Diablo III Review - Samson089

I would like to preface this discussion with the understanding that like a lot of children, I started by video game journey on the N64 (because it was awesome!). I then walked into the computer room of my friend’s house and saw his older brother playing a game I had never seen before. I felt like a crack addict, hanging out in the shadows, itching, salivating at the mouth waiting for someone to leave the room, so like a thief in the night I could swoop in and taste this adventure for myself. This game known as Diablo II became my first real pc love after I realized that Heroes III was only in it for the one and done.

Diablo 2 and I were in love; spending all days and nights possible together. There was never an adventure or rush quite like that. Even when you face your first tough foes like Blood Raven or Andarial, I couldn’t just pick up the keyboard and throw it across the room screaming like I would with a system controller, I just wanted more. D2 loved me gently and rough for hours, sometimes for days on end. Even leading up to the new Diablo release I would often boot up the game to get my Diablo fix. This game brought out the best and worst, eventually leading me to the dark addiction that is WoW for the fix I needed left from the void that was my existence based around D2.

If it isn't entirely clear at this point that I loved D2, then please reread with that new found understanding. Additionally, if you haven’t been able to realize that I exaggerated the above to drive a point of how awesome I thought the game was, then maybe again you should consider rereading.

So those of you familiar with this series will undoubtedly know all about Blizz and Blizz North. For those of you who don't wth I’m talking about, Blizzard North used to be called Condor before being acquired by Blizzard just before the release of the original Diablo. Blizzard North released a few years later the Diablo 2 title which saw far more success. Years passed, and I longed for the touch of the Diablo adventure which Blizzard had been promising for years, but still nothing came along. Finally Blizzard dealt the final blow, closing down Blizzard North which was the architect for the two installments of the Diablo series. WTF Blizzard? Oh so they were going to make it themselves in house? What do they know about awesomely-amazing game franchises? So needless to say, there were some people who were very skeptical about the quality and flow into the new game.

12 YEARS LATER...... >_< fml..

Blizzard released the Beta, and then the full game as is normally the case, and I walked into the game slightly skeptical. I entered the game and was first impressed by the graphics but pissed off that the computer I had at the time couldn't run the game. So after the 12 years of waiting D3 decided to give me a big middle finger. The messed up part is that WoW had no problem whoring itself out to my system, but I guess D3 is too good for that nonsense. After I FINALLY was able to play on a different computer I was ready to dive in and drop off the social map for a few days.

You end up running into some old friends like Cain from the previous games, as well as the crazy psychos he calls family. You'll also realize right away that the combat is quite different from the way it was in D2. Like the WoW games, there is a cast-bar type system that helps with combat and replaced the potions of D2 with a casting bar. You can assign special abilities to the left and right buttons on the mouse, and 4 separate abilities corresponding to the numbers on your keyboard 1-4. Through the game you can get new abilities that then have individual upgrades to each of the abilities.

To give you a hint of what the game and gameplay resembles, remember it's made by the people who make a name for themselves off a game called "War of Warcraft" *wink* *wink*. This game is a WoW-esque with a Diablo twist, so there are the nuances like skills in jewel crafting and blacksmithing that seem almost bridged directly from WOW with a whole lot less elves. If you're anything like me, then you would totally whore yourself out for gear that is shinier or maybe has some sort of colored glow to it. There are tons of equipment to be found, but the best that you'd want to keep generally comes after the bosses or elite units are killed. Other than that you just find yourself being thrown junk with the kill of each random mob, with better gear coming with the kills of elite units. On a good note, there are sets of gear you can find if you’re into that sort of thing.

Pertaining to the gameplay, they added a feature where you can see how much damage you do with each blow, showing the numerical value overhead the mobs. You can still party up with friends online and see the little text box in the upper part of the screen say something like "the forces of Diablo have grown stronger", but there isn't an area where you can just run into everyone else playing on that particular server. The best thing to running into a stranger is creating a game and leaving it open so some random person can join, or joining someone else’s game. I wish D3 had more tutorials along the way to teach you how to do things like customize different aspects of your character, but the tips were often few and far between. Something that got quite annoying is that it was tough to keep your character in place while in combat unless you held the shift button to keep them stationary.

The game is littered with features in the environment that you can interact with, like a stone brick wall that is being held up that you can interact with to collapse as a horde of zombies walks by it crushing them, or a chandelier you can unhook to fall on your enemies. However awesome that is, you begin to find those type of things grow scarcer along the way. If you like destructible environments, there is some of that as well. This Diablo serious continues the option of being able to explore huge areas because there is a lot to find including the ever elusive cheevos for things like exploring all the areas and dungeons (for those achievement whores out there, you know who you are). The bosses were a little different than in the previous game. There might be times where you walk into a boss dungeon and get your face murdered off because you tried killing the boss like you tried to kill everything else, but it doesn’t work that way. A lot of the bosses you might have to develop a new strategy to defeat instead of the "run in and hope you can slash quickly enough" method *patent pending* I developed at a young age to defeat the bosses of Diablo 2.

The story is where the game took a big hit for me. Yes, I was able to accept some of the features that reminded me of WoW and not so much of Diablo. Sure I got over seeing Cain die *spoiler alert* after years of identifying shit that I couldn't use anyway. Yes, there is one story line to defeat Diablo, but I just couldn’t get into it with all the little side missions you have to go on that really are just leading you through the main story line; kind of a "there you go of on your own path, and here you are right back on the real path that you were on the whole time" kinda thing. It might have done something with the game just being super short in my honest opinion. I felt like by the time I was ready for a challenge because I had finally gotten my hands on some good gear, gotten a full grasp of how to fine tune my character (because there were no freaking tips along the way) the game was like "Oh hey there, time to play against Diablo and the mini bosses that lead directly up to him before the game ends!". I would say the length kinda felt like going up to half way thru the 3rd act in D2, BUT THERE'S GOOD NEWS! As soon as you beat the handful of mini bosses directly before the new and improved Diablo, and kill diablo, the world is saved, and all is as it should be, until you realize that all the game has left is to stick you right back through the same story you just played with the only real reward being some more levels to gain, some more abilities, and access to better gear.

The bosses were pretty cool and unique (even though kinda OP at times), and so were some of the levels. If I had to play the game again, despite a lot of the game resembling a WoW type game and not-so-much a Diablo game, I would. I would have to give the game about a 7-7.5/10. I really liked how Diablo was a series of games all to its own, but now it's kinda like a brown horse (WoW) painted with stripes and called a zebra (Diablo). Yes, it looks cool, and totally isn’t exactly WoW, but let's face it, it's still a fucking brown horse, from the people who sell brown horses, with black and white stripes and expected to be taken as a horse entirely of its own. I would suggest trying the game out, because it is entertaining, but don’t be surprised if you're let down in certain areas. RIP Blizz North.