Of Mice and Titans

Sat through download of Titan Quest. These direct-to-drive purchasing options are getting addictive. I keep drooling over the Fallout 3 advertisement. The only thing keeping me sane is the thought that I could probably get it in physical form from Tec-Drome for an equivalent/cheaper price.

And not to mention, if I hold out longer and longer, it'll get cheaper and cheaper and maybe come bundled with an expansion. After all, Oblivion got a bunch of expansions, I wouldn't put it past Bethesda to do the same thing with Fallout 3. Downloadable content, I think they are trying out.

The only problem is that I'm going to end up playing a cool game a year or two past its prime if I do that. Mmm, we'll see.

Back to Titan Quest:

Swopped out my Razer mouse for the old Logitech one.

Actually, I didn't swap it since it was plugged into the back and irritating to unplug. I just jammed the USB for the other mouse into the front and hoped the drivers wouldn't conflict too much.

Seemed okay. *touch wood*

By comparison, the Logitech mouse felt MUCH slower and uncontrollable. Now this could be because of conflicting drivers, but ancient memory suggests that this really was how my old mouse worked. Or at least, the last time I plugged it into my laptop anyhow. Lower sensitivity = less speed, mouse cursor sort of stutter-crawls across the screen instead of flying across it, more scraping of the mouse on a flat surface.

I turned my Razer mouse pad over from its SPEED surface to its CONTROL (rougher) surface to get it to feel better.

Bright side, I could now pound the hell out of the left and right mouse buttons without feeling guilty or worried that I would kill any sensitive switches and cause my very expensive mouse to double-click when single-clicking. (I have experienced this on a cheapo HP mouse at the office, it SUCKS big time, kills any semblance of productivity and pretty much means it's only fit for the junk heap.)

The bad news, if and when my Razer mouse dies, I'm going to have to drop another $70 or so on another one. I'm now convinced that it feels distinctly different and performs better once you get used to the higher sensitivity it can offer.

Anyhow, thus armed, I was ready to play the vaunted Diablo lookalike.

I must say, much like all the reviews, I too was pleasantly surprised by Titan Quest.

I found myself wondering what made it -work-.

Part of it is the attention to the lore and setting, methinks. While the intro movie seemed a bit audio-bugged for me, I liked the attempt at setting up the whole ancient Greek / translation 'beginning of an epic story' mood.

The voice acting is surprisingly good. While the actual gameplay design of having to click on an NPC and stop to listen (or have it fade away completely, never to be heard again) is annoying, I liked that you could click multiple times and the NPCs had multiple things to say, in order, as if you were having a conversation with them.

Some writer did a lot of work behind the scenes, and I'm even more startled that the game company actually paid to voice-act all those lines. A lot of them are strictly unnecessary for gameplay. Just for mood and atmosphere. And rather faithful to its source.

I sat around listening to Storyteller NPCs declaim for me the story of Hercules, and another for Artemis. Strictly speaking, that wasn't necessary. Any time I'm not hitting monsters, I'm wasting my xp/hour progression rate. It was an immense chunk of verbiage, and normally, I wouldn't have much patience for it - but because it was so well written and voiced with all the power of Greek storytelling and the ancient myths behind it, I just sat around and listened to someone tell me the tale...

...because it was fun.

In an immersive sort of way. Because that's one of the reasons why we play singleplayer, right? And the people who made Titan Quest nailed that, inadverdently or otherwise.

The skill mastery system isn't too bad. It's the standard talent tree made slightly more interesting with the choice to "dual-class" at level 8. Looks to have significant replay value because of that.

I think it'll be cute to see what people pick as their first choice. Sorta pseudo-pop-psychology test. :)

As usual, I went for a warrior first of all. The offensive kind, since there's very little point building a soloing tank unless yer just being masochistic or like feeling indestructible - especially since Diablo-style means you can quaff potions. (Though the timer on the potions made me grumpy.)

The secondary class took me a little longer. The standard selection would have to pick the defensive shields for cc and defence, but I wanted to deviate from the norm a bit. After all, that's the point of a game that allows hybrid classes, yeah?

I was veering towards Spirit, on the assumption I could be a holy paladin and heal myself while hacking things, then when I read the talent tree more carefully on hitting level 8, I realized it was more a necromancy tree. Being an antipaladin / death knight thingy is fun and all, but hem, I think I've heard too much of death knights on the news lately.

The Fire mastery looked rather fun, but I was worried about my survival and didn't really want to go all out blaster/blapper for a first character.

So I looked around for some other kind of 'heal me' capable option and found the Nature tree. Ooh. And you get a pet wolf. And my char's name happens to be Lycaeus, inspired by the mountain and the wolf tales on it. (Greek, wot?) Sold.

At the moment, it's not really min-maxing, because my wolf is just running around, getting underfoot, getting beat on with very little hp, and nibbling things to death for slivers of hp. I hope he'll grow up bigger and stronger in the end. But it's just the fun theme of it all.

The ragdoll combat is surprisingly satisfactory. I like how I can hurl the dead corpses of my enemies further and further off screen as I charge up my berserk powers.

I've a couple niggles still. Scrolling movement isn't as smooth as I'd like. I would REALLY like to be able to rotate the camera. It feels odd to only be able to zoom in at one angle to see things in 3D and not see things from another angle. How am I supposed to admire the leet armor on my character? If there's an option for this, it isn't obvious.

Character customization in terms of looks is ridiculous. Male or female, one body type, one face, and pick 5 colors of tunics. Sighs.

And if I could spam quaff health potions I'd be so happy. Or at least let me pick which potion to drink, not just drink all the good health potions first before the lesser ones. But I can't. So I die instead.

Inventory really feels too small. Like most Diablo games. So I find myself shuttling back and forth between town to portal to town to portal just picking up and selling equipment. If only I had a Bling Gnome...

But they're niggles. I quite enjoy Titan Quest. Diablo style combat and quick progression, coupled with a world that is relatively faithful to its roots.

I think I prefer it over Dungeon Runners, which isn't too bad a Diablo-clone either, but is more World of Warcraft-y in its art and pop-culture references with lots of fart jokes and is tuned for microtransaction - aka be a member to get the best munchkin shtuff.

In Titan Quest, I get to be the lone epic Grecian Hero, walking in the footsteps of Homeric legends.