Diablo 3 Review

So, I have to admit, I was not that excited about Diablo 3. I had played a lot of Diablo 2, the original. I hadn't really played the expansion. But I had lost countless hours of my 7th-8th grade years doing Mephisto and Diablo runs on Nightmare and Hell. Those were great times. But I wasn't sure I wanted to repeat this whole experience. I figured, how could a game that was more or less the same game be fun a second time around? I played Torchlight earlier this year and got pretty far into it. I got close to finishing it, but not all the way. It honestly got kind of repetitive after a while. It was literally just going deeper and deeper into the dungeon. You never came out and went to a different place. The environments changed, but you just kept going deeper. Regardless, I enjoyed it, but I wasn't super pumped to play Diablo 3 or anything. I knew the internet was though.

However, when my friend Marc decided that the game would be more fun if played with friends and offered to pitch in to buy it for me, I was hesitant to say no. "I mean, it might be really fun with friends", I contemplated, so I decided to take him up on his offer. And boy am I glad I did. This game is the most fun  I've had playing a game for a long time. It's addicting, engaging and accesible while being surprisingly complex and deep. Blizzard could have produced a game that coasted on the phenomenal success on Diablo 2's name and sold millions of copies regardless if the game was good or not. However, they not only matched the success of Diablo 2, but I think they have surpassed it. The fun polished final product suggests that the creators and development team really took the time to study what made Diablo 2 work so well and along the way they fixed a lot of what was wrong with it and created a fantastic game that will raise the bar for both Action RPGs and sequels in general.

One of the best parts of Diablo 3 is the whole aesthetic appeal of the game. The art direction of the game is simply incredible. The look of Azmodan, Diablo and the whole High Heavens are just really really cool looking. The atmosphere is incredible in this game and one of the ways they achieve this is through the graphics. They are warm, detailed and add a lot of depth to the game while not being a simple gimmick. Your character progresses through a variety of environments even in the first Act and one of the things that I really liked was the detail they put into the space outside the explorable map. You know, the place that you can't get to. They fill it with rich textures of swamps, mountains, dungeons and a variety of other background pieces. It really helps add to the feeling that you are a part of a living, breathing world, and immersion is one effect Blizzard achieves with flying colors. What is also great is that the game actually sorta scale. I know that when I get home to my real desktop computer, I should be able to crank the graphics up and play it beautifully, but I can play it pretty well on my Macbook Air. I do get frame rate slowdowns when in particularly busy fights, but nothing that I can't handle.

When I said they did not simply piggy back off the success of the old game, I wasn't kidding. Underneath, it is still the same game as it was before, and Blizzard even subtly acknowledges this. In Diablo 2, you went from Tristram to a desert level from Act 1 to Act 2 and this is the very thing you do in Diablo 3. It's a subtle reminder that this is still the game you know and love. However, they have corrected many of the problems that plagued the original Diablo 2. Firstly, they have now moved on to everyone getting their own loot in multiplayer. No longer are the people with slower internet connections and slower computers at a disadvantage when the boss dies. Everyone will get something. However, they left in the system of being able to drop items to trade. Without that feature, the game probably wouldn't feel like Diablo. Additionally, they decided to do away with Scrolls of Town Portal and Identity. Some will say that this was part of the game, but I want to commend Blizzard on it. That is a feature that was characteristic of the series, but not in a good way. There were few things that were more annoying than when you were out in the wilderness and you realized that you had forgotten to buy Town Portal scrolls. They made an executive decision and it makes the game much more fun. You spend less time doing tedious activities and more time slaying hordes of monsters, which is the most fun aspect of this game.

The choice to include health orbs was a wise one as well. It makes the game less about collecting potions and rewards killing monsters instead of buying stuff. It adds to the fast paced nature of the game and keeps your character moving forward, never losing momentum. The pacing of this game is superb as well. The acts go quickly enough that you do not get bored, but they last long enough to finish in an extended sitting. This all helps the momentum of the game never really stop until you finish the game on normal setting.

In the Original Diablo 2, there were 5 classes, with 2 more added in the expansion. With 12 years of development, Blizzard surely could have come up with some more classes. Instead, they opted to make each character have a variety of play-styles. Good news is, is that this gamble succeeded. Each character has about 15-20 spells, but only 6 can be actively at one time. What this forces the player to do is to think about what sort of role you want to fill. As a Wizard, I could either be a living bomb, opting to pick spells that AOE out from my character, or I could choose to be a single target ranged killer, or a AOE at range role. However, these are all decided on the fly and leads to incredible depth to the classes. Not only can you only use 6 spells of an available 30, each spell has about 7 different runes for each one. And you guessed it correctly, you can only have 1 rune per 1 spell. This leads to thousands, if not millions, of different combinations that are possible for each class. You unlock the available 6 slots for actions by level 10 or so, providing good time for you to experiment with the interactions between all your spells as you level and take on more monsters. The game is easy to pick up, but provides incredible depth and complexity if you choose to partake in it. And what is great, is that the spells you unlock first stay relevant throughout the game, as the damage scales based on weapon damage, not a set number. This means the spell you used at level 1 is going to be roughly just as good as the one you get at 30. There will simply be situational differences that dictate their use instead of numerical ones. Too often do games pick up a mechanic and ditch it later on because something new and fancy came along. Diablo keeps all of its content fresh consistently, and this is a considerable feat.

All of this great gameplay works well playing even by yourself. But where the game's most fun times are to had are online. They say bad pizza is great with friends, and so it comes to no surprise that great pizza is incredible with friends. Multi-player online with Diablo 3 are an absolute blast, and are among the best times I've ever had playing a game online, rivaling the days of Halo 2, Team Fortress 2, WoW and Gears of War. When you get 4 players into a game and you are all hacking and slashing your way through hordes of enemies, they are few things that have made me as happy. And since everyone has their own loot, there is never any fights over loot, only better chances that someone in your party got something that your character can use.

What is going to be impossible to predict of this game is the legacy of. No review could have anticipated the massive overwhelmingly positive reaction to the online play of Diablo 2. The game has inspired millions of people, in multiple ways. It inspired a bunch of kids who grew up playing it to make games like that when they grew up. It also inspired industry designers who saw the success of Diablo and looked to copy it. It paved the way for games like Torchlight and Titan Quest, even if Diablo wasn't the original Action RPG. It made it marketable and the proof of that is in the sales numbers and longevity of its continued play. Will Diablo see such continued play for the next 10 years? Or will it be a flash in the pan game that people cease to play after the hype dies down. There is no way to tell.

Diablo 3 makes extremely good use of a limited amount of material. They re-use astonishingly well. They use a limited number of levels, classes, skills and stories, yet they make it continually fresh. They have delivered a game that is accessible, simple, complex, addicting, beautiful, and social without departing radically from the Diablo franchise. Blizzard has raised the bar yet again with this iteration of the series and has proved once again that they, along with Valve, can consistently put out high quality, polished games, even if it takes forever. It really makes me feel like it was worth the wait.

Playlist:

1. Diablo 3
2. WoW

In a Return to Form

So yes, it's been a long time since I've last written here, but I feel like I should be doing so. Especially if I want to be a video games writer. I wonder if I would write more if it was my only job. I don't know. Maybe I'm so uninspired because I'm not getting paid. That may be part of it.
Anyway, I've been playing a lot of Team Fortress 2 lately. Like almost an unhealthily large amount of it. I'm in class right now, but I'm guessing my Xfire profile is going to have about 20 hours this week. I do know for certain that I just hit 400 hours of it. That's a long time. I almost have 1,000 in World of Warcraft and that game is very very conducive to sitting down and playing for eternity. Team Fortress 2 is not. But somehow, I'm just gaining time slowly but surely.
Now, everyone who reads this blog knows already about the Spy vs Sniper update that just came out. Valve decided that their old system of unlocking weapons was fubar and so they decided to overhaul it. So they released a system that would randomly give you weapons as you accumulate play time. After playing for a week, I have to say this system is retarded. While I'm playing, it is nice not to have 4 snipers and 3 spies running around in every server in attempt to unlock achievements. However, I've played about 20 hours and have only unlocked one new weapon: The Ambassador. I have unlocked three other force of natures and another sandman. It's infuriating if I think about how much I'm being ripped off. But, if I just play the game like it's suppose to be played, I have fun, namely because there are only a slightly larger number of spies and snipers.


This is an informal piece of writing, right? Okay, good. Well, when I'm playing Team Fortress 2 my name that I have on Steam is “Awesome”. This sounds really self serving, right? But, I feel as though I deserve the title. I was playing yesterday and felt especially vindicated when I have 19 points, the next guy had 9 and my friend had 0. I just sat back and said, “wow I really am Awesome”. I have been getting really good as a sniper actually. Par example, I was sitting at about the midway point of the first Goldrush at the first point. I was looking through my scope and hear a Pyro near me. So, instead of trying to kill the Pyro who was bum rushing me, I looked slightly to the left and saw another Pyro running. I flicked by wrist and clicked. My life then ended. I looked at the scoreboard and saw that I did indeed kill him. I was very pleased with myself.


Recently, funnily enough, I have been recently been thinking of renewing my World of Warcraft account. Yes, I know I should not and I think I'll be able to stave of this craving until I finish finals, but I am really thinking of doing it. I've been thinking about how much fun it is to just run around Azeroth. I care about the world. I like to go Dustwallow Marsh or The Hinterlands. I like to explore the world and think about how the world use to be so bustling and important. I like finding the huts that are off the beaten path and looking around. I also like speculating about future expansions. I like to read about The Emerald Dream and think about how they may implement it. I want to get to level 80 and then go back and clear all the Burning Crusade dungeons. I want to get some bored people together and run some AQ. I find myself wishing I was really involved in Vanilla WoW. I played then, but I didn't really play. Back then, getting a group through Van Cleef was a huge deal. Most of the time we didn't have enough people or people had to leave or the group was retarded. Westfall was a beautiful place and was fun to run around in. Gaining a level was a big deal and you felt as though you had fun with the whole thing.


This is how I want to play WoW if I started again. I would play Akoris, sure. But I would do everything meticulously, trying to do all the quests in an area before moving on. I'm not sure I want to raid however. I definitely want to clear all the dungeons and heroic dungeons in Northrend. But I don't know about Raids. I may PUG a raid or two but I would make sure that I knew the fight very very well before going. I just don't want to have a commitment to a guild that I can't always fulfill. I think I'll be holy after I hit 80 though. Healing gets you into lots and lots of groups and I feel like I've a good healer. I hear that you can obtain an obscene amount of money in Northrend so I'll be able to get my epic flying mount. Then, I can go back to Outland and finish all the quests. Then, I can go back to Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor and finish doing those quests. Then I can grind reputation for all the factions I never got to exalted. I feel like I want to play this like I played Grand Theft Auto and that's okay with me. I've just been being really nostalgic and longing for the days that I rode my elekk into Un'Goro Crater while watching Groundhog Day.


I also want to start a guild. I always got a kick out of my <We Hate WoW> fake guild spam and I feel like if I created the guild, people would join. It would be the people who I like too. The only people to join would be the ones with the subtle sense of humor because those would be the only ones who thought it was funny and worth responding to. I would invite anyone and everyone. I wouldn't care about any sort of guild disputes or anything. My motto would be “well fuck it”. I think we could be a pretty good griefing guild and become notorious. I would not mind being known for that. I think running a guild would be fun. Oh, and about the guild bank, I would allow everyone to take everything. I would of course tell everyone about that beforehand. It just seems unfair for someone to expect something they deposit to be there and it's not there. That's rude. But funny. Maybe I shouldn't tell everyone. Maybe I'll make a blogspot for the guild. Just talk about nothing. Should be fun.


I need to review a couple games actually. I played enough of Dawn of War 2 to review it, and I believe I have the review on this computer. I played through Braid and was very impressed by it. I could review that. I could also review Demigod. I've only played about 10 hours of it, but I feel as though I fully grasp the gist of the game. I also could review Sins of a Solar Empire: Entrenchment. I have played only like 2 games, both as TEC, but again, I feel as though I get the game.
Writer Curtis Wright knows that renewing WoW right now would surely be the end of him

Fallout 3 Review

Now that the holiday season has come and gone, the only thing that remains are the games to be played. The game I was most excited about was Fallout 3, after hearing raving reviews from nearly all sources, I picked it up for Xbox 360.

My initial impressions were less than spectacular. I found the controls overcomplicated, the button presses slow and unresponsive, the aim inaccurate, and the delayed load of textures made the game feel like something that should not have been released in its state. Needless to say, I put it down for about a week, then decided to give it another go, on PC. This switch made all the difference in the world. I instantly found the precision greatly improved and later found most of the other initial issues I had were practically erased. I was able to focus on the game.

The first thing that really popped out were the stunning visuals when looking at the landscape. You could see to the horizon, everything had realistic values and shadows. The visuals were very stylized, everything had a derelict feeling, perfect in keeping with the story. Bright colors were used sparingly which accentuated the feeling of depression that was present in nearly every character in every town. This made the game feel deep and helped me connect to the NPCs, which is important in a single player RPG. This nice feature later lost its luster, as I began to long for a change of scenery, but there really wasn't much of one throughout the game, there were only destroyed cities, and barren wasteland.

One of the first views a player is treated to as they leave Vault 101

As nice as the visual landscapes were, the NPCs did not look nearly as good. The textures were flat, and the characters had almost no shadowing effects. There are only a handful of faces, so the same people would pop up in every town with different clothes, and even the clothes were a little disappointing. There was almost no variety, and even the different types looked almost identical. In a game where character is the main focus, the lack of unique forms of armor was entirely, for lack of a better word, unacceptable.

The leveling and character progression system was done very well. Every level, the player gets to assign several points to various skills, such as speech, and sneaking. These skills affect the perks a player can choose later in the game. By the end of the game, a player is perfectly geared for one or two traits, but not much else, which is where the leveling falls short. Some skills are obviously better than others, such as speech. If a person has enough skills in speech, they can often entirely skip quests, which makes the game a little too easy and short. Worse than the unbalanced skills is the level cap. A player can advance to level 20, but then the leveling, one of the biggest draws of the game, ends. While getting to 20 is time consuming, there is a lot more of the game after that, and it would have been nice to see a higher level cap.

The story line is really the best part of the game. The game starts, appropriately, with a cutscene of your own birth. It then jumps forward to you living in a vault, a community sheltered both from the nuclear apocalypse that was imminent in the past, and the of outside influence, so you only know the life in the vault, and assume that everyone and everything outside of the vault has been destroyed. Things quickly go sour in the vault, as you learn that the Overlord has begun abusing his power, and you need to escape the vault to the harsh outside world. Once there, you begin an epic journey to find your father which leads you through dozens of cities. On the way you meet the several factions fighting for control over the Capital Wasteland. You quickly learn the Enclave is bad, the Brotherhood of Steel is good, and the Super Mutants are dangerous. The story was incredibly deep and rewarding, leaving me with a sense of accomplishment at every story point.

The Derelict remains of the Jefferson Monument in Capital Wasteland

Another high point of the game was the sound. As you progress through the game, you find several radio stations, each with their own style. All of the DJs had their own personality, back story, and taste in music. My favorite station was the first one I found, Galaxy News Radio. The DJ, Three Dog, told the news “as it really was”, and had a personality that really made him unique. His station played a lot of swing music, which went perfectly with the era of the game, but there were only a handful of songs, which began to feel old and tired after hearing them for 30+ hours.

The combat in the game too could have used improvement. The player has 2 options, melee or ranged, and while there is a wide variety of guns, there is no depth to them. They basically all function the same way, but with different stats and ammunitions. The guns were inaccurate, even when you were dead on. Bullets would stray far from where you were aiming, which gets frustrating in combat situations where you need to make the shot to stay alive. The game had an auto targeting system which did all of the work for you, it took any necessary skill from the game, and made the game point and click, which was not nearly as satisfying as doing the work yourself, but it meant actually hitting your target.

Overall I found this game to be an enjoyable experience, one full of memorable moments, like the stasis pods in vault 87, or the town of Little Lamplight. While the game had some flaws, it is still worth buying, a must own for RPG fans.

The Good:

Great Visuals

Amazing Story

Perfect Soundtrack

The Bad:

The Combat System

Level Cap of 20

Little Armor Option

Overall Score: 8.5/10

Playlist: Farcry 2, Left4Dead, Rockband 2