Titan Quest is an attempted reinvention of the role-playing hack-and-slash genre Blizzard's Diablo arguably established. Developer Iron Lore took it upon itself to take the successful design of Blizzard's bestseller and recreate it for this generation's gamers. Sadly, Iron Lore missed the mark.

The plot is interesting enough - the original Gods of the universe, known as the Titans, have escaped from their eternal prisons to wreak havoc on mortals and to overthrow the current Gods. As usual, it's up to you to save the day.
With the makings of a decent story it's a shame Iron Lore took the opportunity to evolve the genre pioneered by Diablo and tossed it to the lions.

If you're not familiar with Diablo, the formula is fairly basic - take one player and guise them as a fantasy character, equip them with weapons and spells and slap it all into an isometric viewport. Finally, send them through legions of monsters that may or may not drop some sort of fantastical weapon that's marginally better than the one they're using. This character gains levels while killing these monsters, granting skill points to spend to make their spells better. Repeat.

Titan Quest follows this formula to the final dot on the last 'i' of the design document and does little to improve on it. The only real difference is the setting, with Titan Quest based on a melding of ancient Greece and Babylon, with a dash of various mythologies, while Diablo is founded on Hell, demons and medieval fantasy. Otherwise it's almost identical, right down to the key combinations.

It's not that there's anything particularly wrong with Titan Quest - by itself it's a solid, if repetitive game. Compared however to what has come before it, TQ just plays like a wasted opportunity to forge new paths in the genre. The game looks gorgeous and is content rich, but it all seems pointless when the game could have been so much more.