Titan Quest

uh, which one of you works in the audio-visual department?

Why am I going commando in this scene?

Have you been itching for Diablo 3?
Have you had a yearning for your characters to walk around without pants?

Titan Quest is calling and you are just poor enough to buy it!

To be fair; let’s state the obvious… the game is a less original version of its idol at the original selling point of $49.99… this fateful reviewer would have demanded a refund. In general, however, the game is serviceable and you can lose several hours without complaint.

The story goes along the Greek mythology route in a somewhat moronic layout:
You are the Nameless Hero! Bad Stuff is happening and the gods are not able to handle it (Where is your Zeus, now? Moronicles…) and as that is a fairly familiar state to the average action-rpger… let’s rumble!

Yes, master pet…sir.

You get to advance along 2 of 6 trees of special powers and use whatever equipment you qualify for along the way. This probably the largest difference and can lead to unusual characters that are definitely fun to consider and play (a hoplite-type that levels with AOE fire effects? Checkus-Majorus). I decided to make a pet-user… no, not a farm-lover sort. But when I decided on the necromancy-path (a real natural fit into the heroic Greek tradition?); I became the servant of the Lich. The Lich is apparently from a Dungeon and Dragons game and, there of, proceeds to be better then anything you might actually fight in the game. It clears rooms, draws attacks and kills bosses with maximum evil floating for dramatic effect. And your part in this, after summoning the Mega-Lich and upgrading it faithfully? You are its bitch treasure-collector and re-summon it when the hordes of useless fantasy stereotypes actually kill it (it can happen a few times every ten hours of play).

Where I cannot mock the game too harshly (don’t worry, we’ll return to that shortly) is that the animation art and music are pretty good. Things look great for the time period of release and the music is pretty atmospheric and appropriate for what ever land (or tomb) you are adventuring in. The voice-acting consists of scared folks telling you about monsters that haven’t killed them and their families yet… Sometimes you get a scantily-clad female character begging for your help. No commentary on whether a relationship with a female centaur could go ‘all the way’ with a minion treasure collector. Not bad… but far from a good use of decent voice actors. Sometimes you get the gruff-soldier telling you how he has held out against the said monsters… very ‘eh’ reports. In essence if he/she has an exclamation mark above his/her head, its a quest related babbling. Diamonds mean that the voice acting was wasted on a script requiring the actor to be sorrowful that giant bird creature is eating his livestock or something else you cant do anything about.

Let’s talk about your enemies along the way to Titan-killing.
Basically, you commit genocide with a smile to anything vaguely sneering and hairy or slightly undead. Apparently, none of the gruff soldiers you met or the stable cities you sell and buy your crap from has actually cleared anything from Greece’s countryside or its tombs (once you get to Egypt you should have been a near-Stalin level mass-killer-of-stuff-that-never-really-stood-a-chance-against-human-heroes). Is that a satyr settlement? Fireball the hairy savages. Are some amphibious critters strolling along a beach? Life-Leach the waterborne abominations to their tranquil beach graves.

If one thing can be said about the enemies you massacre; they don’t follow such things as common sense or a history book or silly crap like that. Slime puddles are next to rat-men in caves. Hostile boars infest 55% of Greece. Birds hang out with cat-people. It’s rather wonderful to realize that much like in movies with hot chicks; when stuck, the designers just threw in whatever looked cool and could pass for mythology. Sort of.

Speaking of ridiculous… Something that seemed a little ridiculous was the teleporting system in ancient Greece. The Greeks apparently discovered teleportation somewhere to allow the hero access to every city section once discovered. They even clear a patch of city in order to have built a ornate ‘teleporter’ area for exactly one man. Your bumbling, genocide-inducing self. Let me repeat this for effect; the Greeks. and later the Egyptians, have made a system of instant teleportation and yet… somehow… are under siege by horny goat-men and skeletons that are about as deadly as gnats with cold-symptoms.

Yes, makes perfect sense.

But, as an older game… available from our friends at Impulse and other digital distributors… It’s okay to fulfill the specific need to pass time.
I would say 5 out of eight tentacles, but i would give it a six if you can get the game for under 20 bucks.

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