Diablo II

By: Bill Stiteler

Genre: Adventure RPG

Format: 3 CDs

Developer: Blizzard North

Publisher: Blizzard

Minimum Requirements: G3, System 8.1, 32 MB RAM w/Virtual Memory (64 MB for multiplayer), 600 MB hard disk space (900 MB for multiplayer), 4X CD ROM, 800x600 display supporting 256 colors, 28.8K modem connection for internet play

Network Feature: Yes

3Dfx Support: Yes

Retail Price: $59.95

Availability: Out Now

We come up with rules in life. Never eat at a place called Mom's. Never play poker with a man named after a state. Don't trust people, they'll only hurt you. One of my rules is "Any game that comes on more than one CD sucks."

And this isn't just coming out of nowhere. Those of you who, like me, grew up in the years when people said "multimedia" when they meant "CD ROM" can back me up. We were so enthralled with the ability to put video on disk that (thunderclap) we didn't bother to think about if we should! We were constantly hammered over the head with the knowledge of how much data a CD could hold, so that if your game couldn't even fit on one disk--good lord!--think of all the work that must have gone into it!

But as I say, they all sucked. How quickly we learned that live-motion video didn't make the game any more realistic. Phantasmagoria, anyone? The only thing these games did was extend the careers of Dana Plato and one of the two Coreys. I forget which one.

But all maxims retire into being aphorisms, and now I must retire my own personal bias against multi-CD games, because I've played Diablo II. Which is too bad in a way, because I had a killer title for this review, "Dia-blows, too!" This is the kind of thing reviewers think is clever.

I had something of a love/hate relationship with the original Diablo, there wasn't much story to it (kill the monster to get more treasure to get better weapons to kill bigger monsters to get bigger treasure to get better weapons...), but it was also insanely addictive. Diablo II is a sequel which improves on the original, giving us a bit more story without taking away from the hack 'n' slash that made its predecessor so enthralling.

Diablo II picks up some time after the original ended, and "things are looking rad for the forces of bad." Diablo ended with your character defeating the Lord of Terror, but oops, it looks like the big D actually took possession of him. The Dark Wanderer, as he is now known, is crossing the continent, looking to free his demonic brothers, Mephisto and Baal. Guess what your job is?

You start by picking one of five (up from three in the original) character classes: amazon, necromancer, barbarian, paladin, or sorceress. You all know the drill, the classes each have different advantages and disadvantages, but Blizzard takes it a step further. Instead of just making, say, the amazon better with a bow than the barbarian, they give each character class unique skills. As you advance in levels you decide how to allocate points to these skills. You can advance generally, say, giving your necromancer a general (and low-level) base in several types of raising the dead, or you can specialize, become deadly in one form of combat or one special attack, which may leave you weak against a particular opponent. There are a lot of skills available, but you only get one point per level, which means it's impossible to be an expert in everything.

In terms of game play--it's a quest game! What do you expect? You get quests, which basically involve a scavenger hunt--scavenging corpses, that is. You have to kill the big monster to get something for the townspeople who will give you something else you need (boy, is this sounding familiar). But thankfully, Diablo II expands on the theme in really the only two ways a quest game can: locations and monsters.

Diablo II leaves the dungeon behind (for the most part) in favor of a camping holiday: the standard Ye Olde Westerne Foreste, an Arabian desert, a West Indies Jungle, and finally, Hell, which doesn't look as much like the Atlanta International Airport as one might figure. All beautifully (though darkly, and I mean this in terms of being able to see the thing) rendered. The sunlight and weather changes, but this has no real effect on gameplay, other than to cause me to question the intelligence of a "hero" who wanders in a thunderstorm wearing plate mail armor and carrying a spear upright. Shades of Goofus and Gallant.

And since this is a game about killing things, let's talk about the monsters and combat. Playing the game the first time through, I found it to be kind of easy. Most of the monsters went down doing little to no damage to me, and I was loaded with healing potions, so it hardly mattered. I could go toe-to-toe with the worst boss, and just keep pounding away at him until I wore him out. Yeah, I was feeling pretty cocky.

Then I met the flayers. Oh, how I hate the freakin' flayers. Hate, hate, hate! Flayers are a pygmy race in the third act made up of warriors that come at you with their giant cleavers while others plink at you with blow darts. Worst of all, they have shamans who can bring them back to life. No, I take that back: the worst part is that they use tactics. Tactics! The warriors run at you en masse. The blow dart users will run away if you start to chase them, and will continue running as long as you do! The shaman's fire breath does a colossal amount of damage, and they try to get you in a crossfire! I hate the flayers on the level that I hate Pac Man for the Atari 2600.

Which is to say that they're great monsters. And most of the monsters in Diablo II seem to have little personality quirks. Scavenger birds will circle over you, waiting till your back is turned. Saber Cats move quickly, attacking with whips or explosives. And leapers and their ilk do this nifty thing where they come charging at you, only to jump over your head and land on the other side. Only the undead (zombies, skeletons, etc.) are exactly as we expect them to be, but no one ever does anything different with them (well, except for Fallout, that is). Diablo recycles monsters by giving them different names, colors, and more power (the "Burning Dead" are red skeletons, for example).

As I said, Diablo II comes on multiple disks--three, to be exact. The first installs the game, the second plays the game, and the third contains the cinematic cut scenes. Now I was never a big guy for graphics, but then, I never really had a machine that could handle them. The cinematics for Diablo II, however, are pretty darn cool. The humans look about as believable as they ever do in CGI, but everything else will knock your socks off. From the fire lapping at the ceiling to Diablo finally revealing himself, I have to say that for the first time, I think the time spent on the cinematics was well spent in developing the story of the game. Tyriel alone has to be one of the coolest ideas of what an angel would look like, and just watching his tendril-like wings move was...breathtaking. There you have it--a graphics rave from Bill Stiteler. The Seventh Seal is broken (now maybe Demi Moore will die).

Here's the thing about Diablo which bugs me, though; saving. You can't save in Diablo without quitting the game. And if you quit the game, it revives all the monsters--all of them, including the bosses. I've seen this type of thing before, usually as an "iron man" option, but this is the second game where I've seen making saving difficult as part of the game (the first was playing Aliens vs. Predator on a friend's PC). I think it's supposed to come across as making the game more challenging, but you don't make a game more challenging by making it inconvenient for the player--or rather, you don't make it more challenging on an enjoyable level. And besides, you can stock up on scrolls which will teleport your character back to town safely, so what's the point? I could have lived without it.

Blah, blah, blah, play it on the internet, blah, blah, blah, connectivity, blah, blah, blah, world of adventure, period. I was on eBay the other day and people are auctioning off magic items they've gotten in the game. We're a sick, sick world.

Someone once told me that there are really only seven plots in existence, and when it comes to computer games, there are probably like four. Diablo uses the combat-quest RPG plot, and as of right now, with solid gameplay, aggrivatingly good monsters, and kick-butt cinematics, it stands at the head of the class.

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May 26, 2012