If you've played Diablo 2, you've played Torchlight.

The game essentially revolves around the underground of a town called Torchlight, travelling through several floors beneath it, progressing from zone to zone. The gameplay mechanic is in the form of point and click / hack and slash, having a generic attack for left mouse click and a skill of choice on the right click, with other skills along the task bar. On the surface this may seem dull, but in actual fact it works really quite well and can be incredibly addictive.

There are three choices of characters, a barbarian who has the standard warrior attributes of any RPG, big weapons, flashy armour and so on, a Vanquisher, the only female character with a variety of ranged weapons from pistols to bows, and finally my personal favourite, the Alchemist. He is essentially the mage class of the game.

As I said before, this game is incredibly similar to Diablo 2, it was made by some of the makers of the latter and so this is not very surprising, it even has the same sound effects. However, despite the similar design, the graphics really do give this genre a breath of fresh air, with some absolutely fantastic animations.

Of course it does have additions that sets it apart from Diablo, such as the pet, a choice of a cat or dog. The best thing about this feature apart from the additional damage and customisable trinkets is the ability to tell the pet to go sell unwanted items in the town. This saves a considerable amount of time and keeps the flow of the game going.

A very useful feature is the shared chest in the centre of town, which allows transfer of items between characters, so if you find a particularly rare item for another character then it can be easily switched between.

Despite it's fun nature it does have a few disadvantages, most significantly no mutliplayer option which is bizarre considering how well this would work. However there is a multiplayer option being developed but this isn't due to come out for at least another year. The game can also become quite repetitive, following a pattern of weak monsters and then bosses until the end of the floor and then onto the next and it is quite easy even on hard mode. Despite these shortcomings, for the low price it's certainly worth the investment if you want a time killer or a modern equivalent of the diablo series!