Dark Souls Remastered

More than a decade after its original release, it’s still impressive how much Dark Souls has influenced gaming. Dark Souls Remastered is a fairly straightforward enhanced edition, providing a 60 FPS frame rate, higher resolutions, and improved lighting and alpha effects among other minor improvements. But the core of the title, from the excellent pacing and pitch-perfect design, the madness of levels like Sen’s Fortress and Blighttown, and the wonder upon finding Anor Londo remain to this day, as does the solid combat and boss design.

This week’s free games – or rather, game – on the Epic Games Store has been revealed. It’s Runic Games’ Torchlight 2, one of the more well-received action RPG looters in the past decade. To claim and keep it forever, you’ll need to an Epic Games account but you must do so by July 23rd.

Torchlight 2 is a big step-up from the original with more classes, larger areas, a more intricate end-game and more complex combat. The story focuses on a quest to defeat the Alchemist and takes players across a variety of locales, from jungles to deserts and caves. Along with a variety of loot to collect, players also have pets that can assist during combat and even sell off excess items back in town.

The Torchlight series has seen a resurgence with Echtra Games’ Torchlight 3 which recently launched in early access. It hasn’t been well-received but the development team is working hard on improvements. As for the Epic Games Store, next week’s free games are dungeon crawler Next Up Hero and adventure game Tacoma.

DESTINY 2 

Destiny 2 didn’t start out in the best of shapes, especially considering all the potential the series had after the improvements Bungie had made to the first game with post-launch support, but of late, Destiny 2 has become an extremely compelling experience. It’s teeming with content, and the launch of Forsaken last year saw the game living up to much of the potential it always had (finally).

Torchlight 2, the action-RPG sequel, is getting ported to consoles thanks to the talented people at Panic Button. They are also giving us a bit of a peek behind the curtain, so to speak, about the porting process (they’ve ported a lot of high profile titles, such as DOOM, to the Switch). Also, we may have gotten a hint at a Switch revision?

In an interview with Game Revolution, Dan Hernberg, Head of Production at the studio, talked about the porting process. He said the company has no issue being known for porting games, and in fact thinks it’s a great position to be in, as being known for a specialty means they are someone high profile developers can come to without a lot of need for directions or instruction.

“This is why people come to Panic Button; it’s our bread and butter,” he said. “What we try to do is take great games that other people have made and we try to honor those games and when we bring them console. We don’t just [do a one-to-one port].

“I think porting has a bad connotation. When we port a game, we try to think of what the people who made this game were trying to do. If Runic put this game on console today, what would they do and what would they add? [We do this] instead of just saying “Here’s a game, let’s just copy and paste it.” A lot more of our work is not just trying to get the game running but trying to get the game to feel like it was made for the consoles in today’s generation with achievements and friends and all those other things that you just don’t think about. A game like Torchlight 2 that is that old, none of those concepts exist in that game.”

It’s an interesting read for a section of game development we don’t hear from a lot, but Hernberg says something particularly interesting when asked about a Switch Pro, a long rumored revision of the system that will be more power-focused to contrast with the recently announced Switch Lite– or maybe I should say it’s what he doesn’t say when the interviewer asks him if it thinks it’d be cool if there was a Switch Pro.

“Um… no comment,” said Hernberg. “You’re welcome to speculate. I’ll just drink my coffee.”

Whether he’s taking the piss with us or not remains to be seen. Either way, Torchlight 2 is now available on PC, with a release coming for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Switch on September 3rd. The first game in the series is also available for free on PC on the Epic Games Store until July 18th.

While Path of Exile is the more popular dungeon crawling loot-based action RPG, Torchlight 2 was pretty popular back in the day, too. And now, an entirely new audience gets to enjoy it, when it comes to consoles later this year.

Panic Button, the maestros behind impossible Switch ports such as the upcoming Wolfenstein: Youngblood, have announced in a press release that later this year, they will be bringing Torchlight 2 to Nintendo Switch, PS4, and Xbox One as well. The console version will have “enhancements”, though those specific enhancements are presently unknown. We can at least hope for a good control scheme for the game, something like how Diablo 3 works on consoles.

Torchlight 2 will have to contend against Diablo 3, which is available on all these consoles, as well as Path of Exile, available on Xbox One, and newly launched on PS4. Like I said though, Torchlight 2 is a pretty good game, so I do see it catching on.

EA has announced a brand new addition to the Origin Access Vault and it’s another non-EA game – Runic Entertainment’s awesome ARPG Torchlight 2. The service now boasts 16 titles in its Vault which includes Battlefield 3/4/Hardline, Plants vs. Zombie: Garden Warfare, Dead Space 1/2/3, Dragon Age: Inquisition and Need for Speed Rivals. The other non-EA title in the Vault is This War of Mine.

Origin Access is available on PC for $5 per month and is essentially the equivalent of EA Access on the Xbox One. This means you get access to a selection of games for free in the Vault, early access to major EA titles (up to five days early and with 10 hours of playtime) and 10 percent discounts on digital Origin content. It’s not a bad deal all in all, though it currently lacks a yearly membership like EA Access.

What are your thoughts on Origin Access’s growing library? Let us know in the comments below.

Isometric action RPG title Torchlight is available for free. No, seriously. It’s absolutely free. All you have to do is head to the Arc Games website, install the Arc client and you’ll be able to download Torchlight for your own personal play. The best part is that once you get it, it’s yours forever.

The sequel Torchlight 2 is also available at a low price of $5. The sequel adds many new elements including co-op play, a brand new story and campaign and many other goodies. This deal will be valid until November 30th though.

If you haven’t heard of Torchlight, then it’s best described as the alternative to the Diablo series. Much like Blizzard Entertainment’s action RPG, you’ll choose a class, roam the world completing missions and earning sick loot, slotting gems into said loot and just clicking until your fingers go numb. And yes, it is addictive.

Will you be picking up Torchlight and its sequel? Let us know in the comments.

Runic CEO Max Schaefer stated that, “We are overwhelmed by the reception for Torchlight II. To hit this milestone is a testament not only to our dedicated development team, but also to the greatest, most positive gaming community I’ve ever seen.”

Runic president Travis Baldree also stated that the Torchlight community played a big part in improving the game and staying active since the game’s launch. “It wouldn’t have been possible without you, and we’re humbled and grateful at your response.”

The original Torchlight managed to sell 1 million units but reached this target after 2 years. This means that the sequel has managed to sell twice as much in less than half the time. Check out our review of Torchlight 2 here to learn why it’s one of the best hack and slash, loot-collecting games you’ll ever play.

Runic Games just announced that its action RPG, Torchlight 2 has now sold over 1 million units since its release in September.

Having drawn so much comparison to Diablo 3 got Torchlight 2 a lot of attention. That and the extremely positive feedback of the game definitely must have helped with these strong sales.

When we reviewed Torchlight 2, we gave it a score of 9/10. We praised the game for the abundance of content it offered and its beautiful art design, but criticized the iffy netcode and the lacking technical visuals.

Our review says: “Runic Games haven’t tried to be over ambitious here, they’ve improved upon the original’s failings, and have crafted a fun game you and your friends can enjoy for a long time.”

You can read our full review through the link above. Stay tuned for more updates.

About the game (from Wikipedia) :

Years after the end of the original Torchlight, The Alchemist (playable character in the first game) gets corrupted by the Ember Blight coming from the Heart of Ordrak, the evil being who had been the source of the corruption under the town of Torchlight, and then destroys the town. The player character takes on a quest to stop this villain, who is using Ordrak’s power to disturb the balance between the world’s six elements. As the game progresses, the player treks across large geographical areas, corresponding to three “acts” of the story and an epilogue. Act I is set in the mountainous Estherian Steppes, and Act II takes the player to a desert known as the Mana Wastes.

***Please note this walkthrough was not uploaded by GamingBolt.com.

Special thanks to Youtube user DanBamPow for uploading this walkthrough.