Diablo III - Game Review

Induction Assignment - Games Review

Diablo III picks up the storyline of its forebears 20 years after the defeat of Mephisto, Baal & Diablo. The Worldstone has been destroyed and chaotic evil stirs in the bowels of Burning Hells once more. You, as the hero (choose from 5 individually distinct character classes), must acquire skills and abilities along with spells and powerful objects to enable you to combat evil, safeguard the world of Sanctuary and its randomly generated environments.

This game has a typical “Kill stuff, Get loot, Level up” type of gameplay style in keeping with its predecessors Diablo II & Diablo. Starting with Diablo, released December 31, 1996, which used ground breaking cutting edge graphics. This was the companies 7^th game release under the name ‘Blizzard Entertainment’ who were previously known and established under the name ‘Silicon & Synapse’. Diablo II was released in the year 2000 and was one of the year’s best games and by 2001 it was even competing for best game of all time. It took Blizzard another 11 years after the Diablo II expansion in 2001 to announce and release Diablo III, the long awaited sequel.

Diablo III is a dark and almost gothic RPG, it is the perfect example of an action role-playing, hack n’ slash, dungeon crawl genre. This kind of gameplay suits a lot of gamers including me, for some it is repetitive but it definitely has a unique appeal to each individual. Torchlight 2 and Path of Exile are the two main competitors outside the Blizzard Entertainment franchise. Having said this, they pose no threat to Diablo III’s outstanding 3.5 million copies sold in 24 hours (excluding the 1.2 million copies the current World of Warcraft players received as part of a one year subscription)!

Diablo III has definitely excelled on interface and gameplay compared to Diablo II, but what doesn’t, when it’s been just over a decade in development? The gameplay is spell-binding and challenging throughout. Whether you are in a desert with sweeping sands or in a dangerously dark and damp cave fighting for your life against its inhabitants you will be totally immersed. The interface has evolved to allow a much more user friendly interaction with the game and its characters, putting the player firmly in control.

On the down side, ever changing loot patterns on items makes it a grind to succeed. That alongside the internet connection requirement in single player mode might be the games Achilles heel. Nevertheless, stunning 3D graphics enhanced with superb visual effects and custom in-house physics combined with a Wagnerian score composed by Russel Brower mean this epic fantasy is a sure-fire hit.