Grim Dawn - Preview @ Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Rock, Paper, Shotgun played the alpha version of Grim Dawn, and has posted a preveiw of the game.

This is alpha code, and just the first third of the game, but it’s enough to sate my need to finally play the thing. And gosh, that title’s appropriate. It is, mostly in the right way, grim. Dark, gloomy, and mercilessly tough, it’s the game I’m certain so many furious Diablo fans wanted D3 to be when they found out that had planned to feature colours. There seem to be two central pillars here: traditional, and difficult.

Which is a mighty good thing, I should add.

It’s extremely dark and bleak environments at first can look a little primitive, but you quickly realise the detail comes with study. Much has been done to the old Titan Quest engine, not least freeing the camera to rotate on the X axis, and you don’t need frills when it’s serious business. So you really already know what to expect: A Tetris inventory attached to a character sheet of square slots, basic stats embellished by a sprawling choice of skills, and hundreds and hundreds of monsters to left and right click all over.