Torchlight

If I had to use one word to describe Torchlight, it would be "unsatisfying". I have never played Diablo, but this clicky click game sounds a lot like it, and what I learned is that I don't care for it as a genre.

You're in this town of Torchlight. There's some crazy dude down in some caves causing a bunch of hooplah because of some ember that makes him tetched in the head, and you gotta go down 35 levels of caves to get to the motherfucker because some lady said so. There's beasties on every floor. Mostly the same beasties...over and over and over in levels that all look pretty much the same. Click until stuff is dead and find the stairs to the next level down. Do this 35 times and you'll reach said motherfucker.

I tired so quickly of this game. It was way too grindy. Same shit over and over. Kill a bunch of shit, loot, kill more shit, loot, have too much loot, go to town and sell it, kill a bunch of shit, loot...until you reach the end of the game or you give up. I wanted to beat it, but it was like homework. There are some quests that I suppose are intended to add some variety but no... It's along the lines of go get this whosawhatsit ember, it's crazy rare. Then you bring it back, and they're like that was awesome, but what I'd really like is the whatsadingus ember, and so forth and so on until you find like 47 embers. It's very much the same with the kill quests. Hey, you should kill this one dude, he's totally the worst, and once you do, they're like, that was good, but this other guy...is even worster. It's dumb, and it's boring.

I'm bored.

When I finally got to the final guy, I was relieved because this hell was almost over. The last guy is quite a large beastie, and he summons other beasties, which are ridiculously numerous. I tried to be all tactical at first, but the longer you're around the guy, the more enemies he spawns. They despawn every once in a while to heal him a bit, which just drags everything out more. It felt like how arcade games ramp up the difficulty at the end by just adding more and more bosses so you'll continue to pump in quarters. While you're not trying to steal my money, Torchlight, you did successfully steal my joy. This was a ridiculous boss fight that I refused to participate in legitimately after a while. When you die, you have the option to pay part of the money you have in your inventory to return to the entrance of the level without losing any experience. I just pulled beastie over to the door and shot at him until I died, respawned, and repeated. No, it wasn't a very impressive win, but what's important was that this awful experience of a game ended.

Only it didn't end. The guy is dead, but embers are still fucking up things that I'm supposed to care about, and so if you want, you can continue to travel down further into the caves and Groundhog Day this stupid game as long as you please because the levels are procedurally generated.

No thank you. I'm going to go find something actually fun to do.