BATTLE REALMS

Simplification in a complicated gaming world is an elegant thing, if done right. Often, focusing on subtle details over a flood of features makes for a title worth returning to again and again. Battle Realms is a perfect example of the "less is more" concept put to good use, and a fun game to boot.

As Kenji, exiled head of the Dragon Clan in a broken land that resembles ancient Japan, you return to once again reunite the people under your family's banner. Unification means defeating the splintered clans of the Serpent, the Wolf, and the mysterious Lotus. Along the way, allies and enemies will twist the plot, occasionally guided by your choice of providence to attack next. Battle Realms's story unfolds in an understated, but gripping manner.

The only two prevalent resources are water and rice, and the set population is usually 30+ instead of the normal 100 or so. What evolves from the simple economy and sparse number of units is less of a RTS game and more of a game about squad warfare. Gamers used to a "million men with sticks" or "tank rush" tactics will find the game frustrating. Conversely, strategists who learn the lay of the land and respect the pros and cons of each unit will find the nuances truly enjoyable.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Battle Realms is unit training. Peasants appear from huts and can build, gather, or train to become warriors in military buildings, but creation slows down as the populace nears its limit. After basic training, warriors can continue their studies, as in the case of an archer who learns the arts of hand-to-hand combat in the dojo to become a Dragon warrior, capable of melee or magical ranged attacks. Such a unit can train up to the ultimate, a Samurai, skilled with bow and sword. Additionally, Geishas can study the arts of healing to the point of sacrificing themselves to heal others. This deft move by the designers means a wide variety of units with only a scant number of buildings.

While Battle Realms has fewer types of buildings and units than RTS games like Empire Earth, the items are exquisitely rendered. The four different clan types have a unifying theme through their respective elements. As the Dragon Clan features buildings like a Dojo, Archery Range, and Bathhouse, the Wolf Clan has more of a barbaric feel to it. The Wolves Den, Quarry, and Vitality Gardens are all built of rock, exclusive to the Wolf Clan. Additionally, animations of characters waiting for orders are funny and crisp. Graphics are only blocky during close-up cut-scenes, but not to the detriment of gameplay.

The game has a few noteworthy limitations. Fights tend to breakdown into chaotic melees and even the stalwart Samurai get mowed down by towers. The lightning cast by the Lotus Clan is unbalanced, decimating forces with ease. Simple doesn't mean easier by any means, and the unit balance between clans could have been better. In multiplayer games, as long as a single peasant lives, rebuilding the army is not a problem, which makes for tedious drawn out battles at times. Finally, having various storylines to play for each group would have been nice, such as the rebellion of the Wolf Clan or the Lotus Clan's ultimate goal of stopping Kenji. Perhaps add-on packs will include more stories.

Sounds play a vital role in Battle Realms. When a squad enters the forest, birds shriek and fly away, often giving away their position. Other sound effects are excellent, the clang of a sword cleaving enemies or the meaty "thunk" of an arrow striking true are well done. Even the voice acting shines, which is an improvement on many RTS games.

Multiplayer games in Battle Realms, despite dragging on at times, are solid. A host of maps give gamers multiple places to hold a war. The skirmish mode, while not as challenging as a human opponent, also gives generals a chance to scout the lay of the land and a nice workout to brush up their squad strategies.

Battle Realms doesn't have the hundreds of units of Total Annihilation and Empire Earth, or the rocking soundtrack of the Command & Conquer series, nor the hype. What it does offer, however, is sharp graphics and sounds, a fine story, and exciting gameplay. Fans tired of the fanfare and hoopla who want a really good game should turn to Battle Realms as an exciting, viable alternative.

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House of the Dead 2

While the graphics in the home version of the original HOTD fell far short of its coin-op cousin, the Dreamcast port of the second game is virtually identical to the arcade sequel and looks phenomenal. The monsters and their environments are incredibly well modeled and textured, and your gunshots blast gory green holes through the zombies (which look fantastic when they get up close enough to take a bite out of you) and the other assorted nasties.

The home version of HOTD2 also stacks up very well in terms of added value, with four different modes in all: arcade, original, boss, and training. The arcade mode is the heart of the game, wherein you shoot zombie after zombie and confront boss after boss. Original is essentially the same, but in it you can set your bullets for extra damage or expand your clip, but you're locked into the basic options. (In arcade, you can increase the number of your continues and lives.) Meanwhile, boss mode lets you practice taking on the game's boss monsters, and training mode sets you up in a number of point-blank-style puzzle/shooting levels, where you'll shoot a dozen creatures with only a limited number of bullets, save humans from zombie attacks, knock zombies off moving cars, and blast barrels within a time limit. This mode is great fun and carries the potential to be almost as strong and entertaining as the main game itself, save for a few drawbacks.

Even without the training levels though, House of the Dead 2 carries excellent replay value. The main game has numerous branching paths along the way that split off nearly every time a human is in danger of getting killed by a zombie. If you can blast the attacker in time, you're rewarded with either a health-up or a different track to explore. There are enough branching pathways that you won't see everything the game has to offer until you've played it through multiple times, and it's fun enough where you'll want to do just that. This is definitely one area where the HOTD series really beats the pants off of its main competition, Namco's Time Crisis line, but things unfortunately don't turn out nearly so black-and-white in the end.House of the Dead 2 is an incredibly tough game. In fact, it's hard to a fault. You'll play through tons of times with the options set to nine continues (very easy) and five lives before you'll get anywhere near the end. Also, the training stages also appear to begin at an expert difficulty level; since there are five degrees of toughness to each of the stages within it, it would have been nice if training started off easier. The main problem seems to be that you just don't get enough bullets in each clip. Your character carries a semiautomatic, which generally has a clip size of about twelve rounds because it isn't as powerful as, say, a .357 Magnum, and it fires more rapidly. Strangely enough, however, you only get six bullets per clip - the same number you'd find in a revolver, and your gun doesn't have nearly that much "stopping power." (Remember the Magnum in GoldenEye 007?) When it comes down to it, the game doesn't need to be anywhere as hard as it is, because it already provides such a great deal of value through its branching pathways and training mode. Being this difficult just leads to screaming fits on the part of the player. (The barrel-blasting level got me mad enough that my TV almost had it.)

Another problem with the game stems from the whole gun issue. The game was made to be played with a light gun, which Sega of America opted not to bring out in the US, ostensibly because the folks in the mainstream press were calling gun games "murder simulators" after the tragedy in Colorado. Not content to simply refuse to release a light gun in the States, Sega implemented a lockout in the US version of the game, keeping owners of the imported Japanese gun peripheral from using it with the title. At press time, two third-party manufacturers have released light guns to the US market, but both have calibration problems with certain television sets, making them tough for us to recommend. All of these factors lead to you having to play the game by using a standard DC controller, which is not only much less fun, but also more difficult to master. The game requires you to aim at opposite sides of the screen frequently, which is hard to do when you're waiting for your target to move into place. You'll wish for a reliable light gun while playing HOTD2. Often. Just a gun that lines up with the sights doesn't seem too much to ask for.

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Torchlight 2

As an action-RPG, the best thing about Torchlight II is the way that loot, skill choice and chance bubbles over into a fountain of light and treasure at the whiff of a right-click, every single time, for as long as you can keep going. As an action-RPG, the worst thing about Torchlight II is the way that loot, skill choice and chance bubbles over into a fountain of light and treasure at the whiff of a right-click, in the exact same way, for as long as you can keep going.

After more than 20 hours I’ve built my Embermage into a machine for the consumption and processing of monsters. My wands cast random spells when I kill an enemy. My armour reflects melee damage. I have a passive ability that randomly teleports attackers further away. My firestorm plants a fire vulnerability on enemies that my columns of flame capitalise on, explosively. Every point of damage I do fills my charge bar, which ultimately reduces the casting cost of all my spells to zero. When this happens I summon a duplicate of myself, just because I can. I’ve also got this raven. His name’s George. I think you’ve met.

As the difficulty rises, it’s sometimes necessary to tinker with the machinery: to invest in new skills, or alter the opening moves of my combat rotation. By and large, though, the character I’ve made worked in act one and she’s still working a campaign and a bit later.

Your place in Torchlight II’s plot is circumstantial: you’re a hero, and that’s about it. You’re chasing down the villainous Alchemist – one of the original game’s protagonists – for reasons that nobody in the game sounds especially concerned about. Character emerges as you settle on a playstyle: I’m a stationary death vortex now, but I could have specced differently – a teleporting, sword-wielding warrior mage, perhaps.

Her love for skeletons is like a truck.
Besides the Embermage, the other predominantly ranged character is the Outlander: a mobile weapons platform specialising in guns, glaives, and debilitating magic. The Berserker channels spirit animals to augment melee attacks, buffing allies and debuffing foes to build an advantage. The Engineer is a tank that can specialise in heavy weapons or sword-and-shield durability, with the option of swapping out for a massive handheld cannon and an army of robotic pets.

They’re a varied bunch, although the game struggles to communicate precisely how different they are before you start playing. I arrived at the Embermage through a process of experimentation: given the game’s hundred levels of character advancement, I recommend you do the same before committing.

Levelling grants you points to spend on attribute boosts and new skills. The two are linked: attributes determine the relative power of your weapon and magic damage, for example, impacting the usefulness of the skills you may choose to invest in. Unlike the original Torchlight, you don’t need to invest points in a skill tree to unlock its late-game potential. Instead, new skills open up as you level, allowing for greater dabbling as you progress. The system is over reliant, as many action-RPGs are, on incrementing your power by tiny percentages every time you spend a point and each individual level up can feel inconsequential as a result. In the long term, however, there’s a lot of scope for cleverness and creativity.

Unfortunately, Torchlight II limits your ability to respec to undoing the last three skill decisions you made. This effectively prevents shifts in direction at high levels: even though I’ve built a character I like, I can’t change her – and my skill trees are littered with discarded investments. If I want her to be perfect I either need to start again or wait for the inevitable respec mod, and both feel like a compromise. Certainly, it’s a system where decisions have consequences: it’s just that those consequences are a needless waste of time. In a year where multiple RPGs have figured out that freedom to change your mind actually results in more interesting decisions, not less, this aspect of Torchlight II’s design sticks out as an unwelcome manifestation of its early noughties influences.

Certain set pieces mix up the rules: in this section, you have to stay in the light.
Other aspects are much more gratefully received. Offline play, six player co-op (both online and over LAN) and full mod support are all present, and Steam Cloud support enables the game to benefit from the best bits of modern online integration.

In terms of features, Torchlight II has tremendous scope. The campaign is randomised from the overworld down, remixing environments and sprinkling them with events that keep the pace up even as you go about the busywork of map clearance. You might kill a sprite who drops a golden key, then go looking for the chest it opens. You might kill a phase beast and enter a pocket-sized challenge stage, or stumble across a hidden side quest that stretches across the whole game.

When you finish the campaign, you can start over from where you left off or enter the ‘Map Room’, a nexus where you can use in-game gold to buy access to randomised dungeons with custom rulesets. A full set of difficulty levels are available from the start, along with a hardcore permadeath mode for the committed. The game bends over backwards to give you options, a limbo act that twists the rest of the way and swallows itself with the provision of mod support. This is a game with a long, community-driven future, one that scrawls an infinity symbol over your potential time investment in effortless freehand.

Ever feel like a game knows exactly what buttons to push?
It’s less successful in terms of scale. There’s very little sense of escalation to the environments or encounters: you start in a field, pass through a desert, visit a swamp and spend an awful lot of time in caves. You will be fighting level 1 rat-men at level 1 and level 40 bat-men at level 40: although it apes Diablo II’s narrative and structure to a comical degree, Torchlight II doesn’t up the stakes in the same way. The short fourth act changes the tone but is thin on surprises.

The game’s stock-in-trade is charm and detail: characterful animations that you’ll zoom in to watch, witty item descriptions, the sound of fingers on strings in Matt Uelmen’s excellent soundtrack. Action-RPGs are at their best, however, when they can complement detail with spectacle. A sense of escalation helps to mask the numbers game by implying that there’s more to higher difficulties than a shift in some underlying equation. If the numbers game is why you’re here, then you’re unlikely to complain: Torchlight II will escalate your numbers all day long. If not, though, then expect repetition to limit the game’s longevity.

Torchlight II’s status as the conservative underdog is the source of both its most impressive successes and its most visible limitations. It’s tempting to wonder what this chamber orchestra could do with the resources afforded Blizzard’s full-blown philharmonic: at the same time, there are moments when Runic’s devotion to the genre’s past – which, admittedly, they helped to shape – holds the game back. It’s a charming, sunshine-bright indie action-RPG with an old-school disregard for your time. It’ll consume you with a smile, and you’ll be smiling, too: but it’s down to the community to turn it into something special.

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