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Since Dan is on a trip ( have a good time buddy, and don’t forget to buy me something :-“), this week’s article will be written by *drum rolls*….. *wait for it *… Me! :). Although I kind’of lost touch with the recent gaming world, I’ll blabber about some old stuff that reached out to me. So, without further ado : DIABLO II ! Do you feel the tension? I do.
Blizzard was one of the studios that guided me through my childhood. Starting with the first instalment of the above mentioned game (Diablo, duh! – released in 1996), it got me hooked to a new “style” of gameplay. Good imersion, almost non-existing bugs, complex story, are just some of the perks of playing a Blizzard game (Dan would disagree, but he’s not here now, is he? :D). So, after my jaw droped at the sight of the famous Starcraft (1998), my respect for the stormy guys reached its climax with the release of Diablo II (published in June 2000). The premise was simple: you’re this character here, those are the bad guys .. and, well, click on them ’till your nose bleeds. Fair enough, I think I can do that, let’s play!
The first thing your eye beholds is the character selection screen. Five characters (+2 in the expansion Lord of Destruction), stand in front of you (trying to impress, I guess) and you can have your pick from a Barbarian (no, it’s not Conan nor a Dothraki), a Paladin (Arthas?), a Sorceress (aka Frozen Orb chick), an Amazon (Xena reloaded) and a Necromancer (lead caster for Shaun of the Dead). The other two guys added by the expansion are an Assasin (gothic version of Nikita) and a Druid (Getafix :D).
Dan is the type of player that goes by the theory “let’s kill it with fire”; I, on the other hand, have a different aproach to gaming. It’s called “let’s kill it with swords and axes”. So, naturally, I chose the big guy in the middle of the screen.
Hey, look, I’m in a village. What am I supposed to do now? Clean out the Den of Evils? Sure thing. Kill a corrupted rogue? Why not? Travel to Tristam? Yay, old friends. Hi Griswold, what’s u*Suckerpunch*… The hours kept pilling on, one by one, whilst I was clearing out quests, collecting better equipment and decimating the hordes of undead. By the time I ended my first day of playing Diablo II, I was already in the second city, pursuing the Traveller. After a month of gameplay, I conquered Diablo’s forces even on their home ground (Hell dificulty), but I couldn’t get enough, which brings me to another thing I like about Blizzard: replayability. Every Blizzard game I’ve played has a good replay value, but Diablo II took it way up in the charts for me. It’s in a constant battle with Heroes 3 (awesome game!!). As I was saying, after my Barbarian retired, I couldn’t get away. The Assasin was my next pick. Trap, claw, poison, shadow .. and the game was done again. This went on while I played with every character, analyzing their weak and strong points and experiencing the story over and over again.
Ah, the story. I found it to be one of the most attractive and well put togheter stories in the gaming history up until that moment (I may be wrong, but I liked it a lot). I’ll try to summarize it for you: Diablo, the Lord of Terror, was defetead by an unnamed adventurer, but managed to corupt the hero through his soulstone (the soulstones were created by the Horadrim and contained the souls of the three evils). He is now on a quest to release his brothers, Mephisto – Lord of Hatred and Baal – Lord of Destruction. You have to defeat them, using the knowledge left behind by the Horadrim and with the help of Tyrael, a Seraphim from the Angiris Council. I’ve always wanted to read the books (yeah, they ahve those) and learn more about the world of Sanctuary but I couldn’t get them in my grasp. Oh well.
To wrap things up, Diablo II was one of the greatest games I ever played. It had a good gameplay, an amazing story, decent graphics and sound effects and interesting development trees. What more could a gamer want?