Diablo III Preview
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Without a doubt, the game feels like Diablo. The environments, while more varied and, yes, colorful, still evoke that lonely, foreboding atmosphere that locales from the first two games were so successful in creating. Fog fills eerie forests and dilapidated ruins crumble underfoot as you plumb their depths. The music, while being handled by Russell Brower rather than Mat Uelman, still puts a chill in your bones as you slice, dice, and smash your enemies into pieces.
System-wise, the game feels stellar; it feels like Diablo II, given a modern facelift and the production values ratcheted up to eleven. Banners around the town waypoints allow you to teleport quickly to wherever your fellow adventurers are; a button in the interface allows for easy access to the town portal skill (no more scrolls or tomes to hoard in the corner of your inventory); and each player receives their own loot, alleviating some of the stealing and loot-bot concerns that plagued the previous iteration of the series. Tedium has been all but eliminated from the various aspects of the hack-and-slash genre, and there are numerous concessions in place to ensure that you won't spend hours in town selling loot and fiddling inventory (unless you'd like to!), and that you're always just seconds away from joining your teammates in the fray, wherever they may be.
Unfortunately, there were a few problems I had with the beta. Many people have taken issue with the game's four player limit on matches, and I believe there is definitely some merit to these complaints. The game does feel like organized chaos with four players, what with crazy skills effects erupting all over the place, but the player cap feels strangely low and will likely seem limiting when the final game releases. The lack of world PvP such as it was featured in Diablo II isn't a deal-breaker, but it definitely changes the tone of the game a bit. Perhaps Blizzard could patch in a toggle when creating a match to allow players to duel one another in the game environment, at least as a concession to players missing a non arena-style PvP option.
