Sunday, April 22, 2012

Diablo III Open Beta Weekend Review.[PC]

    With the starting of the Diablo III weekend beta, I had to follow in just to see what all the hype is about. I used to play a bit of Diablo II with my friends getting around level 50 and owning the hell out of Baal.
  
  If you aren't fimiliar with the series, Diablo III is a fantasy-action RPG in which you obtain quests, adventure through massive lands, and then slay the demons of hell. Diablo III is made by Blizzard, who also created World of Warcraft and the entire Warcraft series, along with Starcraft and Starcraft II.
   
 In order to play, you require a Battle.net account and it requires a Battle Tag, which is your own name within the game. When you first load the game you are asked to log in with your Battle.net account. This is one thing I dislike, the fact that you HAVE to be connected to the internet in order to play, even in Single-Player mode. This can cause many problems, such as if there is downtime for a patch or there is a problem with the server itself then it can hinder playing the game itself. Diablo III is entirely online but you can choose to close your game so others can't join or you can open it entirely for others to join.
    
There are 5 classes to choose as a character. Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Monk, Witch Doctor, and Wizard. The Barbarian is the standard warrior/tank. Demon Hunter is a ranger. A Monk can heal and support and is a well-rounded fighter. The Witch Doctor can summon and use poison darts for range. The Wizard is a standard mage-like character. When you reach level 10 on one character, you are allowed to make Hardcore characters. Hardcore means that when you die, it's a permanent death and your character is then deleted. It adds to the difficulty of this game.
   
 When you first start out, you have your beginning-class weapons and you have to travel to New Tristam and try to find Deckard Cain, only to find out that he isn't there. You will meet many undead on the way. The HUD, as shown above is very simple. I will describe it as so:
1. Your character. I first started as a Barbarian since he's an original character from Diablo II.
2. Objectives. These are your current quests or tasks that you can complete
3. Mini-Map. This is the mini-map of the surrounding area.
4. Current Area/ Current time: This tells where you currently area and it tells what your current time is depending on your time zone. You can turn off the time in the options.
5. Health/Mana/Skill bar. The Left orb is your Health. The Right orb is your secondary stuff such as Fury (Barbarian) or mana (Wixard/Witch Doctor). In between it tells you what your current skills are set to. The lockpad next to my health potions is the town portal, which when unlocked, lets you teleport back to the most recent town whenever you want. The four buttons to the right of the lockpad is the Skill tab, Inventory tab, Achievements/Journal tab, and the System tab.
6. This is the dialouge box. You can see what NPC's say aloud or if you're in a party it lets you see what your party members are saying.
7. This is your in-game Friends List. You can add people on to here to make game-joining easy.
   
Diablo III HUD

One thing I do not like about Diablo III is that there is no customization except your inventory. There are no skill trees like in Diablo II and there are no points that you can put into your character's strength, endurance, or intelligence. You have preset skills chosen for you based on class and your strength, endurance, and intelligence is automatically leveled up for you.
    
I won't spoil the ending of the Beta quests that they give you, but near the end if you are playing solo then you will die a lot. BUT you can revive at the nearest checkpoint that you have reached unless you are a hardcore character. As I said, I won't spoil the quests, however many monsters that you encounter at early levels have low HP, such as 10-30 or even around 70. The final boss in the Beta quests has around 2,200 and even has many cheap tricks.
    
I was hyped for this game when I first heard about it being made. But as I started playing it, it felt different and it felt dumbed down and just not the same approach. First there is a mandatory online feature. This can cause problems and even not allow some people to play if there is a patch, that you required to download anyways, or if there is downtime on the server (Think the daily downtimes for World of Warcraft on Tuesdays). If you have a bad connection or even a high ping (having programs in the background, like Skype or music like Spotify open) then it can affect the gameplay. I had some monters just teleport right up to me, causing me to die. Second, there is no customizability like that in Diablo II, with what kind of character you wanted to be, such as a Whirlwind Barbarian or just a heavy-damaging  Barbarian. The only real way that PVP on servers will determine the factors is the armor and weapon skills placed on them (such as +5 strength on a belt or gloves). They do have a Auction House, in which you use real money to buy items founded by other players.

How I rate it:
Gameplay: 5/10. It's slow and clunky. You move fairly slow at lower levels (there is no run option, you run automatically),  it can be affected by your internet if you have a high ping or a bad ISP making a lot of things lag up and jump up at you. There is no customization, forced skills.
Graphics: 8/10. The graphics are probably the best part of the game. They pop out and come to life, although dark. Even on the lowest settings, they're better than a lot of other games' graphics on low. You can enter places now, although you can sometimes think you clicked on the place but it doesn't accept it. There are NO load screens, just a 2-3 second black screen.
Sound: 7/10. I loved how your own character speaks and the voice overs of the NPC's and how they even talk and the text appears in the Chat screen as well.
Overall: 6/10
    
This game comes out May 15th and it's only April 22nd where I am. I'd honestly tell you to try it first before you buy it. Hopefully they have another Open Beta Weekend for you guys to try out before the May 15th date although that is a short time.
    
If you have played Diablo II then I have to tell you: This is nothing like Diablo II, it's just dumbed down because of no customization. You have a free Town Teleport after a certain point in the game. You are forced to take skills and some aren't even that great. You have cooldowns on your potions as well. It's like a 15 second cooldown in order to use your potion, which can make cluttered combat extremely hard to macro against.

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