A couple of months back the Scoob and I were looking for some games to try and take the place of our weekly journey to Valoran and the League. I'd got Torchlight and we gave it a little evaluation to see if it was worth buying number 2, which had a multiplayer mode. Though the sequel has DRM, which I am vehemently against, we really needed something to pass a few hours...
Shortly after, Torchlight 2 was installed and I was making an Outlander named Splap with his chakawary pet Gizmo, joined by Berserker Scoob and his pet wolf called Ragnar.
We set off into the world, and I struggled a lot with the controls at first. Clicking on fast moving enemies was difficult and as a ranged character any misclick would send me running into the melee instead of holding my ground. I had to change all the bindings and install a little program called AutoHotkey to get the desired method of control.
It was not a particularly stable game either. It never crashed or anything, but the lag over the network was evident throughout, even over my LAN, which should not happen. Very often, our avatars on each other's screens, and many of the enemies, would spontaneously jump around the screen as the game tried to keep both computers synchronised. At least, that's what it looked like. Also abilities did not instantly trigger, but there was a short delay which meant timing attacks was hard. Sometimes they didn't trigger at all. Not sure if this is in the game's design, or more lag over the network. It sucked whatever it was.
I don't think either of us payed much attention to the story. It was something about the Alchemist (a playable character from the first game, and the one I had chosen, no less) turning evil and trying to unleash some purple demon things out into the world. Whatever. We just found him and smacked him around the screen. It was very weird after fighting the Alchemist to have to fight more of the netherim, which felt kind of anti-climactic after assuming we had just completed it.
But it's over now. And that's another one down.
Shortly after starting our adventure
Splap scratches his butt
Anyone wanna play frisbee?
We summon some groovy pink skeletons and zombies to help out
Under attack by robot things
Gizmo is so in awe of the Guardian that he sinks into the wall
The assault on the Alchemist begins...
...who tries to fight back with lasers...
...but is ultimately overwhelmed
Splapdinkle, before turning evil for the sequel...
As I had finished number 2 after only playing about 15 mins of number 1, I decided to go back and try and continue that one. Unfortunately, even using AutoHotkey, I could not get the controls working the way I wanted them. The first game does not give you any in-game method of rebinding keys, and instead you have to edit text files in the game's folders. Even then, there is no way to rebind the actions of the mouse buttons, and there seems to be no way of separating move and attack, which are linked together as one command. I may have still been able to get it to work, but for some reason the Ctrl modifier, which is supposed to only move your character if you click on something that can be attacked or interacted with, does not work in this game like it does in the 2nd. Meaning as a ranged character I would constantly be running into combat if I misclicked. Annoying.
Alas, the adventures of Splapdinkle and his pet ferret Biggles will never be known, unless the game gets patched. Which it definitely will not at this stage.