Diablo III Review

Let's get right to it --

The first nine hours of Diablo III are boring. Specifically Acts I and II on the unskippable Normal Difficulty. It's too easy. Almost every monster can be beaten via the "Just click on them until they die" strategy. And the random events and near-constant loot drops and the achievements and even the coop cannot save it. Although there is the Hardcore (permadeath) Mode. Playing that makes every bit of the game thrilling, until you die (both in the game and then in real life).

But I'm going too fast. First: what's Diablo III really about other than being the fastest-selling PC game of all time?

It's about playing out your God fantasy, wearing the coolest clothes (called "loot"), and showing it off to other players. It's a four act, poorly-written epic, and you're the badass protagonist. Or at least one of them. Diablo III's designed to be an up-to four coop game, in which you can play as a male or female Barbarian (as in "Conan the Barbarian"), a male or female Monk (think the opposite of monks), a male or female Demon Hunter (think Medieval Terminator), a transvestite Wizard (think Wizard), and the Witch Doctor (think "person who  likes throwing dangerous animals"). These are the weirdos you can play as on your quest to save the universe from the ugly Lords of Bad. Everything you kill dies beautifully. Many things in the environment can be smashed.

Diablo III's not about story (which exists only so you can fight demons in exotic places). And it's definitely not about witty, interesting, deserves-to-exist dialogue. Blizzard has a strict "gameplay first" policy, you see, and they've spent five years making sure that their game says nothing special. Not that this should turn you off from their latest. The Diablo games were never about their stories.

Everyone already knows Diablo III is an Action RPG, a great grandchild of Rogue, and a Diablo-like. But not everyone agrees on whether it's best as a singleplayer game or a coop game. This assertion may seem silly; it's obviously a coop game, with its four-player cap -- best number for coop -- and its drop-into-another's-game-easily system (it's as easy as clicking on a friend's portrait a few times). But at the same time, it's not meant to only be a "coop game," because chances are you'll want to kill the final boss, on the hardest difficulty, by yourself (as well as with others). Diablo III is more like a drop-in action RPG. Coop only makes the monsters tougher, recommends teamwork, and allows you to play socially if you're chatting on Skype. You'll want Skype; the monsters won't let you take your hands away from the seven buttons. Well, the non-Normal difficulty monsters will, but you'll know what I mean when they lunge at you at sixty miles per hour.

I could discuss how ungrindy Blizzard managed to make this famously grindy series. Diablo II was famous for addicting players to killing the boss Mephisto over and over, in sad attempts to get the game's best loot, for no better reason than to, well, feel even more like God, in that virtual materialist way. Blizzard's saved the potential addicts the Mephisto fate by introducing an auction house and the fourth, final, super difficult Inferno Difficulty. The auction house makes it so you can spend money -- in-game gold or real money  -- to get good items. And if that's too time-saving for you, you can actually attempt to play Inferno difficulty, finding that even the "minor" elite monsters, are potential Mephisto-style pinatas.

Blizzard's also ungrindified the inventory screen and the healing system and the town portal system and the leveling up.

Gone is Diablo II's "Manage me lots!" inventory. The key fix is making it so you can stack dozens, hundreds, a thousand, one-square items in just one of your limited squares.

Blizzard did away with drinking healing potions by the gallon. Now there's a cool down for every health-filled bottle you down. Now there are God of War-style health orbs that might fall from enemies, with a big stress on the word might.

Also gone is the insta-town portal; that blue hole you used to be able to instantly summon which let retreat to town, away from the enemy. Now you must charge up the town portal. Enemies can kill you while you summon your escape.

And the no-going-back-because-you-made-a-mistake stat-leveling and skill-picking? Gone. The game does it all for you. One of the most addictive, time-consuming, ultimately pointless features from D2 has been streamlined out of your hands. Stats auto-level now, and as for your skills, you can simply switch from this one to that one whenever you want, providing you're a high enough level. (Also elegant: the level cap is 60, and the last ability you unlock, you'll likely find, is at level 60).

Also gone are the boring boss battles. Yes, I did just actually say that. Diablo 2's bosses were basically damage sponges who did a lot of damage. Diablo III's are that, too, but they have abilities that encourage you to dodge, plus they wait for you on proper boss levels, with fire that burns through the floors, and explosions, lasers, traps. And the bosses look great. Not most of Act I's bosses, sure. But yes, Blizzard's World of Warcraft-funded budget did wonders on most of the boss showmanship.

And if this sounds too overwhelmingly positive, then that's because the game really is excellent once you pay your 60+ dollars and your 9 hours of sedentary not-being-challenged. But don't worry, I haven't forgotten the always-online essentially DRM that the game requires you accept (even you singleplayer gamers). Do I think it's bad? Yes. But, depressingly, I'm not sure how bad it really is, despite thinking that I understand it.

The immediate badness of the basically DRM comes from the lag and the server shutdowns and the inability to play the game wherever there are the right outlets and voltage. Server shutdowns prevent you from playing or having LAN parties (remember those?) whenever you want. And the lag causes you to die in coop matches if you're surrounded by powerful mobs. This is especially bad for Hardcore Mode, coop players; it's like a bug -- a by-design, game-breaking bug -- that can separate you from your Hardcore Mode friends, with your level 60 dead and their level 60s still there.

Where was I...Oh yeah, the potential long term badness. Every big game publisher is waiting to see if we -- every PC gamer on the planet -- are willing to buy a DRM, non-MMO. And we are. Thus the fear is every big budget PC game will eventually have DRM, which will produce a less-friendly environment for mods and require that game companies' servers are running in order for us to play what we spent sixty plus dollars on. The word is "potential" though, because no one knows if the big publishers will say, "The customer's willing to pay more for less. Let's DRM them!" Or: "PC gamers were willing to accept DRM that time because it was Diablo III."

I agree with most that D3's always-online is more bad than good, but, I guess what I'm really trying to say is that it currently doesn't bother me. I just don't care about the vast majority of big budget games, since they tend to be either barely good or just bad, and thus I don't care if they go DRM. Plus, I don't really want to play much of Hardcore Mode with my friends; the more players in a game, the harder the average monster and the more likely I'll become depressed.

8/10


The review score was lowered from an 8 to a 7, due to the following sentence: In light of learning that Hardcore mode is best played by first knowing what the monsters will be like, a knowledge most efficiently come upon by playing the game in non-hardcore mode, I am lowering the Diablo III review score to a 7/10.

The review score was raised from a 7 to an 8, due to the following sentence: All my criticism regarding hardcore mode just died. The ideas were: one - many players will want their hardcore run to go as far into the game as possible, before they die, and then they won't want to play Diablo III ever again; I realized many players like being surprised especially when permadeath is involved; although it may make a sudden, cheap, permadeath more likely, it raises the tension even more. The other idea was about the lag killing off hardcore characters in coop games; well it turns out you can immediately quit; press ESC, click exit game, click "now." Character almost certainly saved.

Future Reviewy notes (related to this game) will follow here:
Act I (Normal Difficulty) Diablo III Hardcore Mode is Boring