Incoherent Babbling about Torchlight and Star Wars

Still playing Torchlight... now at floor 22 and about 8 hours of play. This is easily the most enjoyment I've had from a game of this type since I first played Diablo II. Believe me, I've tried a number of Diablo clones over the years, but none of them have been good enough to even stick with (I'm looking at you, Titan Quest), much less be comparable to the original.

A lot of this type of game revolves around the simple pleasure of making your character more powerful and cooler looking through leveling and getting better equipment. There's an absurd amount of equipment dropped from enemies to the point where you'll need to send your pet to the surface at least twice per floor if you pick up everything. Only rarely do you find something useful or interesting, but the possibility alone makes it hard to stop playing. 

I seem to always pick the Barbarian class in this type of game but I might be enjoying Torchlight enough to actually give it another run through or two. I like the idea of retiring a character and handing down a family heirloom so that there's a sense of continuity from one playthrough to the next.

I've also been watching some Star Wars again. My first experience with the movies was with the VHS Special Editions and I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I've never seen the theatrical versions at all. I guess because I grew up with the new editions, it was a lot easier to fool me with the line that this is how the movies were always meant to be. But the older I get, the more embarrassed I am watching some of the lamer changes and additions.

And while it was nice to finally watch the trilogy again in DVD quality, things of course got even worse, such as the face palm inducing decision to insert Hayden Christensen into Return of the Jedi's ending.

I'm not a prequel trilogy hater. They aren't great movies, and there are parts of all three that are downright terrible. But I am fond of several parts of Episode III and the existence of the whole PT is not a major problem for me. The problem is just with trying to force the two trilogies to fit together into a coherent story when they can never possibly do so.