threevue

I was just as ready to blow off the news of Diablo III as Russ was when I first heard the announcement. But then I thought back to the heady days of 2000 when I was 18, my friends and I would work all night in a hot restaurant, chow down on a stolen prime rib dinner, get an older server to buy some beer and we would all retire to their house for some LAN-Tacious Horadric Cube cook-offs. I’m talking gibberish now aren’t I? No matter. It was a different time and place. But I can’t say I understand if some won’t play this game just because of its angle at which the screen is shown. That’s like not playing Half-Life 2 because of the controls in the few driving segments!

I never played the first Diablo, and when I saw a friend playing the sequel I thought what everyone thinks when they see Necromancers casting spells and Paladins upgrading their broadswords… “This game is for fucking nerds.” Basically, this game was WoW before WoW and ‘intelligent online multiplayer experiences’ were household phrases. If you wanted to play with another group of people, you were going to have to put in the phone number, hear the squealing of the modem and find them in the world.

It was tedious, it was repetitive, it was hard work and in the end it was an epic game to say that you finished.

Check it out below and see why.

Story

The opening cinematic is what hooked me into playing his game. It came at a time of Pokeman and Banjo-Kazooie. To see a game get set itself up with such dark and cryptic imagery was a welcome change. I still remember the last words of that clip. “East… Always in to the East.”

Gameplay

Yes, you use the mouse to click and attack enemies, a lot. No, you will not get carpal-tunnel syndrome playing this game. It’s a computer game! You pay for the precision the FPSs get on the PC by paying with menus and a ton of clickables in other games. As for the gameplay, it was pretty involved, with lots of spell trees and differing attack strategies. The payoff for working up to a specific attack level was satisfying once you got to take out a boss and collect his jewels and weaponry.

You could hire mercs to assist in the harder dungeons and manage your stash of loot when you were back on safe ground at home base.

Audio

It says something that to this day I can still remember almost exactly the way Deckard Cain said his own name like an old feeble man. Coincidentally, he uses what I call the Hobo Voice from my own repertoire.

Graphics

Van Halen said it best “Change, nothing stays the same.” Currently, the visuals in this game are nothing to lose your head over. By today’s standard they pass the test by being tolerable, yet underwhelming and still better than Oblivion. Eight years ago, this shit was hot; I mean, it was the best looking CGI around.

So Yeah,

While it isn’t really my kind of game, I still had fun with it due to the multiplayer and the satisfying ability tree. I’m excited about Diablo III and will play any demo that they throw at me. And for the first time in a while, I don’t really think I want to see this game on any of the consoles… let’s stick with he PC, shall we?

RETROGRADE: C++