Titan Quest: Gold Edition for Windows PC

If you’re going to play Titan Quest, you might as well get the Gold Edition. It comes with the original game, plus the Immortal Throne expansion pack. The main reason why you should buy the Gold Edition is that the expansion pack makes you start the whole game over again because it incorporates so many new features. It does really improve the game, but not enough to make you want to start it all over after having finished the original.

Titan Quest is basically a Diablo II type game, but based on Greek legends. The script for it was written by Randall Wallace, who wrote the screenplay for Braveheart and also directed a couple of movies. He’s a history buff, so he lended to the background on this story. As far as the story goes, there isn’t a whole lot special to it, though you will get to meet King Leonidas, who was made famous in the movie 300.

You spend most of this game travelling huge open maps and killing everything. Combat is done by clicking on the opponent, then you keep clicking until they die. It’s quite simple, really. You will also learn a few magic spells and pick up some cool items along the way. While these all help you better fight things, the game never varies from being a big, pretty click-fest.

This is a very graphic-intensive game, so you’ll need a strong video card to get the full effect. I’m running a pretty high end machine with 3 gigs of RAM and an Nvidia 8400 GS, and the game still lags on me when there’s a lot on screen. I do have it set at the maximum widescreen resolution to fit my 22” monitor, so part of the lag is my own fault.

Graphically, this game does look really good, hence the need for a decent machine. Each character and monster you meet is animated, like in most games of this genre. What makes this game stand out is that the environment is animated, too. You’ll see the grass sway with the wind when you walk into fields. You’ll also see grass be trampled down as you walk on it. When you go out on beaches, you’ll leave footprints in the sand. All these subtleties make for a nice looking game, but it takes a lot of machine to make it all run smoothly.

The audio part of this game is pretty nice in that it utilizes voice actors whenever you encounter a new character, which happens at most every city. There’s a lot of sound going on during combat, but those parts can become very repetitive since combat itself is very repetitive.

Immortal Throne is an expansion that adds about ten more hours of play to the original game, plus it offers a whole bunch of tweaks to the menu system. There are new monsters to fight, new items to use, and even a new level of Mastery that lets you have new special abilities and powers. It is a good expansion, but I made the mistake of installing it after almost completing the original game. When it wanted me to start it all over, I was less than enthused.

The Diablo games have spawned far too many clones since gaining popularity, and only a small handful of them have actually been any good. Out of that small handful, Titan Quest is probably the best of them all. You should be able to find this Gold Edition now for less than twenty bucks at most stores, such as Amazon.com or Wal-Mart.