Them's Fightin' Words

My last post about D3 wasn’t very complimentary because, to put it simply, the game wasn’t working for shit.

Good news is that Blizzard have sorted out the “Error 37” issue and I’ve finally been able to log some solid game time (much to the detriment of my sex life).

I’ve only been playing the Starter Edition but D3 already has it’s claws in me. Like its predecessors, Diablo III is dark, atmospheric and badass. The art direction on the game is insane, as is the level of detail. It’s still early days for me playing this game, but here’s what I like so far:

In-game physics:

When I first read about the fact that the game has physics I honestly didn’t give a shit. So some stuff falls down super-realistically, awesome. Stop the press.

Having played the game though, I can attest to what an awesome difference this makes to the gameplay. A LOT of shit is destructible – everything from tables to tombstones get wrecked while you’re slaying hell’s minions, who scatter in every direction as you obliterate them.

By taking out support beams, you can bring entire walls crashing down on the bad guys or do the classic unhook-the-chain move to bring chandeliers crashing down on them. Sure, you don’t need them, but they add to the overall aesthetic appeal of the game.

Artisans:

Think of artisans as merchants that you can train. It ain’t cheap, but you can pay artisans to level up and as they do, the weapons, armour and miscellaneous trinkets they can forge become more and more hardcore.

Artisans can “craft” magical weapons for you provided you supply the right crafting materials. You salvage these materials from the magical items you give to artisans. It makes more sense to do this than to just straight up sell the items.

Your artisans travel with you throughout the game, like groupies, so you don’t have to start over with new ones at the beginning of every Act.

Follower banter:

It’s a pretty minor feature of the game, but I thought it was also a nice touch. Unlike the mercenaries in Diablo II, who followed you around everywhere, fought through hell with you, but didn’t utter a damn word, the followers you amass in D3 aren’t shy to engage in some random banter from time to time.

It probably gets a bit irritating eventually, but I thought the way your followers chat with you while you’re missioning around looting and slaying everything in sight was pretty cool.

Classic example – my Monk randomly asks the Templar Knight that’s decided to hang out with him if he has any friends back at the order.

“My fellow Templars are like brothers to me,” replies the Templar, “it is a bond that goes far beyond mere friendship.”

To which my monk fires back with, “So I take it you have no friends then…”

It’s not all good news though. Like I’d said before, if you’re trying to run the game on minimum specs on a Macbook, prepare yourself for some intense running-through-molasses moments when the action picks up.

Also last night the game started bugging out in a big way – rendering blue squares instead of landscape and stuttering so badly that my Monk ended up running over the same patch of ground about 20 times to make it to a checkpoint so I could exit and restart.

Bottom line is I’m hesitant to get the full version until I have a rig that can handle it. I want to be able to crank the graphics up to the max, sit back and enjoy every second of the experience rather than bulldozing through the game in perpetual slow motion because I refuse to play without anti-aliasing, physics and high textures.

The good news I guess is that you won’t have to read any more shit about D3 on the site, fuck yeah!

For now…

-ST