Game Designer Dungeon

(Source: voldemortoutbitches)

Warning: Spoilers and Shit.

I will get this out of the way before I start. I have never played a Diablo game before D3. I did beat Torchlight and numerous other clones. So when Tuesday morning at 12 am PST rolled around I was with all my friends waiting to jump into together to finally play Diablo 3. The horrible launch happened with error 37 and shit. So here I am a week later….and well….I feel like I went through hell and back.

Story

The story of Diablo 3 tells the story of Tyrael, a Morgan Freeman like angel who fell from the heavens after choosing to become a mortal. He crashes in New Tristram and accidentally puts the wheels in motion for Diablo’s return. The story however focuses on Leah, a young girl with untold power who teams up with her mother Adria to help vanquish the 7 demon lords back into this stone thingy. The story is ridiculous almost to a Metal Gear level of “WTF?” All the plot twists you can see from a mile away and the game also has one of the worst endings I have ever experienced in a game. Throughout the plots messy and dumb story you actually grow to like Leah. She is the one character you care about and all the super budget CGI cutscenes revolve around her. So when she is suddenly sacrificed by Adria at the end to take the form of Diablo I was like “Blizzard wtf?” I immediately took this as the final goal because I wanted to save the one character Blizzard took the time to focus on in this story. So when I finally defeat Diablo I expected Leah to be saved since Blizzard spent so much time focused on her. Nope, you killed Leah. Her character is thrown away and instead the ending focuses on Tyrael for no reason. Adria gets away with sacrificing her daughter and Leah turns out to be a useless character that died. WELL THANKS BLIZZARD, that makes me want play through your shit story again on nightmare mode (Sarcasm). The story sucks and you won’t be missing much by just skipping the dialogue mmo style. (Unless the game awkwardly glitches and does it for you. That happened a lot.)

Design

It’s a hack n slash rpg that is surprisingly light on both the hack n slash and the rpg elements. After playing through the wonderful combat of TERA, and the excellent rpg Legend of Grimrock, I got stuck with Diablo’s bastard. Instead of having full control of your character’s skills and attribute points, your character just gains new abilities as he levels up. This becomes a problem because you can experiment with all your skills to find the perfect build for you. Well, I found my build within the first 10 levels and I never changed it. This completely made leveling up useless since the game levels up for you. The only thing you actually role play is how flashy your hotkey moves look. Another big design flaw is the DRM “Always Online” system (You knew this was coming). It completely ruins the game’s presentation and it’s very frustrating that Blizzard decided to make their piracy problem EVERYONE’S problem. I played most of the game in single player and it was awful. I kept getting lag to the point that Diablo 3 was unplayable. I would check my internet thinking it’s my problem, but it wasn’t. Blizzard’s servers would be causing the lag. Well that makes me feel like I completely wasted my $60. Blizzard, you and Activision can have your little orgies in your money baths, but don’t get us involved and quit fucking over your customers. It is terrible and I will never buy a Blizzard game again if it has DRM.

Gameplay

The gameplay is based around clicking enemies and using your special abilities to kill them. It is boring, repetitive, and made me want to play something else. I’ll honestly admit that I had a few moments of “Wow, that was cool.” When the game would throw 100 enemies at you and you had to fight your way out. This in itself was a problem, because Torchlight did that with every fight you encountered 3 years ago. Diablo 3 will send small minions and then three tougher enemies. This became frustrating and the cause of most of my deaths. Most of these tougher enemies have an ability that will cause fear or stun your character. I can’t tell you how many times I was “Stun locked” by the AI and watched myself die. There was nothing I could do about it and it was complete bullshit. The worst is how little strategy it takes in every fight. I would use the same combo to kill the enemies and bosses, rinse and repeat. The only difference in boss fights was when I would be low on health so I would be running from the boss until my potion hotkey cooled down (When that’s the best strategy you know something is wrong.)

Presentation

For every single amazing point of presentation Diablo 3 has, the DRM ruins it. The world of Sanctuary is full of detail and little quirks that make the atmosphere wonderful, but then you lag and are completely unable to experience it. The cutscenes narrated by each class are told in a scroll-like animation, which comes across as very bland. The game only attempts to push boundaries with its fully cinematic cutscenes (Starring the ill-fated Leah for no fucking reason). The cutscenes are gorgeous and must be experienced by anyone playing the game. The sound design is fantastic and when swinging your weapon sounds like a gunshot every hit is satisfying. Now if only the lag could sync it up right.

Bottom Line

Diablo 3 is a disappointment. With every single thing it does right, there is something completely dumb and wrong that ruins it for everyone. I hate the DRM, the story, the design choices, and most of the presentation. The one thing I hate the most however, is the fact that I still like the game and want to play it.

Final Score: (7/10)

Fuck it.

Go spend your money on Torchlight 2 and damn this game to Hell.