Don't Click [Diablo's Claws]

Ah, Blizzard.  Love them or hate them, everyone has to agree, they have staying power over anything else.  The ability to just put out a game and it to just "be".  That is to say that a game they put out will probably still be played for quite a while, unlike other titles *cough* X Military FPS simulator of the week *cough cough*.

So it boils down to this:

I've been plugging away at Diablo 3 since it's closed beta up through recent, my character in Mists of Pandara beta is stuck due to a rather nasty bug that I hope gets worked out soon, and I'm in a writey mood.

It begins.

Game: Diablo 3
Dev: BLIZZARD
Platform: PC (Online only...)
Rating: 7 A witch doctor, a monk, and a barbarian walk into a bar...

I fell a little awkward talking about Diablo as a series.  To be honest, I never did play Diablo 1.  Nor have I played Diablo 2 pure and expansion-less.  On top of that, I never made it 100% through Diablo 2.  I've seen the cinemas and such, but never played all the way through it.  I think I got about 80% through before getting excited about another character and another build so I'd go back to square one.  One thing that sticks with me, it had one of the funniest loading screens ever... just cause I'd always yell out "AAAH MY FACE!" at just the right moment... If you've seen it, you know where.

Click for larger: Where do I get that sword?

I do, however, know the "feel" of Diablo and how it's supposed to emulate a unique sense of "place" if anything else.  That is to say, this over the shoulder looking from the sky camera and a toon that walks in an X axis that lays on a grid like an X and not like a + shape (you kind of stand and move in diagonal motions, never exactly straight.  You can see this if you try to spin your character around and make them face certain directions like forward and backward, turns out, you can't, it's 4 directions, and all movement is derived of these 4 directions).  It creates this unique feel of motion and movement of your character and all NPC's.

There is a lot more that goes into the "feel" catagory in this game.  The gruesome and rather grotesque monsters that made me zoom in and shudder when looking at them for the first time.  The dark scenes, the hellish levels, all very Diablo-ish.  They did a very good job with art.  It is pretty!  On a personal subjective note, I know they did a desert level in Diablo 2, so I wish they wouldn't use one in Diablo 3 and use this chance explore more unique terrains, but oh well.  Music, monsters, bosses, this game just "is" Diablo 3, and due to the distance between the previous and this one, that was a major concern of mine.

Click for larger: Bitches love fist weapons

Lets touch a little bit of the bad side to this game.  It did have a rather rocky beginning.  I think one of Blizzard's least smooth opening days since Wow v1.0.  The worst part about it in my opinion, was that they new it was going to happen before hand. A couple weeks before D-day, they were hosting an open beta.  During this time, they had the exact same problems.  Because the beta was so close to release, I'm guessing there wasn't much time to really do anything about all the bugs, log in problems, and most of all, the server issues.  They really should have hosted that beta either earlier than a week or 2 or pushed the release date a couple days to hammer the issues out for a smoother release. Either option isn't really that ideal, but at least most, if not all of the issues were taken care of within the following weeks.




Bugs are still quite rampant here and there in the game, but they ease up and become fewer and fewer as time goes on.  The AH, which has been strange and fun to follow continues to be online and offline at random points.  This still isn't Skyrim, so that's good at least.  I haven't encountered anything game breaking just yet.  Other then one of the strangest bugs with tooltips.  Apparently there must be some items that aren't fully in the game yet they can be link able in chat.  But when some one clicks it, the client can't even deal with it and crashes.  It sucks because people are using it to troll general chat.  Why that's kind of an issue, see below.

Click for larger: SUPER JUMP!

Most of the issues come from the fact that the game is Online Only.  Even in single player, you must be connected to the internet to play on their servers.  This poses problems.  Everything from crazy random lag spikes to 20-30 sec rez timers on single player in higher levels.  If their servers are down for any reason, you can't play your game you paid for by yourself like previous installations of the Diablo series.  Also this could have far reaching implications in the future as well.  You can't just hand a disk to your friend and be like "here play this", they have to get their own whole account.  You could be sitting in the same room, with 2 computers and you couldn't play together if only one or neither of you has the interwebs.  And if Blizzard goes away, or decides to take down the servers at any point, the game goes with it.  In turn, the players don't "own" the game they play.  Like any other online only game, it will only last as long as the company that holds the reigns deems it profitable... (yet no burial pire has been lit in the form of a pirated or emulated server for Tabula Rasa, may she rest in piece).

Click for larger: 7 sided strike is pretty boss

You are also at the mercy of patches.  One of the more recent patches has forced all players to auto-join "General Chat" at login.  Pretty much what that means to gamers, is that you are forced into wow trade chat at login.  And what that means to non-gamers is TROLL CITY BITCH, YEP TROLL CITY!  That and the crazy gold farmer spammers.

But enough of the doom and gloom.  Some more good junk.  Skills.  I like how abilities are done in this game.  You have a gambit of spells or abilities and from there there's a slew of "runes".  Runes not only do stat stuff, but they change the effect, look, and in a lot of cases the feel or mechanics of those abilities.  For instance, Witch Doctor has exploding frogs as a spell.  You summon a swarm of frogs that run out from your origin and explode where your cursor is (moving in random patterns in a cone).  One rune turns that into summoning a giant frog that eats smaller enemy NPC's.  And there's a whole other rune that makes it rain frogs on top of your foes!  The best thing about all of this, is that one list of spells or abilities isn't statistically more significant than any other.  It comes down to play style.  That is incredibly nice.  Something I hated in old wow, and now that I think about it in Diablo 2 as well, is that you got slammed into using a certain rotation or some abilities completely phase out older ones.  It sort of sucks because you become stuck in a numbers game.  For a handful of people, they like the numbers.  Me, I like to look good when I do things on epic proportions.  I don't care really how "effective" it is. .01% more damage or -31 stam or blah blah blah, hate that crud.  I want the spells to be most of all fun.  With Diablo 3, do what ever.  Any combo of whatnot can be made to work.  It's wonderful.

Quick one line note: The use of physics is super spectacular!

Click for larger: "Arise chicken....arise!"

The devs did decide to constrain the list by categories.  Which I really like in most cases.  Luckily, for the class(es) that don't quite seem to fit the category system, there's an option that lets you select where to put your own stuff.  Which is cool.  I personally love the spells that make you transform into things.  Like Wizard's Arcon and a special Witch Doctor rune....RUN CHICKEN (then) KA-BOOM!

And now we sing to the story.  Act 1 is good.  I wish they would have split 1 quest into 2 or 3 be cause it takes forever and goes through like 4 zones and if you have to stop for one thing or another, you have to start all the way back at the start.  Act 2 I'm pretty good with...other than the fact that SPOILER it takes place in the desert which feels like "been here, done that".  In act 2, you face a demon called Belial that's supposed to be "the lord of lies".  I feel there was a large opportunity missed to expand this game into more acts by making him live up to his name.  As it stands now, his 1 lie is pretty poor at that.  You walk up, punch him in the face, that's that.  Missed opportunity for some interesting story there, I feel.  Act 3 and Act 4 get shorter and shorter as you near the end.  Especially Act 4.  The last of Act 4 is pretty anti-climactic as well.  The ending cinema leaves a lot of questions and open ends (one of my primary concerns is "how the fuck do I get back down from here?!?") END SPOILER

Other than that, yeah, pretty solid Diablo game.  Well done.

Rating: 7 A witch doctor, a monk, and a barbarian walk into a bar...

--N00basaurus