Diablo

The Good
Many years ago, there was a game called 'Rogue', where you were in a dungeon and romped about it collecting gold and fighting monsters. It was immensely addicting. From it descended the famous 'NetHack', which followed suit, allowing one to enter town and upgrade. It, too, was immensely addicting. Down through the ages (and mixed with the blood of the arcade game 'Gauntlet') comes their spiritual descendant: Diablo. And, yes, it is immensely addicting. There is something inherently appealing to most people in constantly improving something and a character in constant danger of death in the dungeon seems to be a perfect choice. Whether they're having outright fun, or are even frustrate a bit, people will find themselves returning to the game. Most people who sit down for one session of Diablo want to play it again and again, just to improve their character. It's almost scary.

Diablo's isometric graphics were beautiful for when it came out, and if people were not so used to 3-D graphics these days, it would still be considered good today. Low resolution aside, even today the graphics are pretty to look at and provide the perfect combination of atmosphere and storytelling qualities. The backgrounds are detailed and dark, the characters scary, gruesome, or heroic when needed to be, and the magic spells quite interesting to watch.

The learning curve is nearly perfect and one only gets overwhelmed early on when it is intended (such as the first mini-boss or the second mini-boss's skeletal hordes). There are enough spells, weapons, and armor to keep making people come back to see them all and as you play you learn the easier methods of performing actions (such as the wonderful quick-use tool belt).

The addition of a multiplayer cooperative mode makes for many an enjoyable dungeon romp if one can find compatriots who aren't out for your gold and your life (all too frequent when playing on Battle.net). While adventuring alone in the single player mode is fun, nothing compares to having a party of two or three playing as a team.

The actionis often intense as your character opens a door and is nearly surrounded by the angry hordes of Diablo, all bent on destroying you. The pace of the game under normal circumstances (when no going through a cleared dungeon looking for an item you left behind) is usually fast and can provide enough entertainment for fans of first person shooters.

Eerily beautiful music is the perfect accompaniment in your travels, and the sound effectively tells you what is happening.

The more-or-less random dungeons provide a new challenge each time you restart the game, making each crawl seem like new.

The Bad
Sometimes the action is too intense. Rests are recommended between trips to the dungeon, as you can easily develope repetitive stress syndrome from the hundreds of times you will be clicking your mouse in any particular excursion.

There is only a bare bones story and your true interactivty with it aside from performing quests is negligible. You basically talk to someone and listen to what they say and move on. The townsfolk give hints for the quests, but there's little personality or life in them. They're basically living billboards. One can play the whole game without ever doing more than talking to those people required for any given function.

There is many arguments over the validity of the ending. Whether or not one likes it, however, everyone must admit that it's not worth the time going through the entire game again just to see the final sequence with one or two slight (and I do mean slight) variations.

Much like the lack of story, there is also a lack of true role-playing. Most Diablo players don't care about their characters and their personalities as much as they care about their character's numbers. They seek to constantly upgrade their stats and equipment and little else. Anyone expecting a true role-playing game should steer clear. There's also little logic between the stats and what they represent. If a rogue can only have 'x' amount of strength, that's understandable for one of her light build, but explain to me how heavy an object must be for its strength requirement to be three times the maximum a rogue can carry normally? You can't...in the end, the stats aren't a way to describe your character's abilities...it's merely another 'score' to keep adding to.

Some items, like rings, are depicted so small that it's hard to find them if you drop them. While realistic, it makes for frustrating searches.

The Bottom Line
An addictive action game with role-playing game undertones, Diablo is a game that anyone who doesn't mind a lot of mouse clicking can get into. Take a warrior, a rogue with a flair for archery, or a mage into the bowels of the earth in order to put an end to an evil that threatens a town. Like many a vice, it is addictive and will draw you away from your normal activities, though you may walk away with a shallow feeling when all is said and done.

The Good
Diablo is, in and of itself, an okay game.

The graphics are pretty nice. The town feels morbid and hopeless, which annoys me, but then again, so does the rest of the game; still, the town graphics work well, for what they are. The dungeon graphics are very nice and the random dungeons fit together well.

Enemies come in many different varieties, but you really won't notice until half way through; until then, the whole game is a cakewalk. Go down to a level, smash monsters to bits, sell loot. Perhaps it's just because I've played games like this for a long time, but I didn't even drink a health potion until halfway through. As I was saying, enemies, once you need to notice, have different resistances as you get lower. Fire for cold bad guys, cold for burning bad guys.

Items have very nice graphics and the inventory system is excellent. I think the whole item system is just about the highest point in the game. There are item 'prefixes' and 'suffixes'; imagine getting a "Burning Plate Mail of Fire Resistance." The possibilities are many. This might not seem too neat, but Diablo was the first commercial game to use the prefix/suffix system.

That's basically it. You can waste days of your life on this game (playing games is a waste of time in general, albiet a fun one, I know; my point is, looking back, you won't understand why you wasted this time). Once you're done, you can play as a different class, or online.

The Bad
Okay, minor gripes first.

For one thing, the whole game atmosphere is dark, oppresive, and hopeless. This annoys the hellfire out of me. Not only that, but in the sequel you find out that all you did by winning the game was doom the world even more. Just great-- I really want to finish now.

The game is also pretty unbalanced. Sorcerers can happily blast away with spells and Fighters can use all sorts of weapons and armor, but poor, hapless Rogues are stuck halfway inbetween, wondering what in the world they shoul do. The only good reason to play them is because they are the only class that looks good no matter what they're wearing...

Now the major problem.

Diablo stole all these ideas from roguelikes. The idea of a town above a big dungeon filled with monsters. The idea of random dungeon generation. Even the word of recall scrolls and the prefix/suffix system was grabbed! Nothing in this game is original, and yet absolutely no credit whatsoever is given to the brilliant masterminds who developed the roguelikes. I'm saying 'roguelikes' here, but it's mainly Angband that these ideas are taken from. Go ahead and play the game. It's the exact same darn thing.

Another major gripe is that the game is really darn short. You can finish it in a day of full playing if you don't spend time clearing everything out of levels anyways. Playing online ads to the fun, but not much-- teamplay just dosen't work in Diablo, because there is no teamplay element. Get some heroes, get some evil corrupting malicious essenses of utter destruction and primal gore, and toss them in a big, dark dungeon. That's it.

The Bottom Line
You may have noticed that this review is very down on the game, although I said it was an okay game in itself. That's because it is an okay game, but only because it stole ideas. It's a 2.5/5.

I actually do recommend buying the game at the price it is at right now. If you add on the Hellfire expansion, you've got 3 new classes and about a day more of play time. The game does have its high points. But all the acclaim it got for being a breakthrough, brilliant game should have gone to Angband-- a free game that started decades ago, and hardly anyone knows about it.

The Good
The combination of a gritty, dark visual presentation along with a terrific understated soundtrack and immense re playability makes for an addictive hack and slash. The gory backgrounds (downright nasty sometimes: check out the impaled guys in the later stages!) and dark ambiance (almost too dark: you'll need to crank the gamma a bit here) really suck you in, the simple but engaging game play does the rest as the hours will literally fly as you go deeper underground and butcher tons of baddies in order to kick Diablo's ass.

The Bad
The game play is really repetitive: Kill, Kill, Kill, down some potions, grab some loot, Kill some more, go back to Tristram and sell the stuff you've looted, buy some new gear, go back to the dungeon(s) to kick some more baddies in the ass, rinse and repeat dozens of times until you get to Diablo and kick his ass too! How's that for repetitive? The palette is a little bit on the garish side (think Quake I: lots of browns and blues, here it's gray/red/blue and the other colors are used sparingly). The NPCs are really only source of quests and stuff to buy so the whole RPG thing is nonexistent and some of these placeholders will piss you off more times than not with weird dialogue and endless requests for items. Some of the enemies are really annoying especially if you're a warrior and can't deal ranged damage as your character can't run so in the later stages you'll chase them through corridors trying to kill them, attracting even more baddies and getting kicked in the butt.

The Bottom Line
Addictive Hack and slash that has aged surprisingly well, more than 10 years old but still fun and with lots of gore, plenty of stuff to kill here and it gives you a tangible feeling of becoming more badass as you progress in the game.