So, several years ago (yes I'm old.. deal with it!) I played Diablo (originally on my Playstation, and then later on PC) I waged war against those oh so pixelated daemons for many a happy hour in my youth, When D2, and it shall for me always be referred to as D2, but for sake of reference, I'm talking about Diablo 2 and the Lord Of Destruction expansion pack; when this game came about I was more excited than a chihuahua on crack being told it's walkies time! my friends and I gored our way through that game like no other, and I could not even begin to hazard a guess at how many hours I played.
So, With the (at this point historical) arrival of Diablo 3 I became anxious of a repeat of sleepless nights and dungeon crawling, searching for that next weapon drop, or grinding a level for experience. Sadly I think I have been let down a little in that respect... Even the title of this blog points to one of the major flaws which was (now solved... mostly) bane to thousands of players: The game has to have an active internet connection at all times, even for solo play. For the best part of its early life players could not log in to the game and were presented with Error 37 .. So a game which cost players upward of £40 they couldn't play because of severe technical fault.
Diablo 3 presents a very simplified interface, indeed gone is any interaction based around character 'levelling' instead replaced by automatic character sheet adjustment and a 'single choice' .. and a choice that can later be altered if you so choose, of skill point.
The interface and game play has also been dumbed down or perhaps more politically correctly simplified with a meagre 4 action keys replacing essentially what was the entire row of player determinable action keys.
The inventory too saw a break down to a more basic role, now the player has one inventory which serves all of their characters, previously each character would have space of their own in which to stash stuff.
I could continue for several point more each detailing how the game seems to have been stripped down until only the required base parts are left... but lets focus on something more upbeat:
This is a very different game from Diablo 2, but, with a bunch of mates and several hours to dedicate to the game it's easy to get sucked into the world of D3... Even if it is stacked with reference to the previous games like some aged grandfather regaling for the 60th time about how he met the queen once. It does have its charms, but the character progression reaches a plateau all to quickly and game-play becomes quite stale.
All in all, a great fantasy romp, and as far as button bashers go, it's still got good merit quite frankly.. read the scores and my summary below I think it sums things up nicely...
Gaming Review summary:
Graphics 4/5
Audio 4/5
Gameplay 3/5
Features 3/5
Weighted Score: 64%
Disappointing and forgettable modern take on a game franchise which I had nothing but massive respect for previously.
