Teleporters like these will keep you from pulling your hair out.
Dungeon Hunter: Alliance also supports the PlayStation Move. Chief Puleo tried it out and this is what he had to say: "Basically the Move acts as a mouse cursor, with a big arrow on the screen showing the direction it's pointing. Holding the trigger has your character follow it and the Move button is your primary attack. This combo makes it a bit uncomfortable to move and attack at the same time. Alternatively you can 'waggle' the controller to interact or attack, but really you're wrist is going to get tired pretty quickly unless you've had a lot of practice. Overall the controls work, but I didn't find them ideal, I'd much rather just use a controller."
The co-op is awesome. There, I said it. This is how co-op should work in dungeon crawlers. I, with the help of Jason, Nick, and my wife, put Dungeon Hunter: Alliance through it's co-op paces. You can play with four people locally. You can play with four people online. You can play with any combination of the two. Nick could host a game, then invite Jason and I to join. My wife only had to push start on the controller and she was right there with us. The host can manage players, choosing to leave the empty player slots public or private. The host can also kick idle players. The only drawback I found was that even online, everyone shares a screen.
You can get the Mage's Ice Beam early, and it is mighty.
You can play with your character both locally or online. All loot and gold you pick up stays with your character. Loot is dropped in a round robin selection. Each character is designated by either blue, red, green, or yellow. When loot drops it can only be picked up by a player assigned the same color. The drops aren't class based, so your super strong warrior may get a bow that is useless to him. That's okay, just ask the rogue to trade whatever two handed weapons he may have in the inventory. The game scales both enemy difficulty and loot to the number of players accordingly.
Quest progression is handled simply enough. If you join a game that is in the same Act as yours, you get quest credit for whatever you accomplish. If you join a game that is at an earlier part of the game, you'll earn quest progress once that game catches up with your own game. If you join a game that is beyond your story progression, you don't advance your own story. When you return to your game, your story will be right where you left it. You will keep all your loot, gold, and XP, no matter what game you join. Dungeon Hunter Alliance has an fantastic "Help" menu that explains all of this thoroughly.
I'm well aware of the difficulty gamers are having joining friends game. The "spam the 'x' button technique" worked easily for us, and I have the reflexes of middle-aged recovering alcoholic. It's an easy solution, so I won't slight the game for it... much.
With 12 Acts, a level cap of 75, great co-op, and a $12.99 price tag, ($9.74 for PlayStation Plus members) this game is a great little PSN Diablo clone. Dungeon Hunter: Alliance will scratch your dungeon-crawling/co-op itch.
Verdict
Co-Op Score
Overall
The Co-Op Experience: Four players choose and customize their own heroes.
Co-Optimus game reviews focus on the cooperative experience of a game, our final score graphic represents this experience along with an average score for the game overall. For an explanation of our scores please check our Review Score Explanation Guide.