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New releases for The Week of Loots and Mutants

New releases for The Week of Loots and Mutants

It’s a big week for lovers of co-operative adventure games:

The big deal with Torchlight II is co-operative mode. The first Torchlight was a single-player dungeon crawler, and the new one allows players to team up in groups of up to four. Mostly the game looks the same, otherwise. The classes have been overhauled to use a class system that very closely resembles the new Diablo game, and the dungeons and loot are all procedurally generated to improve replayability. The sequel also expands the gameworld, sending players into the wilderness and even other towns, rather than just in and below Torchlight itself. The pet system and fishing mini-games have also been expanded and improved. If you liked everything about Diablo III except for the auction house, perhaps Torchlight II is the game for you.

Realms of Ancient War seems mostly like just another overhead dungeon crawler, and it mostly is. It has a very classic advancement system, a fantasy theme, and procedurally generated dungeons and loots. The gimmick here is what the designers call the ‘Incarnation’ system: When an enemy in the game is nearly defeated, it will become open to Incarnation. If activated, the player will gain control of the monster for a short time, to use its abilities against the remaining foes. The game has a cooperative mode, but it’s local only. Not particularly versatile, but If you and a friend (player limit is 2) like to sit on the couch together to play through a dungeon crawler, you’ll want to check this one out. That type of co-op is pretty rare.

This week’s Icrontic Spotlight shines from the cracks in the vault of Borderlands 2. The original Borderlands game had several major features that set it apart from the rest of the dungeon crawler pack. First, and most obvious, it’s a first-person game, and while the first-person dungeon crawl is far from a new thing (in fact: the earliest graphical entries in the genre used a rudimentary 3D maze), it had come into a genre which had become mostly populated by top-down controls which require the player to do little more than click on the enemy he/she wants to attack. Bringing modern FPS aiming and controls into the game was a combination worth noting. It also had an incredibly robust procedural loot generator, with an effectively infinite number of possible weapons to find in the world. Finally, it had a unique setting, pulling away from the pseudo-medieval magic world—the game was instead set in a ruined colony on a distant desert planet.

All of these features return for the new game, with some enhancements. The engine itself has changed little, but there is a lot more art, and the few non-desert portions of the ruined planet will enter the story, allowing the player a chance to see the jungles, plains, and forests of the world, along with a myriad of new enemy types. Though the  skill system is unchanged (a level cap of 50 with a total of 45 skill points to be used across 91 skill slots), the classes have been overhauled with all new skills and bonuses, and a fifth class has been added—as a future DLC—with a focus on summoning allies in the form of robots, which sounds like it would be fun in single-player. Finally, the procedural loot generation system has been expanded, not only to give an even greater variety of weapons, but all the other item types (shields, grenades, and class boosters) now also use the system which produces that effectively infinite number of possible items, making the player’s character build much more variable. However, even without improvements, it’s the continuation of one of the most fun co-op games of the last few years.

Folowing is a full list of this week’s announced North American releases:

Windows

  • Alea Jacta Est
  • Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition
  • Borderlands 2
  • Dogfight 1942
  • F1 2012
  • Jet Set Radio
  • Torchlight II
  • Train Simulator 2013

Wii

  • Harley Pasternak’s Hollywood Workout

Xbox 360

  • Borderlands 2
  • F1 2012
  • Harley Pasternak’s Hollywood Workout
  • Jet Set Radio
  • Kinect Nat Geo TV
  • Kinect Sesame Street TV
  • Realms of Ancient War

PS3

  • Borderlands 2
  • F1 2012

Comments

  1. ardichoke
    ardichoke EFF YEAH BORDERLANDS 2!

    image
  2. midga
    midga Dude, a remake of Jet Set Radio? Neat :D

    Also, Kirby's Dream Collection was released yesterday for the Wii. It's got Dream Land 1-3, Adventure, Super Star and Crystal Shards (the 2.5d N64 one). I'm considering picking it up just for archival purposes. I have all those already (except maybe 64, dunno if I ever bothered doing more than renting it...) in at least one format, but I'm a sucker for good re-release compendiums.
  3. d3k0y
    d3k0y I need to remember to pre-load BL2. I might call in sick tomorrow too.
  4. primesuspect
    primesuspect Crystal Shards was actually my favorite Kirby game, @Midga. Really good.
  5. midga
    midga I played, beat and enjoyed it (I think...that was years ago), I just don't recall if I own it. I remember that, instead of throwing cutters, you became the cutter, and that was kinda weird. Wasn't that that Kirby that introduced the idea of combining powers, though? I seem to recall that being a cool dynamic. For some reason I think I just rented and beat it, and then went back to playing Super Star.

    imo, Adventure is the best of the library (the original, not the DS remake with the sub-par mini-games, though it was mostly a good remake), while Super Star is hands-down my favorite (it just really needed each section to be about 5x longer, but all Kirby games suffer from being just too damn short...). I really want to pick up DL3 again (and it will probably be the first I replay if when I pick the collection up) and see if I can figure out all the level extras this time.

    And in the meantime, my copy of Kirby's Epic Yarn sits only half-played... I think it was the disembodied voice talking to me as if it were narrating a tv-show to a three-year-old that killed it for me =/
  6. Bandrik
    Bandrik Pretty excited for Borderlands 2.

    Also, my favorite Kirby games were Kirby's Adventure (NES) and Super Star (SNES). I haven't played a Kirby game in a while, though I really enjoyed Squeak Squad on the NDS. Wasn't the best Kirby game evrar, but it was still enjoyable.
  7. BHHammy
    BHHammy You know...I wonder how many bosses actually keep up with game release dates?

    Just wondering if there's any bosses that answer your sick-day call with "Are you sick, or just coming down with (game name here) Fever?"
  8. Signal
    Signal Some help desk bosses keep up to date on game releases.

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