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Review

Titan Quest

8.1

Format PC

Developer Iron Lore

Publisher THQ

Genre Action, Role Playing

30-Jun-2006 A pure action RPG with huge production values and great visuals but the Diablo's in the detail

The action RPG has fallen on hard times of late, but if your memories are yet to be dulled by encroaching old age or rampant narcotics abuse, you may remember a time when it was cock of the PC gaming walk. It was all about Diablo, of course - the fantasy click 'em up was nothing short of a phenomenon. As moreish as Sour Cream & Onion Pringles (well, I like them) and as simple as the thought processes of the average Big Brother housemate, it entranced millions of gamers (many of whom played it online for years after its release) and made a shitload of cash for Blizzard.

Diablo got its sequel, of course, and there have been the two Diablo-apeing Dungeon Siege titles released in the years since, but the genre's stock has never reached the levels of those heady days where the big thing in PC gaming was to guide a man around a dungeon and make him kill thousands of monsters in rapid succession.

Titan Quest is supposed to be the game to change all this. Developers Iron Lore - whose head Brian Sullivan was also the brains behind Age Of Empires - have tried to create a top-down clickfest of epic proportions, unburdened by the likes of party management, confusing class and skill systems, complex storytelling and, well, anything else that interferes too much with the real business of destroying evil beasties.

Want an example? Take the first thing you do in the game: create a character. While most RPGs ask you to choose a race, class, skill-set, some stats and perhaps even model yourself a face, all Titan Quest asks is that you choose a man or a woman and a colour for his or her tunic. That's it. No need to pick out hair dye and choose whether or not they keep their nails in good condition - you decide if you want your character to have breasts or not and five seconds later you're in, looking down at your character standing in some ancient Greek countryside.

Oh yeah: if you haven't already worked it out, Titan Quest isn't set in your standard orcs, elves and quasi-medieval castle-filled fantasy world. Here, you'll be doing all your questing, slaying and looting around the ancient world: Greece, Crete, Egypt and beyond. Instead of introducing ogres to the pointy end of your blade, you'll be kicking the living poo out of mythical creatures like satyrs, minotaurs and harpies, and you'll be visiting Athens, Memphis and Babylon.

GREECE IS THE WORD
The story, such as it is, is that olden days Greece is being invaded by a veritable horde of the aforementioned mythical creatures and it's your job to find out why and put a stop to it. The form that this investigation takes is pretty simple: you kill everything in your path and occasionally a friendly person will stop by and tell you where to go next. You can also embark on short, optional sidequests, but you never have to wander far from the main quest route to do so.

The gameplay is strikingly reminiscent of Diablo: it's an RPG stripped down to almost pure combat, with a bit of levelling up spice thrown in. You get the odd stroll through a friendly town or city to catch your breath and admire the fantastic visuals, but the developers have ensured that you're never more than 30 seconds away from another fight. What bits of background information there are can be ignored should you wish, as they're irrelevant to the plotline.

FASTEST FINGER FIRST
In fact, the game is so stripped down that you can easily play through it without once touching the keyboard (except to type in a suitably heroic moniker for your character
at the beginning - something like Ajax or, er, Domestos). Left-clicking on a patch of
ground moves you there, or performs your normal attack if the pointer is hovering over an enemy, while the right mouse button can be bound to perform a special move or spell. The mouse wheel controls the camera zoom (it can't be rotated, incidentally).

That's pretty much it, control-wise. You can make things a little more complicated (or simple, depending on how your brain works) by assigning powers and special moves to the number keys, but otherwise it's merely a case of left-or right-clicking and enjoying the beautiful ragdoll carnage that ensues.

So you move your character around the gorgeously realised world and fight gorgeously modelled and animated creatures, usually in waves of four or five basic grunts with the odd specialist class or mini-boss chucked in here and there. Say you're currently encountering a load of half-man, half-goat satyrs, for instance: some will be bowmen, some will wield axes or spears, one or two will be spell-chucking shamans and once in a while, a hulking, muscular brute will crop up. As variety goes, it's hardly amazing, but what is niftier than a nifty thing is the fact that the enemies and the weapons or loot they carry are somewhat randomly generated. We say 'somewhat' because certain kinds of creature (satyrs, undead, insects, demons etc) will always inhabit certain areas, but the actual specific creatures will be different each time you play through.

WHO'S THE BOSS?
An action RPG wouldn't be complete without its boss fights, and Titan Quest does well here - at least on the visual front. The first huge foe you fight is a Cyclops and he's BIG. In fact, to show you how hard he is, he bashes in the skulls of a few pathetic hoplites before turning his one-eyed gaze on you. Later, you face a giant minotaur (in the middle of a Cretan labyrinth, natch), skeletal princes, scuttling spider-queens and - shades of Ray Harryhausen here - animated statues. All of them look eye-gogglingly impressive, especially when they die in awesome ragdoll fashion.

The only exception is the Telkine, a hugely powerful titan apparently created by the developers. Before meeting him, several people inform you in panicked tones about what a badass he is, but for some reason, Iron Lore have made him look like (we kid you not) an evil version of Orko from He-Man. As well as being a bit silly, it looks out of place, smacking more of a traditional sword, sorcery and beard-ridden fantasy setting than one based on real myths and legends.

REPEAT, RELAX, RINSE
The real disappointment with the bosses is that, when it all boils down to it, you fight them in the exact same way as you fight anything else in the game - by giving your mouse a good old bashing. They just take a bit longer to fall down, that's all.

If this game does have a serious flaw, it's the fact that, as the boss fights illustrate, it's extremely repetitive. Every bad guy, no matter what kind, can be killed in the same way as the last and, with nothing meaty in the way of plot or character interaction to break it up (your guy/gal doesn't ever speak), it becomes almost hypnotically relentless.

What helps to keep you going, as was the case with Diablo, is the fact that you develop your character's skills and collect shinier and sharper weaponry as you progress through the game. Each monster you kill, and each side-quest you complete, rewards you with experience points and loot, be it weapons, armour, rings or simply cash to spend later on weapons, armour and rings.

BAGS OF CHARACTER
Stuff your experience sack with enough XP and you'll level-up, allowing you to bump up your stats and increase your powers and spells. There isn't a strict class system here: you choose one mastery at level one and a second at level eight. Each mastery contains its own powers and abilities, which can be picked and chosen as you see fit.

I created a magic-using character (did the Greeks have wizards?), able to summon a hard-hitting buddy made out of lava and rock, shoot fire out of my hands and turn enemies against each other, but the possibilities are pretty much limitless given the amount of customisation. You can be a rogue-type fellow specialising in stealth and ranged attacks, a masochistic bastard able to lap up massive amounts of punishment or a graceful fighter, slicing and dicing your way through legions of blade-fodder with a sword in each hand.

Add the customisable weapons and armour and you're laughing. Yep, character development is the one part of Titan Quest that feels semi-innovative. That's not to rubbish the game at all - after all, Iron Lore never set out to make Oblivion, Fallout or Planescape Torment. They didn't even set out to 'reimagine' the action RPG genre - they just wanted to make a big game that was as simple and as enjoyable to play as Diablo.

In this, they've succeeded. While the story (penned by Braveheart and, er, Pearl
Harbor scribe Randall Wallace) may be more hackneyed than a man repeatedly driven over by a fleet of black cabs, the game feels huge and some of the set pieces and locations look suitably epic. In fact, besides Oblivion, it's the best RPG around in terms of its presentation.

WHAT A BOAR
The music score is stirring, the sound effects solid (a dying boar sounds exactly as we imagine a dying boar would!) and the graphics are utterly beautiful. The ragdoll physics add immeasurably to the fun of the game - I couldn't stifle my cackles as my beefy rock-and-lava sidekick punched a blue skinned woman off a cliff and into the sea hundreds of feet below - and there's simply an overall feel of a well-made, quality product. It's also incredibly accessible - Iron Lore have said they wanted to make a game that your mum could pick up and play (actually they said, "your mom"), and to their credit, they have. Everything is tool-tipped to death, but you'd have to be a halfwit to have trouble understanding what's required of you here.

But, needless to say, it won't appeal to everyone. The lack of a gripping storyline is
a minor flaw for a game like this, but it's a flaw all the same. There's also the danger that, eleven or so hours into things, the sheer repetitiveness (and dare I say it, easiness - I died on about two or three occasions the whole time I played it) of the game might have worn you down to such a state that you might decide to put the thing back in its box and go back to the non-linear likes of Oblivion. These things are linked, of course - a plot laced with twists, turns, intriguing characters and powerful themes (you know: revenge, love, lust, betrayal) can drive a game on when the gameplay itself starts to become a bit of a chore (see Baldur's Gate II). You don't get that here.

Then again, nice as it would be, you shouldn't really expect it. This is a pure action RPG with huge production values, great visuals and a fairly diverting levelling system. It doesn't rewrite the rules of the genre because it isn't supposed to. Allow me an analogy, if you will: if Oblivion is a gourmet dish with a rewarding taste that needs some acquiring, Titan Quest is a Big Mac - it's pretty tasty and fills a hole, but it isn't going to provide any huge surprises.

Sam Kieldsen