Monday, September 20, 2010

Ever played Diablo? You like it? Then you should try Torchlight.




SO. I've been pretty bored on my days off of work as I've gotten used to being there all the damn time, so I was going through and looking for games to play. I was going through my games library on Steam and saw that I had Torchlight installed but couldn't remember what the hell it was, so of course I start playing. About 5 hours later I realize that I haven't eaten yet... Oops.

Anyways, for people that don't know about the game, it's basically a Diablo clone but with some updated features and one really lacking feature. You can play as three different classes that can essentially be three classes each (more on this later). They're the Destroyer (think Warrior type hero), the Alchemist (Mage) and the Vanquisher (Archer/Amazon from Diablo). Of course one of the great selling points is, of course, the updated features such as the UI, graphics, a talent-point-esque system and a few other random things. Some of the random things being you have a pet dog or cat that can hold items for you and bring them back to town and sell them for you. There's also an item enchanter that will either buff your item... or wipe every stat off it (starts off as 2% and goes up the more you enchant it). There's also a transfusion guy that just takes your stuff and makes it into better stuff (if you give him the right items) as well as a "Gambler" where you can buy a piece of gear and you get a random green, blue, yellow or purple quality item, hence his title. Lastly, you can fish in the game. It's really boring and tends to suck, but it allows you to catch fish that will change your pet dog or cat into other creatures with special abilities (not at all necessary to go through the game btw).


There's two dungeons in the game (seems small, just wait) that both contain quests that you can do that are given from town. The first dungeon is of course the story based one and is about 40 levels deep, give or take (sorry I don't remember). The 2nd one is an endless dungeon that just gets harder and harder the deeper you go and has more challenging enemy waves and better drops (makes sense, right?). The story dungeon tends to take about 7 hours for your first play through, give or take. Another feature of the game that is similar to Diablo is, of course, the random drops, sockets and point-and-click gameplay. There's also a hardcore mode for those that want the extra challenge. In hardcore mode, when you die, you're gone and that character is now unplayable. There's also two cache's for you to use in-game. A shared cache that is accessible to all your characters (there's separate ones for Hardcore and Non-Hardcore) and a personal cache. The only thing you can't share is money. Also, max level is 100.

Lastly, there's a good sized fanbase for the game and the developers are very fan friendly, so they've allowed the fans access to the game's editor. So you can find all kinds of fun fan-made mods that do everything from change the UI or skin of your character to new monsters for dungeons or extra vendors that sell random potions (or anything really). The mods can be really game changing for both the good and the bad, so USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

What really sells this game is that it's only 20 dollars. Pretty cheap considering it's an EXTREMELY fun game.

Now, the only lacking feature, and it's a very lacking feature, is there's no multiplayer. None. The only drawback, but it's a huge one. Thankfully they are making Torchlight II at the moment, which will indeed have multiplayer, and will also be very cheap. Quoted from developers of the game: "The price of the game will be comparable to the original game and will most likely 'start with a two."'

Well, my opinion is that you should indeed play it if you want something that's not Diablo but plays like it (or just really sick of the extremely outdated features). It's great fun and, as I said, it's only 20 dollars.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Sweet new Monster Hunter 3 PSP

I was looking through my usual websites and happened to stumble upon an awesome Monster Hunter 3 PSP. It wasn't because it had a Monster Hunter theme that I thought it was awesome though. It was due to the actual hardware improvements that the PSP could really use.

The first, and in my opinion the biggest improvement, is the new concave analog stick. It's heavily updated and looks much more comfortable with extended usage as well as better overall control. Anyone that's used the original PSP can account for the terrible analog stick it currently uses, so this could be a great improvement. The buttons also look to be concaved as well, which should be an improvement.


The second physical improvement is, what looks like handgrips that jut out from the back. I'm wondering if they're bigger for a second reason which is the extended battery life as I have no idea how large the new battery is physically. I know that the first generation battery tends to be a bit larger physically than the 2nd and 3rd generation, so who knows.


Well these are great additions that I'm looking forward to for the PSP. Hell, even cosmetically I think it looks good.

Monday, September 13, 2010

How to shutdown your computer... on a timer!

So I was done with my computer for the night, but wanted to use it to listen to some music while I pass out. So me being me, I decided that I'd look up how to shut it down on a timer. So here's how it's done (this is for PC's by the way, I'm pretty sure this won't work on a MAC OS):

Right click on your desktop (anywhere)
Go to New > Shortcut
In the text field for "What item would you like to create a shortcut for?" type in this: "shutdown -s -t 1800" without the " ". (The number is in seconds. 1800 seconds = 30 minutes)
Click next. Now, name it!
If you want to change the time at some point, you can right click the shortcut and click "Properties" and change the number to whatever time you want.
Now when you double click it, you'll now have an awesome new shutdown timer!

Now lets say you click it and now you're sitting there going "Shit! I don't want it to shut down in 30 minutes?!" Well, we have a fix for this.
First, right click your desktop and go to New > Shortcut
In the text field for "What item would you like to create a shortcut for?" type in this: "shutdown -a"
Click next and name it!
This will make it so you can stop the countdown whenever you want.

Well, have fun guys!

Friday, September 10, 2010

So you found my blog...

So you somehow stumbled upon my blog. Nice. A good start for me since it's brand new. As it's a brand new blog, you probably have no idea what you can expect from me on here, so I'll share it. The first and foremost things you can expect on here are things about video games, movies, gadgets, music and computers. This is named Entertainment For The Masses, isn't it? As far as I'm aware, those are the types of things that are indeed entertainment for the vast majority of people, and that's what you can expect on here.