FutureFive New Zealand - Consumer technology news & reviews from the future
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Sat, 1st Jul 2006
FYI, this story is more than a year old

From the co-creator of Age of Empires, Titan Quest is an all-new RPG set in the mythical worlds of ancient Greece, Egypt, Babylon, China and Mongolia (phew). With fast action, and familiar elements from RPG fame, Titan Quest is a visually pleasing title that offers 8 ability types, a flexible class system, tons of unique skills, and over a thousand pieces of equipment to help you slice, dice, hack and slash monsters while on your way to defeat the Titans. A strong storyline centred on the return of the Titans, and the release of demonic gods (such as Medusa) back into the world helps to set the scene for your quest into the unknown, and it is up to you as the hero to stop their sinister plans.  Before I go any further, I would like to point out Titan has a lot of similarities with Diablo and this I think, helps to make this game a winner.The character skill development is very typical of other RPG’s - you have your primary and secondary class abilities.  I made a warrior/healer character - the best possible ‘Combat and Survival’ class.  I invested more points into offensive than into defensive abilities and it paid off for me. I was able to deal with monsters quite easily, dual wielding my weapons and using one or two special abilities. Titan Quest is a huge game and the skill tree reflects that as well. With the right hardware, Titan Quest is, in my opinion, the most visually rich RPG to date. Playing the game settings at 1600x1200 resolution with anti-aliasing enabled, the game looks simply stunning, with beautifully layered, varied rich environments, scintillating and eye-popping special effects, and beautifully rendered monsters that appear in a good variety throughout the game. The heroes themselves are not too diverse, but constantly change appearance once you put on different types of armour (as you would expect) and weapons. Overall, Titan Quest is an absolute winner for quality and fun. If you love RPG’s, then this title is a must have for any PC gamer. With the right hardware, it offers better graphics than any game in its genre to date and thankfully – decent camera angles and a really nice set of monsters that will sometimes scare you right off your mouse. Between the amazing graphics, the great class and skill system, plus the ability to play the game through multiple times locally on-line (with up to 6 players at a time), Titan Quest is a game that will draw you into the world of Myth for hours at a time, and comes highly recommended for purchase.