
Diablo III
Diablo 3 does a lot right. The refinement of the skills system means I've been able to experiment with everything my Wizard has to offer in one playthrough. You also won't have to reroll your entire character when Blizzard changes the weight of a stat in a patch in three months, rendering your entire build nearly worthless.
The emphasis on cooperative play makes playing with your friends a lot more guided - when they join your game, they know what quest you're on and what they'll be up to. When they enter the game they can teleport directly to you by clicking your banner, and when they get there they can't run around stealing all the loot. Well, the loot thing might not be a good thing - but I'll get to that in a bit. The social aspect of the game has been enhanced as well; you add friends online, and then you can join their game at any time - and they can join yours. This means that if you've just beaten the final (twist) boss and you want to show off your 'leet' skills to your friends, you can jump in their game and drop mad damage on their enemies. Still, that's not always a good thing - but I'll explain why further down. The story is perfect Diablo, all expository dialogue and amazing cinematics. You journey all over the world as you careen towards boss fight after boss fight, visiting familiar locales like deserts and green pastures and dungeons (lots of dungeons). The plot isn't very good - there, I said it. Screw it, let's start there. Blizzard does some of the best cinematics in gaming - dare I say it, they're better than Square ever was. It's such a crying shame then that these cinematics are so wholly wasted on the most banal stories possible. I understand that the narrative in a Diablo game is there as a garnish only - it's not even a driving force because you all know how it's going to end. So I'm not exactly surprised that achieving 'perfect Diablo' isn't going to shake the world to its foundation, and I'm also not disappointed that it manages exactly that. I would have enjoyed seeing the team try a little harder, though. For example - and I'm just riffing here - maybe don't take us to a bright yellow desert, ever again. At 1am the only thing worse than transitioning to a bright yellow desert is knowing that you'll be there for the next eight hours. Speaking of eight hours, the game feels a little front heavy. I spent approximately 10 hours in Act 1, seven hours in Act 2, four hours in Act 3 and maybe three hours in the final Act. The worst thing is, I was so fatigued with the way the game works by Act 4 that the relative shortness of it was a welcome surprise. Then you realise the actual downside to this brevity - you have to start the game again in Nightmare mode. Nightmare mode is apparently 'the real game', but only in the sense that when you finish Nightmare, Hell is the real game. And Inferno is the actual real game - the one that Blizzard doesn't expect the average player to finish for months. I've got no problem with the core concept of Diablo 3 in this sense - if you didn't think you were going to have to spend a few months grinding out 'Frost Resistance' gear for your battle with [redacted] on Inferno difficulty, you clearly hadn't played a Diablo before. And if you hadn't played a Diablo before, here's the thing about Diablo - on the hardest difficulties you essentially need to build a very specific character or you're going to die. My problem actually stems from the front heavy nature of the game - you're going to be bored of the forest green hills of New Tristram before you ever make it to Hell difficulty because you'll have spent more than half an Earth day in them. The same goes for the eye-blistering canary sands of Caldeum, but you probably won't even hit double digits in time spent in Bastion's Keep and Act 4 before Hell difficulty (though, to live through Act 1 of Hell difficulty you'll probably need to farm Act 4 in Nightmare a couple of dozen times). Farming loot is a great way to segue back into something I spoke of earlier - the 'instanced' loot of Diablo 3. Superficially this is great - it was always rough when some jerk would steal the item you'd been farming for - but it indicates a larger problem with the game... the inherent lack of competition. The core concept driving people to play the Diablo games over and over has (almost) always been the chase for better shinys. Some people did it to have the best character, some did it to beat the toughest bosses... and some did it to show off to their friends. Ultimately though, it's been a quest driven by competition - the need for players to be demonstrably better than those around them. The clearest way to peacock around your fellow players was through Player-Killing (PKing) - hunting down other players and killing them. Usually you'd follow this by stealing all their stuff just to remind them of their place (and that you're a bit of a jerk) - but it was an important reminder for the rest of the game... items weren't 'owned', you were just renting them for a while. This impermanence increased the worth of items in the game more. The other thing which increased item value was the threat of never getting the item at all - the Free-For-All loot system meant that anyone might take your special sword because they clicked a bit faster (or stopped fighting the mob a little sooner). Instancing loot and removing the 'drop items' penalty for death diminishes the value of this loot significantly, because the only way you'll lose anything is if you drop it on the ground. The perceived value of loot is core to the concept of the game - so diminishing it devalues the game (though it probably goes some way to preserving friendships). Diablo 3 allows your fellow players to join you whenever you're playing - well, those on your friends list, anyway. As soon as they login they see a 'Quick Join' bar on the bottom right, which allows them to immediately enter your game. This is usually a good thing - you get marginally tougher enemies, but the appearance of another player outweighs this significantly. The cooperative experience of the game is enhanced as well, and if they're a good friend they'll probably even share their instanced loot with you. When you're doing a very specific thing - like say, farming the Bridge of Korsikk spawn so you can get the Gibbering Gemstone - it's annoying to have to explain this to them every time. "Hey, thanks for joining me - sadly Chiltara hasn't spawned so I'm going to have to unmake this game and do it again. You're welcome to join me again if you like, but fair warning - if the Icefall Caves appear instead of the Caves of Frost I'm going to quit out and remake again."
An annoyance you can't avoid is the lag in the game. My wizard is pretty specifically made - he outputs massive damage at the expense of survivability. He's geared to stand outside of the fight while others get in the thick of things. When I'm playing on my own, this usually means a lot of kiting - moving away from enemies and killing them off as I run - because they inevitably come after me. When the game lags out and I start warping, I typically die - and the game lags out quite a bit. It blows my mind to think that Blizzard - who at one point managed a global population of 14 million World of Warcraft players - have managed to fail so spectacularly at creating reliable networking for Diablo 3. The constant 'server maintenance', the North Korean level failure to launch attached to the consistent 400+ pings I get while playing make me wonder what they were thinking, exactly. I dread to think what will happen when the game actually has PVP gameplay in it - did I fail to mention earlier that there is no method to pit your character against another in mortal combat? I also wonder how this will affect Aussies in later difficulties, when every action counts. Belial was a tough boss on Normal (until I respecced my skills to something sensible) - I can't imagine what he'll be like in Inferno when my character teleports backwards due to network traffic. Speaking of the bosses, Belial and one other (the boss at the end of Act 1, who is a bit of a fun surprise, so I won't spoil it) were the only two interesting boss fights in the game. Most of the bosses follow a tired formula - you chip their damage down, they become invincible and spawn adds, you kill the adds and they return, rinse, repeat. Changes in difficulty levels have - so far - only appeared to give larger health pools to bosses, meaning that once you know their patterns you can beat them by simply taking a little more time (or doing more damage). Instead, the real challenge comes from the unique and rare monsters in the game - those with a yellow outline. These enemies have randomly assigned abilities, allowing them to always present a challenge. Lag or not, Fast enemies are a constant source of terror for me because I can't outrun them. Even in Nightmare if I want to beat a particularly hard-hitting Fast enemy I have to phone a friend (or recruit one of the companions). This means that finding rare enemies is often more fun than fighting the bosses - and because they can spawn all over the map at any time, it means that adventuring around the world of Sanctuary is actually more fun than playing Diablo 3 as a linear experience (as it should be). Ultimately though, Diablo 3 is a linear experience. Before I finished the game on Normal I'd managed to unlock all the active skills in the game. That is to say, from there on out I could create a build without keeping in mind the fact that I'd eventually change what I was using. To borrow a term from World of Warcraft - I could create a rotation (or at least a system of skill priorities). On my left mouse button I have my permanent backup attack - Forked Lightning Electrocute. It arcs to multiple enemies, which makes it a perfect attack to finish off a horde of low-health attackers. One my right mouse button I have Chaos Nexus Disintegrate - a red beam of death which uses up my Arcane Power. Keyboard Number 1 has Diamond Skin on it - a skill which allows me to not only soak up all damage coming my way, but with a rune it makes all my skills cost less AP while I'm in Emma Frost form. Number 2 is my Arcane Hydra, basically a fire and forget attack which kills low-health mobs often before I see them. Number 3 has Force Magic Weapon - a buff which lets me do 15% extra damage. Finally, Number 4 has Arcane Destruction Archon - my wizard turns into a purple being of pure death, with a 40% buff on everything important. Except for when I find myself fighting specific enemies, this is basically the skill set I'll use from here on out. I have little reason to change any of this - even against Fast uniques I could get away with it once I get some items with some more Vitality. The best I have to hope for is that a new rune - modifiers for each skill - might encourage me to try a different skill. Where is the fun in this - in hammering the same buttons to the same set of priorities every single time? In World of Warcraft the draw beyond this is in the social aspect of the game - in a way, I guess this makes a little sense here too. Though diminished thanks to less worthwhile loot, multiplayer is also at the core of Diablo - as a series - so I find it difficult to hammer it too hard for its master server failures. It's inexplicable that it should happen, but it's difficult to claim that it ruins a singleplayer experience when the game is basically meant to be multiplayer all the time. Truly, I have had a significant amount of fun playing the game in coop, and everyone I've played with has been awesome. People share tips and hints on how to beat certain enemies, how to build a better character and how to farm for gold efficiently. They freely share items they can't use - I've had multiple people offer me items 15 - 20 levels over my current level just because they've outgrown them. Coop in Diablo 3 has been fantastic, and it's made me realise gamers are generally pretty cool people. Still, I don't know that helping others out is enough for me. A revealing moment for me came when I had just finished taking some friends through the mystical Whimsyshire - a care bear themed replacement for the Cow Level, designed to poke a little fun at those who said Diablo 3 was too colourful. We finished the level, having brutally murdered all the ponies and teddy bears, and we pondered what we should do next. All four of us dropped our banners, wistfully dreaming of duelling to measure our respective e-penii in the traditional manner... and then we all split up and went back to our own games. And in that case, my game wasn't Diablo 3. All told I've played 28 hours of Diablo 3 (according to the in-game measurement) - but this isn't the whole story. I've spent six hours not playing it - nearly a quarter of my time total. With no competitive multiplayer (except for the facile concept of a 'race to the finish line'), constant network related issues and what I feel is negative movement in terms of the 'loot' metagame, Diablo 3 in its current state isn't something I see myself playing any more. I've been to Whimsyshire, I've killed Diablo and I've stayed a while to listen to Deckard Cain. It's time to move on.
Comments
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Game Comment by Milamber
I've stopped playing D3 and I don't know why
6.5
Game Comment by Joaby
Irony is smarine77 accusing anyone else of acting like a child after posting 200 qq words because somebody said mean things about his video game.
5.0
Game Comment by Archangel
I have read dozens of reviews and I think
10
Game Comment by smarine777
I don't know about the rest of you, but I find this review junk. I didn't come here to find spoilers, and then apologies from the reviewer only to find that the reason he noted them, was because
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Game Comment by sirving42
The game itself is great if you can get past the developers consitant errors in patching each week, the downtime on Tuesdays while they bring the servers down for maintence during 6:00pm onwards Aus time, the lack of quality loot drops on harder difficulty settings. Game play out of 10 is 8. Having to rely on internet access to play a single player game with Group play option.
10
Game Comment by Khel
I'm pretty happy with D3 all round, everything I hoped it would be, can see myself playing for many months to come. _ _
Game Comment by 4saken
When will reviewers stick to reviewing what something is, rather than measuring their vision against a product, and then listing what something isn't.
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Game Comment by Smokinxp
well my take not reading every other comment is as such
10
Game Comment by grammamoocow
while i do agree with the review on a few points, 6.5 is way too harsh. i find it hard to take the author seriously when he has given such high scores to other games such as: MW3 9.5, homefront 8.5, heck even fear 3 got a higher score then diablo 3.
6.4
Game Comment by Krjal
First review I've read for D3 that I completely agree with. Pretty good writing too though I did spot a spelling mistake ;)
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Game Comment by Majic
An exceptionally accurate critical review. It expresses my sentiments exactly. These are the types of reviews we should demand, not deride.
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Game Comment by Banf
@Skillet37 you sir deserve a ban at least from this comment thread. But then again you have given the an excellently succinct example in each sentence of why comments like yours are not appreciated why, because they contribute nothing. Please just look at what you said for a second.. ok about a minuite and put it into context. Oh ok I will do it for you first sentence: Good Game excuse my paranoia but this screams troll given you have dug up the past I need say no more; it was two words, first sentnce. "Throw more at it" yes we get what you mean but surely you can elaborate here all i can make from your entire comment is you like it because it "keeps you occupied" how and why is this a good thing I am sure you mean this to be a good thing. "Call me stupid or whatever, but it's the best money i've spent lately, and relative to other games in it's price range recently..." I actually dont mind this comment its about the only thing I have heard about the games price tag and calling you stupid would be stupid in itself becuase I dont know yoy for starters. "While it had the "potential" to be a superb game...so do most games these days. Get over it." This last remark is why you should be banned. It started well and just ended. Well Floppily.
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Game Comment by skillet37
Good Game. 42 hours in and still expected to throw more at it. Call me stupid or whatever, but it's the best money i've spent lately, and relative to other games in it's price range recently...it does a good job at keeping me occupied.
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Game Comment by Hotcakes
Those people attacking the mods for removing their comments should know that other people can see their comments just fine, and you didn't have a leg to stand on in the first place.
6.5
Game Comment by Joaby
Sykotic - RE Comments disappearing - a bug in our comments system was doing that, this used to be for user reviews and we amended it to be for comments later. It's rectified now :)
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Game Comment by veector
@Joaby - I don't see my comments posted, so it's unreasonable to defend my comments unless they're posted. And the comments were not directed as "personal attacks". They were comments regarding the structure and quality of the review. I explicitly said, I don't necessarily disagree with any of your points. 9.5
Game Comment by Sykotic
I don't know how you're managing to reply to my post when apparently it's been removed (for reasons which I cannot fathom, as it was critical but not at all defamatory of you-- this action on its own is abhorrent by the moderators).
1.0
Game Comment by mursuvaari
Disgrace to video games. Blizzard surely knows how to milk the retards, and it's getting worse. Almost everything went wrong with this game. +0.5 for nostalgic sounds (though I'm not writing this review as nostalgic) and 0.5 for cool effects. If you bought this game, you should feel bad. I feel bad. _ _
Game Comment by gogo12121
I don't want to have a go at you or anything, I respect your opinion as a gamer and critic, but you can't review and score a game based on the concerns you hold for it's future.
10
Game Comment by 4kgrubmyrs
I bet if I go look at Diablo 2 which scored the same metacritic score as Diablo3 is scoring now and Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction which has one point lower than D2 and D3
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