28th March 2022: Monster Mission
Just got done playing another game with the Scoobster that we started over the Christmas holiday. This one being Titan Quest.
Now I can't say that ARPG style games have ever been my fave genre, but I've enjoyed them here and there. A few years back, a faulty graphics card stopped us playing through our last attempt at Diablo II, and by the time I got it replaced and thought about that game again Blizzard had started to act like absolute dickwads, so I decided never to play their games again.
Shame, as D2 had been on the list of games I had wanted to complete for many years. I'd also started to play Starcraft after learning that was free, but that attempted completion also went out of the window. Thanks, Blizzard scum.
Nevertheless, we fancied a bit of ARPG action, with Scoob even dipping his toes back into Path Of Exile. I however wanted to finish one of the games I owned, so it was down to either this game or Grim Dawn. As I'd owned this a lot longer, and it was a lot older, we went with this.
But don't worry Grim Dawn. Your time will come. At some point. Probably.
After installing this on my two machines, it immediately looked like it was going to be buggy as hell. I went for a little test run, and the first quest would not even complete. It certainly got the alarm bells ringing.
But luckily, once Scoob joined me and we played the game proper this problem did not occur and we were able to continue.
However, while we had no problems completing quests from then on, the game still proved itself to be buggy as hell. Just some fun examples:
- The most common issue was how abilities would fail to trigger, even though you would hear the sound. This was especially true for my taunt skill, with me sometimes having to hit that button 3 or 4 times to get it to go off.
- Even over the LAN it was laggy, with both machines doing occasional pauses then "speed ups" to re-sync. It was weird.
- Scoob could not see the enemies on level 2 of the Temple Of Marduk, even though he could look at my screen and throw out abilities to hurt them. And he could get hit in return.
- Right before the fight with the final Telkine, we somehow desynced and the game was telling us we were in different parts of the map. When Scoob came and stood near me on my screen, I would not get the benefit of his aura. But when he went and stood by where I appeared to be on his screen, I got his aura even though he was nowhere near me on my screen.

She really doesn't want us getting into her box. Or she really does want us to get into her box. Hard to tell.
But despite these issues it was a fun enough game, though one we started to get a little tired of by the end. It's definitely given me my fill of ARPG action for the time being. This version of the game also includes the Immortal Throne expansion, but after playing this for 3 months we've had enough for now.
The story was a fairly standard affair for these kinds of games. Three beings known as "Telkines" want to free an imprisoned Titan, who himself wants to go and fight the Gods for imprisoning him. And the players have to stop them. Simple as that.
Who knows what we will play next, but we've just found out that Total War: Warhammer is free in a few days over on Epic Games. Now that's a game we've really wanted to play for a while. And I won't really be able to whine about the DRM if it's free now will I?
Well maybe just a little.
I've now been completing games on this blog now for just over 10 years, and have managed 85 games in that time. I don't know if that's good or bad. I also don't know why I mentioned it. I just seem to be on this anniversary kick at the minute. First there was Resident Evil, and Lord Of The Rings, and now this. And I've also got a big FF7 anniversary playthrough on the go right now.
Maybe I'm just getting old and nostalgic.
What am I talking about? I am old and nostalgic.
But mainly old.