late 70ies. That is the time in which the first RPGs were created. They were ‘pen and paper,’ meant to be played with a group of people, sitting around a table with one being the game master (who creates the whole adventure and acts as every character that’s not played by the others). Even though many players probably were mostly interested in levelling up and finding great weapons and armour then as well, the game master usually put a lot of time and life blood into the creation of every adventure and created – or at least tried to create – epics of his own.
When the first RPGs were created for the computer, those people were the target group. They knew the systems, they had played hundreds and hundreds of hours and knew all the rules. When they sat down in front of a computer – because there was no group available, for instance –, they wanted to get the same kind of feeling out of their new game. So the great series of RPGs created at that time were either based on a ‘pen and paper’ system or at least mimicking the basic principles: epic story and group to act with. Games with just one hero were rare.
When computer games became more complex – and, because of this, more expensive –, some genres fare worse than others. During the early 90ies, other types of games became popular, most of all the ego shooters. It seemed as if the role-playing games were doomed to die. Then “Diablo” came.
Two factors were making the game so popular. First of all it was a multiplayer game. People could connect their computers (on LAN parties, for example, but also over the internet) and fight the hordes of monsters together. In addition, the levels were not pre-created, they were randomized every time a player started a new game, build of various parts that could be connected in various ways. Those two factors together made the game popular – and not just with role-playing veterans. Many people who were more action oriented started to play the game. It was easy to learn, but hard to master. And, in turn, producing a role-playing game became more popular with the publishers and software companies again.
And “Torchlight?” There’s hardly any story worth mentioning – but I don’t care. Usually I play RPGs to see (and play) a good story. In this case, though, the monster slaying is fun enough on its own, so I don’t miss the story.
To me, the game is a combination of the good old principles of the first “Diablo” and a very nice comic-like design. The three characters and the surroundings have a little steampunk charm (there’s a robotic bard in the city, for instance). The mage is an alchemist, the barbarian is a destroyer, the huntress is a vanquisher. They look slightly different (the alchemist, for instance, wears goggles on his helmet) and so does the place. And there’s one new invention I really love: the pet.
When you create a character, you also choose between a dog or a cat (well, the cat looks like a small sabre-tooth tiger without sabre-teeth). This pet follows you, fights with you and can be change by feeding it with fish (which you can catch in fishing holes in the various levels). But the most important – and useful – feature of the pet is this: you can put all the stuff you have gathered and want to sell into your pet’s own (!) inventory and sent it back to town alone (!) to sell it. Thirty seconds to a minute or so later, the pet will appear again with the money for the stuff. That’s what I really call a good pet!
As the limits of the inventory are the main problem for most hack’n’slay games, this new idea really comes in handy. There’s also the good old “Scroll of the Town Portal,” of course, but sending the pet back is faster and more fun.
“Torchlight” is fun, easy enough to learn and challenging enough to stay with it. There’s big hordes of monsters to slay and big heaps of stuff to find. There’s no story, but I promise you won’t miss it.
As some of you might have guessed already, I started playing computer games quite some years ago (around 1993, to be precise). Among some of the games I still remember from my ‘first years’ of gaming are the two episodes of “Ultima VII” and “Ultima VIII.” (And just yesterday I mused it would be nice to have an updated version of “The Summoning” and “Veil of Darkness” with modern graphics.)
Anyway, “Ultima” is a series of role-playing games for computers that’s all but forgotten by now. Admittedly, the last game – “Ultima IX” – suffered from quite some problems (or maybe, compared to today’s games, it just came out too soon). I’ve never played the older parts or the last part of the series, just the three games that make up Part 7 (two games) and 8.
I never really got down to the point of the series, to be honest. Maybe I would have had to play all the games to understand it. And I tend to be a bit more ruthless as a player, so personification of all good virtues was not really for me. And I can still vividly remember the problems I had to reconfigure my computer so the games would run. (Well, those were the times when you still had to know about configuration in order to get a game to run, faaaaaar before “Windows 95.”)
But I liked the free movement in an isometric perspective, the graphics and the design of the area. There even were multi-storey buildings around.
At the same time, “Ultima” was one of the first contacts I had with the genre of role-playing games at all. That was when those games were still for a small group of gamers – a long time before games like “Diablo” or “World of WarCraft” made it mainstream.
Why am I thinking about this now? Well, I’ve discovered a blog about miniatures written by a guy who is rebuilding part of the “Ultima” world. It’s interesting and so I let my mind wander back a bit.
I’ve been playing “Plant Tycoon” for quite some time now – although I basically stopped playing after I’d gotten loads of plants and was still missing one or two of the magical ones. Then my mainboard crashed and I had to re-install all my stuff and started a new game (as the old one was lost).
A couple of days ago I stumbled over an excel-file at the forum of “Last Day of Work,” the creators of the game. It’s a real treasure for everyone spending serious time with the game. The file contains three spreadsheets: prices (not all that important), flowers (which flowers to cross to get a certain flower) and foliage (which foliages to cross to get a certain foliage). I knew there was a system to it, but I never was able to figure the system out. Now I have reference to find out how to get which plant (and I know what the six magical plants are). In addition, the file contains a picture with all types of flowers and all types of foliages. Now I know there’s actually 529 different plants to breed – 23 types of flowers compared with 23 types of foliages.
I’m currently back to the cheapest soil and water (started a new game) and have only one magical plant – got it by buying the seed. But I know I’ll make it this time!
