gaming

Diablo III

Blizzard announced Diablo III a short while ago, and for once, I decided to actually check it out. Apparently it’s been highly anticipated, but take that from someone who prefers his nose buried in a word processor rather than a gaming blog.

My initial thoughts were along the lines of “so what?”. The gaming industry isn’t known for innovative games these days, focusing instead on creating an “immersive gaming experience” - buzzwords for “more graphics” and “less player control”.

As I write this, I’m watching the gameplay video on the Blizzard site. Here it is - just be sure to enter a birthdate that makes you older than 18, or you’ll probably get something less comprehensive.

Summary? Gameplay is much of the same, and it’s actually been made “easier”, which is another term for “dumbed down”. Everything is accessible via the mouse, and the item belt has been replaced by an ability bar.

They’ve invested a lot of time in making it look nice, too - water, shockwaves, fire and smoke are more realistic, the environments are much more detailed and flexible, and the characters look better, too.
I’m willing to bet that most of their money was spent on this department. “Innovations” like making your character’s abilities more accessible take about five seconds to think up, and maybe a minute to implement a rough draft of.

I’m hesitant to think of the hardware cost for this game. Their site doesn’t list the system requirements, choosing instead to “announce specific system requirements at a later date”. It’s probably going to necessitate a Vista-class machine, heavy on the RAM, CPU and graphic card.

Overall, I’d consider this game a step backwards for complexity, but a step forward in accessible playability - something that doesn’t stand in your stead when you’re faced with anti-violent-gaming lawsuit-happy parents. It’s easier and prettier to smash things now. That’s basically all there is to it.

For intuitive and engrossing gameplay, I’d go for DEFCON over Diablo, but given what I’ve seen so far, I’m sure the fans won’t be disappointed. Let’s just hope they can afford the gaming rigs.

Tags: blizzard, diablo 3, diablo III, games, gaming, imo, new release, personal opinion, roleplaying, rps