Release Date: May 15, 2012
Genre: Third-Person
Action
Publisher:
Blizzard Entertainment
Developer:
Blizzard Entertainment
Diablo, possibly the only one of
Blizzard’s three greatest game
franchises that I had yet to fully experience, I remember delving into a
bit of Diablo 2 in the past but it really wasn’t much at all. I was far too
busy with Warcraft 2 & 3 and also Starcraft when the Diablo games came out
so I paid little attention to them as I was much more RTS focused in those
days. That said though Diablo has a lot in common with those games so much so
that it almost seems like an offshoot of some of the single player campaign
missions, the ones where you have no building units for the entire period and
you usually have one unit who is the “hero” or named unit which is usually a
different colour to the rest and you play through a semi-linear tunnel or
landscape triggering events. To be honest the style of gameplay I found it most
likely to be akin was none other than the Warcraft 3: The Founding
of Durotar campaign featuring the famous Rexxar which I managed to finish
for the first time awhile ago and do a quick
review. In this campaign you predominately played as Rexxar and a few other companions
while both completing quests, levelling up, obtaining new abilities and
collecting items in basically the same way as Diablo. Of course this style of
gameplay was also said to be introducing players to the WoW style of gameplay
which was to come out after it.
 |
| Diablo 2, never played it, but apparently it's still better than this one |
I must admit I fell in to peer
pressure to get Diablo 3, but now that I do have it, it is a great game to play
with friends. So far in my singleplayer experience of the game I have had
sufficient fun, yes sufficient fun I may sound like I'm going into this with a
lot of negativity though I think I’m just trying to resist becoming a fan of
how awesome Diablo is which is kind of hypocritical since I went from not
fancying World of Warcraft then trying it and realising it was the best thing
ever in the space of 48 hours. So of course I decided to get Diablo 3 and try
it out in the end I had made the right decision to wait since during the initial
launch the game went through quite a few
problems with its long list of servers errors some of which getting famous
by their own accord. But still I wouldn’t have tied to play it on launch night
or even day for that matter, I think the rule of thumb is to just not play the
game until at least a couple of days after it came out, I personally wait
a week or more cause frankly I can wait. I don’t think there is any game
I’d be so excited to play that I’d stay up late into the night to play, maybe
if it was with friends and we were drinking but we’d still be just adding more
people to the number by all trying to log on at the same time with the same
Internet connection.
 |
| Penny Arcade: Condensation |
I wasn’t expecting much
personalisation in the character creation and there wasn’t, this isn’t a
Bioware RPG after all, there’s not much in the way of character storyline as
you just simply create your character, view the initial opening movie, then you
view your very generic character classes opening movie I started out as a Monk
as I thought they looked pretty cool and I liked the idea of using my fists and
feet martial arts style. I soon found that Diablo 3 has a limited number of
abilities that you can use at any one time, two abilities are bound to the left
and right mouse buttons and 4 other abilities are on your action bar, which
pale in comparison to MMORPG’s where sometimes you have enough abilities
displaying to make an on-screen keyboard. For example for my right mouse button
I started with “Fists of
thunder” then got “Lashing
tail kick” for my right mouse button, then a level after that I received “Deadly Reach”
as an alternate ability for my left mouse button and in turn you acquire
different ‘runes’ over time to make deadly reach more powerful this is how the
mouse button abilities work basically one is straightforward hitting a single
direction (most of the time) then the other is more AOE based. The action bar
abilities like “Blinding
Flash” and the Demon Hunter’s “Entangling
Shot” are basically all round utilities to use at the right time. It’s not
overly complicated to play but does require a bit of general rpg type common
sense in choosing your items (which to keep and which to use) and which
abilities to use at the correct time but of course that just comes with
learning the game.
 |
| Character screen and my Monk |
The auction house is one thing I
myself could possibly do without, I’ve only dealt with auction houses in MMO’s
where they are obviously needed, but with a mostly singleplayer game such as
this, I don’t need the auction house whatsoever. I just think it’s an
unnecessary feature for people to wheel and deal, especially the ‘real money’
auction house which is basically a post similar to this
waiting to happen. I did feel a bit taken aback when my friends said that “you
buy most of your stuff from the auction house especially in the higher levels
as it’s so much better” I’d digress on
the higher levels but I really don’t think a primarily singleplayer game should
have to rely on an auction house to have the best gear and/or to compete with
other players.
 |
| Penny Arcade: Absolutely Not |
I’m now up to the 3rd
act and to be honest I can’t really be bothered anymore, I’m sorry to say the
game was only really mildly fun, the story was the only thing that kept me
going. The first two acts were good enough and pretty suspenseful but now it’s
all action just defending some damn castle and it’s the same old mass killing
of monsters and demons and I just can’t bring myself to play it again so I
don’t know how this review is going to turn out. For the most part the controls
were fine, I didn’t really mind having fewer buttons to press. the graphics
were good, especially the effects, . I enjoyed the storyline for as far as I
played it, the difficulty curve... well it was easy enough, I didn’t really get
very far but to be honest I really wouldn’t have bothered trying it on the
higher level, I enjoyed having followers
and decking them out with the best items I could and I enjoyed killing hordes
enemies with super kicks and punches and special abilities. I’d hate to say
this though but the whole thing just felt a bit too linear and repetitive, and
I know your all going to scream at me “Well that’s what Diablo’s about and this
is the first time I’ve played it and I haven’t even finished it on normal difficulty
and how can I say that when I play MMO’s like WoW and SWTOR”.
 |
| Your followers are quite useful, not to mention good company |
The fact that I haven’t finished
it on normal is because I couldn’t be bothered and have gotten bored and it
wouldn’t be any better at higher levels anyway cause it’d just be too hard and
also I’m not bored because of the easy difficulty, just running from one area
to the next killing demons getting loot, going back to drop off the loot etc.
The loot was also kind of a problem too, there was SO much loot and not just
white and grey crap there was heaps of magic blue stuff you had to sort
through, true it just meant a quick portal trip back to home but still I was
doing that about once every 20 minutes, maybe I just pick up too much I dunno.
I’m really trying to see the difference in my experience with this game
compared to The Old Republic, I mean they are MMO’s whereas Diablo is a Hack’n’Slash but you do
really the same thing in both of them. In both of the games you have a large continuous
storyline with multiple smaller storylines running through them, you fight and
kill enemies and bosses, you do quests, you get new spells and abilities, you
have followers/companions with you, you pick up new armor/weapons and upgrade
and enchant them or sell them, you have seemingly similar crafting skills and
interface’s and you level up throughout the game. Maybe what makes me prefer
MMO’s to this is the linearity and freedom of character. In Diablo you get to
choose what kind of fighting style/image your player is but you’re pretty much
stuck to going through semi-linear landscapes and caverns which really not much
choice of how you go about it, whereas in MMO’s you have a lot more freedom of
where you go and how you get there, you have more of a feel of being your own
character.
 |
| Penny Arcade: Recycling |
I think the main reason is that
Diablo as I said before isn’t an RPG it’s a Hack’n’Slash I mean it’s
got nothing in immersiveness, large gaming world, character detail and AI
compared to Skyrim,
and it hasn’t got quite the multiplayer element of MMO’s, that’s probably why
it doesn’t tick all the boxes in my list. It does somehow remind me of why I
didn’t like Magicka except that was even smaller still and plus everyone was
wizards, EVERYONE can’t all be wizards it’s just not right, agh it’s worse than
those games where everyone’s a Sniper, actually that’s not too much different
from the modern EA Battlefield games I guess ahah.. People tell me now that the
game isn’t as good as the 2nd one and I don’t doubt them. Maybe I
should have made the effort to play the second one more, I suppose I’ve never
played Sacred,
Titan quest or even
something like Dark
Souls, maybe If I did I would have known I didn’t like the genre, ah well I
needed to find out some way.
 |
| Sacred |
 |
| Titan's Quest |
All in all, despite my ranting
and whining about why I can’t enjoy it, Diablo 3 is still a solid game, it has
most of the things that good hack’n’slash game should for example:
- Fast-paced combat, lots of enemies of varying difficulties to plough though.
- Rapidly draining, rapidly regenerating stamina bar. Button mash and you get exhausted and leave yourself vulnerable, but pull out for even a few seconds and you can regain enough stamina to keep going. This further emphasises picking your spots well, planning your attacks, and backing up or dodging when things get rough.
- High stakes. Attacks are extremely damaging relative to health, which means if you screw up it WILL hurt. But unfortunately death doesn’t exactly have that much punishment to it really you just spawn back at the last save point and most of the time you don’t even have to defeat the enemies again.
- 3rd person view, with well defined hitboxes, so that different weapon ranges are important. This makes awareness of the battlefield, how close you are to your enemy and how rapidly you or they can close the distance, very important.
 |
| Man did you feel that? |
So for any fans of the genre I
would heartily recommend it, but unfortunately even playing with friends it’s
just not for me that’s all I can say.
JD
JD
Now I know for the future
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