Want to relive the glory days of Diablo2? Feel like hacking & slashing? These are the top 6 Diablo Clones.

6. Dungeon Siege

“You begin as a humble farmer, and as you travel through the world and gain new skills, you can gather a party of up to eight characters to aid you. Dungeon Siege impels the player into one over-the-top battle after the other as the storyline unfolds and a larger plot begins to reveal itself.” – Official Site

Dungeon Siege is Microsoft’s take on Diablo, extremely pretty graphics but not much gaming depth. When released it brought together all the latest and greatest graphic developments and combined them into a seamless world, the musical score was equally impressive with the recruitment of BAFTA Award winnning Jeremy Soule to do the scoring.

Although it’s a decent game the main problem is it feels too simplistic, as when I explored the world all I felt I had to do was click move and loot… strangely for a Hack & Slash style game I didn’t have to click to attack often, instead if any enemy came near my characters it would be auto attacked and auto pursued till it died, and if there was another enemy nearby my characters would automatically go and attack that as well, hence the highlight of the combat system seems to be occasionally pressing ‘H’ to heal when your health gets low.

Curiously though despite the lack of gameplay in Dungeon Siege it still feels like a decent game, and is worth checking out.

There has been a movie based on the game released, but I wouldn’t recommend watching it.
Dungeon Siege 2 is also out, worth a check but nothing really impressive.

5. Titan Quest

Titan Quest is the second to latest Diablo clone released, hence it wouldn’t be wrong to expect it to be able to use all the previously built up Hack & Slash games features and be able to expand upon them… but alas it didn’t.

Titan Quest like Dungeon Siege had outstanding visuals for its time, Titan Quest has also finally done the feature correctly of being able to see every item you equip detailed on your character, monster design is decent and you’ll find nearly all Monster’s are taken from mythology, although compared to D2 monsters they don’t feel as they have much personality(/difference).
NPCs are similar, but they all feel very generic and there is never really any connection between the player and the NPCs except for getting quests.

Although the game has a very strong opening it starts to fall apart just over the midway point(10-15 hours in), mainly because how unbalanced the skills are, some classes it becomes nearly impossible to defeat bosses without spending hours grinding, like if you try being a tank you’ll get into nothing but problems however if you are a ranged class or have a pet you’ll find the game a walk in the park.

Again despite how negative I’ve made it sound, it’s still a darn fun game to play, especially cooperative play with your friends.

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The sequel to the best flash Zombie Game is here! (…well it has been here for the last two months but this site is a bit behind) also shouldn’t the Last Stand 1 have been called the Penultimate Stand since it wasn’t really the last stand, maybe they could rename it! *ahem* anyway, the game rawks!!!

The Last Stand 2 picks up shortly after where the first game ended, except with the rescue attempt from the first game failing. Now you have to travel across the state through many zombie infested cities to get to a new extraction point, collecting new weapons, setting traps, meeting survivors and most importantly annihilating zombies along the way.

Although the zombie combat remains the same as the previous game many improvements have been implemented, including the ability to travel between cities, give weapons to the survivors and lay traps, plus of course a bunch of new weapons.

My only complaints are by the time you get the ultimate weapon there isn’t much left to do in the game and I had to crank the brightness right up to see what was happening.

Definitely worth a play

Casualty Tips:

• Go to Claysburg instead of Whister’s Grover, two automatic guns are found there.
• If you want to finish quickly you don’t have to go to Fort Tran… You can get uber weapons in Fort Tran but they are no use in Union City.
• If you go to Union City after the time has expired you get a nice little surprise.
• The Chainsaw is your best friend.

This article was originally going to be another top 5 but I couldn’t get the list down to 5, thus these are the top 6 RPGs to be released on the SNES.

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Already 10 days into June, where is my time going…

Casualty Gamer’s plan for the remainder of June is…

• Continue the weekly Retro Featurette
• To continue having 4 articles published a week(tis a bit wishful on my behalf, but if I could get another writer *nudge nudge* it would be easily possible~).
• Release the ‘Super Duper Secret Casualty Gamer Project’ by the end of June(again wishful thinking but a beta may be released), this project initially will be only be useful for Australians, although eventually if all goes well I’d like to open it up for other countries.

We’ve got lots of interesting articles on the horizon so I suggest hooking up to the feed.

Have a good one.

Ever felt like having a break from PVP? Getting sick of fragging your buddies? Well this is the all time best Top #10 PC Co-op games.

10. Hellgate: London

Genre: Roleplaying
Released: 2007
Max Co-Op Players: 2-5
Co-Op S.Storyline: Yes
Co-Op Ex.Content: No
Offline Co-Op: No
Subscription: Optional
MetaCritic: 70/100
Official Website

Hellgate: London is a cross between Guildwars and Diablo 2 although noticeably more like Diablo 2. Hence it comes as no surpise that this game was created by the same group of developers who created the Diablo series for Blizzard.

The core gameplay is basically the same as Diablo 2; exploring vast randomly generated maps, killing enemies and collecting loot.

Co-op wise, it’s always fun to go demon slaying with your mates.

9. System Shock 2

Genre: FPS-Roleplaying
Released: 1999
Max Co-Op Players: 2-4
Co-Op S.Storyline: Yes
Co-Op Ex.Content: No
Offline Co-Op: Yes
Update Required: Yes
MetaCritic: 92/100
Official Website


System Shock 2 is a very atmospheric, horror themed, role-playing FPS, which is full of startling and just plain creepy moments.

Having a buddy to help watch your back makes this game all the better, in SS2 co-op you can follow the single-player campaign with up to 3 allies. The only drawback is the item count isn’t increased for co-op so you’ll most likely be fighting for who gets the bullets and upgrades.

8. Baldur’s Gate 2

Genre: Roleplaying
Released: 2000
Max Co-Op Players: 2-6
Co-Op S.Storyline: Yes
Co-Op Ex.Content: No
Offline Co-Op: Yes
Update Required: No
MetaCritic: 95/100
Official Website


Baldur’s Gate 2 is based on the AD&D rule set, it has sold more then 2,000,000 copies and is commonly regarded as one of the best role-playing games of all time.

Co-op in Baldur’s Gate supports up to six players but ideally you wouldn’t want more then 2 or 3, because if the hosts dies it’s game over and you can only walk one 8×8 array away from the rest of the party. Although excluding its two short comings this is a great game to play through with one of the best story lines of all RPGs. As an added advantage if you and your friends have played through Baldur’s Gate 1 you can import your characters and continue playing with them.

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Use your zombie powers to unlock the mystery of your history. - me

Sonny is another turned based role-playing game, but this time with a storyline! The game play in Sonny is heavily inspired by traditional JRPGs, and unsurprisingly the combat plays a lot like the Final Fantasy combat system. Sonny is also currently the most popular flash RPG alongside Monster’s Den.

In Sonny you play as a zombie brought back to life, but lacking all your memories (tis a plot device). The game’s plot slowly unfolds as you progress, although linear and short it has a surprisingly good plot line, including fully voiced dialog.

Sonny has extremely high production values for a flash game, although I did a few a quibbles with it; there isn’t enough difference between the items, cheating, and the game could have been longer. Although all in all it’s definitely a game worth checking out.

Casualty Tips:

Also as mentioned before, it’s quite easy to cheat in Sonny…

Once in the game:

• Go to your inventory
• Select any weapon/armor in your inventory
• Click the options button (ensure the weapon is your cursor)
• Then click the Red background around the options menu.

Your cursor will revert back to normal and you’ll have all the stats added for whatever item you selected.

To start of the weekly Retro features here are the top 5 best NES RPGs to be released.

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Music Catch

Music Catch caught me a bit off guard, mainly because the preview picture didn’t catch my interest. However after playing the game I agree with the masses; this is a very nice game.

The goal of the game is to catch as many green and golden notes as possible while avoiding the reds one. The notes are released in time with the music, e.g when the music is quiet the game is easy but as the music picks up tempo and volume more and more notes pour out.

Although the game only has one level it is still definitely a unique and fun game.

The song featured in Music Catch has now been released for download, “Before Dawn” by Isaac Shepard, get it!

Rating:

Definitely worth a look

Play It!

For those of us on a tight budget, here are the top 8 best stand alone Steam games for less then $10.

8. Bullet Candy ($3.99)

“Bullet Candy is a fast paced, action packed shooter. Viewed from a top-down perspective, Bullet Candy allows for a true 360° shoot-em-up experience. With all of your enemies in view at all times it’s easy to see and, more importantly, shoot them into tiny little pieces.” – Steam Description

Bullet Candy is a very tidy Indie game, reminiscent and most likely inspired by Geometry wars. My only negative is that you are defaulted to firing all the time, although it makes the game unique I prefer choosing when I want to fire.

Although at only $3.99 it’s definitely worth a look.

Bullet Candy @ Steam

7. Geometry Wars ($3.99)

“Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is a old school style shooter, but remixed for the 21st century with next generation graphics and deep, modern gameplay. Playing is simple: you are a geometric “ship” trapped in a grid world, facing off against waves of deadly wanderers, snakes, and repulsars. Your aim is to survive long enough to set a high score!” – Steam Description

Originally a mini-game in Project Gotham Racing now Geometry Wars has spawned its own franchise with a spin-off already released and a sequel on the way.

It’s an extremely simple game; destroy anything that moves and don’t die, yet it is done in such a smoothly stylistic manner with vibrant graphics that it keeps calling you back to play more.

And again at only $3.99 it’s a bargain.

Geometry Wars @ Steam

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