TWO WORLDS 2 & DRAGON AGE 2 & TORCHLIGHT

Like most bus routes run in the UK, you can wait ages for a decent RPG then three come along all at the same time.

Last week certainly made up for a barren run RPG wise for me.  First up Torchlight arrived on X Box Live Marketplace.  I nearly bought this via Steam last year for the Mac but decided against it at the last minute as I thought I had too many games to play at the time and didn't want to spend the £15 asking price only for it to sit there on my hard drive doing nothing.  Well that was a mistake.  It's a really good game in the old style Diablo type RPG vein.  Stylistically speaking it seems to have a more cartoon like influence like a mixture of Deathspank and Warcraft 3 if the latter can be described as being cartoon like.  What I am saying is that there is no attempt at a dark and sinister real world style setting but something clearly more rooted in fantasy.

It is an uncomplicated game but well worth playing all the same, and so far I have racked up a fair few hours on it.

On Friday, after many weeks and months of waiting both Two Worlds 2 and Dragon Age 2 arrived.

As you can see I am suitably crazy about finally getting  Two Worlds 2 as I never thought it would arrive!


The original Two Worlds was a criminally overlooked RPG game.  It suffered the inevitable comparisons with Oblivion although it played totally different.  Many lazy reviewers jumped on the fact that it was a 3D world and you could ride a horse as basis enough to compare rather than judge the game on it's own merits.  Certainly from a graphics stand point it was no match on the X Box for Oblivion but I imagine on a more powerful PC it would have looked much prettier.  There were bugs and the dialogue was an acquired taste as it was spoken in the manner of Old English but I actually really enjoyed it.  Sadly the developers have dropped this from Two Worlds 2 and they have opted for a more straight forward dialogue style which now also includes modern day profanity which simply does not fit into the world it is set in.

That said from what I have played of it so far I am really enjoying it.  The graphics are a massive improvement and the game is more hardcore.  When you can get stoned to death by an irate baboon or chased across the fields by a flock of angry ostrich's you know you are playing something aimed a more hardcore RPG audience.  Much like the classic RPG's of yore you cannot button bash your way out of trouble in this.  Prudent use of blocking and some good old fashioned fleeing is the order of the day.

Lastly Dragon Age 2 arrived, somewhat late on Friday afternoon which was irritating as I had paid for express delivery.  When it arrived I noticed that there was no card included with the game giving me my pre-order codes.  I tried to contact Game, who I had pre-ordered it with, via Twitter but go no response.

Now I am one of those people who don't like starting a game before I have downloaded all the necessary bonus stuff and so on.  There is nothing more irritating than to discover that you need to back track or worse still restart the game to get the benefit of the DLC.  So I ended up waiting all weekend before finally being able to track someone down at Game willing to hand over the code.  As if that was not enough, in order to use the code I had to register an account on Bioware's site then input the code to get it in game as opposed to the easier method of using an X Box Live Marketplace code. Arggh!

I did manage to get a few minutes play in and it looks like a real winner.  The combat is smooth and satisfying as well as being more dynamic and the graphics on the 360 look more the part now.  I am really looking forward to getting stuck into this one.

So I have loads to play through again.  Not only do I have these games but a stack of others I have collected over the past few months.  It's not easy!