Diablo III review

I made the wise decision that buying a hyped game right after launch was a financial risk. Eventually I was bombarded with trial keys for Diablo III from anyone and everyone I've ever known. The results of this trial are mediocre at best.

I started with the game download. Not a painful wait just a throttled 2mbps download. After about 2 hours the download was completed and I was able to create a character. 10 choices 5 classes 2 genders to each. These classes were the Barbarian, the cliche hack and slash type. The Demon Hunter, a mix between Rogue/Ranger and Van Helsing. The Monk, the healer type with martial arts skills. The Wizard, your typical caster. Finally the Witch Doctor, a caster type that seems to be a Necromancer of sorts.

I settled upon being a Witch Doctor and fired up the campaign. The cinematics are nice, the feel of the story was more vague and tired than something that I could feel inspired by. Then after the videos I get immersed in the starting area. Combat is just a simple click and hold of the left or right mouse button as you search out each target. Risks are minimal for any experienced gamer. The scenery reminded me of a mix of Starcraft and WoW. The sounds were what they should be I assume for a zombie killing game and the background music was just that, in the background and barely noticeable. Even in the starting stages of the game it felt like a rehash of an old game rather than anything new. Sure they put some new paint up and cleaned the floors but all in all it's the same old house we grew up in.

I encounter the first mission, it's pretty much straight forward, talk to so and so then get the mission to find an item and kill enemies on the way. This was nothing new or challenging, that is until the lag. Did I forget to mention that you have to be online to play the game even in single player mode? Well you do. This has it's perks for Blizzard but downsides for anyone who has low bandwidth, needs to be offline, or my fav, when the servers lag in general due to player volumes on the server. I started getting all kinds of anomolies such as infinite shooting until the server synced up again, or mobs that wouldn't move/die until re-sync. The game even boots you off if you go AFK for too long just like a MMO. Given all of this I did eventually beat the first mission. Yay me, now I get to sort my loot.

Loot is everywhere, just like a MMO. The loot isn't the bad part, the bad part is the lack of artwork. I felt like I was looking at a Win98 era loot table with less effect than Baldur's Gate inventory imagery. Speaking of artwork the animations are standard at best. Even Soldiers Heros of World War II had better animations and hit location tracking and that game is over 7 years old. Any location is a hit as long as you clicked the enemy in D3. A zombie surviving the attack as half a zombie is based on luck rather than shot/hit placement.

After this point I started losing interest and just treat it as any other canned hack-n-slash dungeon crawler. I felt like I had been playing a mod to the old Diablo II game or a watered down mod of Titan Quest rather than playing a new game.

Final opinion on my end is, it's neat. Is the game $60 + tax neat? No. Is it bargain bin fun worthy? Yes. Save your money and wait until it's $15 or less. If you want colorful gaming and a wide variety of items I suggest Titan Quest. The imagery is very nice, and you don't have to be online to play it, or you could do the polar opposite and find any MMO to play.

As much as I love Diablo II, I've high hopes for III. I bought a year of WOW for Elder Child, and one of the perks is Diablo III for free. Plus beta testing the game, beta for Mists of Pandaria, etc. Lately, though, I haven't had time to play anything that takes more time or concentration than Bejeweled Twist. Well, I did get up to level 20 in Angry Birds before I stalled out.

Anyway, Niclo, I seem to recall that you're a Diablo II fan as well, so I'm thinking I just read a more accurate review than most. Big sigh.

It's been a long time since I played Diablo 2 but it feels the same. Maybe I'm right, or maybe I'm jaded, or maybe I just can't fall into fan-boyism. If you got it for free/as a perk then it's worth it as it is fun. I just don't see anything new/fresh being added to the genre.

I for one will wait for it to be on sale unlike everyone at the office here. (I think I offended them when I said it was a mediocre game not worthy of my 60 dollars).

Even The Witcher 2 seemed a little flat, considering that The Witcher is my favorite RPG. In this case, there was some "fresh" stuff added to the game that made it hard to like. Top of the list was QuickTime Events. A curse of boils on whoever thought this was a good idea! I enjoy challenging gameplay, but most of my gaming is done late at night after a couple of beers, and doing these little quickpress keyboard drills isn't very much fun. Besides, I'm 60 for cryin' out loud! Rocks have faster reflexes than I do!

Thanks to a couple of SSDs blowing up in my face, I've restarted Witcher 2 a couple of times, so I've played the original version, the first major patch, and now the Enhanced version. Enhanced gets it right. CD Projekt Red really does listen to their customers, and upgrades are free. I can't disable QuickTime Events, but I can dial down the level of difficulty. Enhanced is the first version that correctly imported all of my gear from the first game, including Raven's Armor, Aerondight, and my Mahakaman sihil. If you don't know the game, that's rare armor, magic silver sword, and magic steel sword. The heck with startin' at the bottom!

All the same, I'm downloading Diablo III, since I'm taking a sick day today, I'll even play it.

Well let me know what you think of the game and feel free to point out if I'm wrong. I think I beat the trial campaign last night since I killed a boss and I suddenly got a pop up stating "would you like to buy the game?".

Hmm maybe I'm not the only one who found the game not up to par. Arstechnica review

So far, I've only played through the first quest, and I've found it far easier than Diablo II. In Diablo II, I never played a wizard (mostly a Necromancer, though I had a Barbarian and a Druid that I ran some), so I thought I'd start there. Well, even that entry level guy is extremely powerful.

Even when my Necromancer was like, level 35? 37?, he was always chugging Mana potions like crazy, because his offensive magic could deplete it in a heartbeat. Heck, my wizard seems to have limitless Arcane Power to run his spells, and the only limits I've found are the cooldown times for some spells. So that's a big change in gameplay. I died two or three times in the first quest, but just when I was careless or stupid and got boxed in by more monsters than I could kill. Otherwise, running away is always an option. So far, most of the critters are not very aggressive, so if you spot them first, you can generally blow the snot out of them before they get close. There is plenty of stuff to kill, so if you wander a bit on the way to your goal, you level up very quickly (at first anyway); I hit level 8 before I finished the first quest, and it was easy.

Haven't found any class restrictions on weapons and equipment so far, and I pretty quickly found a nice magic shield and a Superior Mace which have both been really handy. The Hell with that little Apprentice's Wand you start with; get a real weapon ASAP. It makes a big difference if you goof and let things get too close for comfort.

Character management is easier than Diablo II, as there is no longer a Stamina Bar to worry with, so you can always run. You no longer become Overburdened if you try to carry too much heavy loot; like most games now you just can't pickup more unless you drop some items, but there's no effect on your speed or stamina.

Actually, I've liked most of these changes, because the pace of gameplay is much quicker than II But, I haven't played enough yet to see how much the level of difficulty increases with new quests, and I have only just gained access to some crafting, so we'll see how it goes.

Nevertheless, for someone who isn't already a fan of Diablo, some of the gameplay is likely to feel a little dated, particularly the fixed isomorphic camera. Would I spend $60 on it? Probably not (subject to change), but then I don't get much playtime, my teenage daughters keep me broke and barefoot, so it takes a lot to pry sixty bucks out of me purely for my own entertainment.