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[luka]

Preparing to open the Butcher's door still scares the crap out of me, beyond anything I've encountered in D2..

Spoiler

except maybe Duriel...damn him

 

[Kosma]

Okay this is the longest Diablo 1/2 comparison I have ever seen. I'm still reading through it. Batshit insane or genius I can't decide. :lol

Diablo 2, on the other hand, while emphasizing the design decisions which made Starcraft what it was, takes place alone, in front of your computer, one handed.

In order to talk about it, I think it’s important to talk about Diablo. After all, this is the game that put rogue-like graphics packages into the spotlight again after years of toiling in vaguely Zelda-like mineshafts, attempting to prove that merely being a good hunter is not enough to secure the respect of the tribe (turns out, actually, it is — especially when people are hungry).

When your fighter appeared, ex nihilo, in the middle of Tristram, and those purple tones of the soundtrack began to claw in at the warm orange light behind your eyes, everything you did was full of pushback. Every invisible tile you strode stiffly into, sword and shield at the ready, despite being among the villagers, gave a tiny nudge of resistance to you.

What were you doing there?

Making your way to the church was, in a way, the act of a pterodactyl keeping its head facing into the wind for the sake of stability, devoting all other potential control surfaces to maintaining forward momentum. These creatures had no feathers, no articulation to manipulate their spacing and the shapes of their wings. Wilbur Wright hatched these bizarre demons in an attempt to prove that a lizard might fly without need of a cumbersome and difficult-to-control harness of foot-long dragonflies (as part of a more general, satanic deception to mislead the faithful as to the age of the earf).

When you approached the front door of the church and saw the miserable dying man, who, much like you were about to do, had plunged head-first into the waves, and received your first quest/ominous portent, you knew that what was on the other side of those stairs was going to be a struggle.

Here’s what it was possible to do in the very first moments of Diablo. You could arrive at the bottom of the stairs of the first level, look around for a grand total of four seconds, see five skeletons and two goblin things, and then get eaten by them. This game was not here to invite you cordially into its lush, verdant fields. It was not about to throw stuffed animals at you and then giggle. This was a crypt, by god, full of monsters. You just saw a man outside with his guts spread all over the walkway. Did you think it was a good idea to go see what happened to him? Did you decide to come down to this creepy fucking town where it’s always nighttime to prove that you’re really great at ignoring the warning signs of mind-destroying evil? Did you make your way here from miles to the west, side-stepping carefully, four feet at a time, the whole way? Your thighs must be insane.

When you encountered a zombie, some time a little later in this adventure, you were already conditioned to be deathly afraid of any shapes lurking in the endless, pale blue dimness. Caligula couldn’t make you senator fast enough for you to volunteer to walk up to one of those things (allow us to explain: horses charge into fire, because their instinct, when confronted with danger, is to run toward it — probably because most forms of danger will have to get out of the way, and then turn around and try to chase the horse — which is, as far as large mammals go, pretty fast, but not especially good at cornering (oh, and Caligula made his horse a Senator (we guess he was crazy?))). Thank goodness everybody got to shoot fire every now and then, or you might have to actually walk up to those things and shake hands with your rusty cheese knife and rotten wooden serving platter you were using to deflect arrows. Those things were clearly a problem.

Later, when you were in the oppressive brown endlessness of the catacombs, rooms full of invisible demons and the awkward steps of literally dozens of the terrifying things — which had said “Mmmmmm, fresh meat” before dicing you into perfect cubes on level two — were the right kind of sticky sensation you felt wading through the tar pits of this hideous fantasy world (as opposed to the wrong sort of sticky sensation, which I won’t get into — see earlier comment re: not saying anything about hymens). Because of them, you treasured the moments on dry, bare ground (within the swamp metaphor; all ground is dry in crypts (or else it’s all wet, in hell (Diablo’s hymen is made of interlocking bone spikes)) in the libraries where some book would improve your fire wall, or at the mysterious shrines where a fortune cookie might give you mana shield (speaking of temporary barriers that hurt when they’re broken!), or a stat boost, or god knows what (your virginity back).

The ultimate example of these triumphant moments of respite was Arkhaine’s Valor. The armor that had so much good shit on it, you couldn’t *not* wear it (nothing says reasoned persuasive argumentation like a double negative flanked by asterisks). In fact, for levels thereafter you would turn your nose up at plate (armor) just because it didn’t seem as good as what you had on (as it turns, out, it was better, but let’s not dwell on that). As part of this amazing moment, when you grabbed this thing off a pedestal in a mini-fortress of insanity, it was quite often *also* the first time you put on armor high class enough to change the appearance of your character. This reward mattered, especially in light of the emotionally exhausting slog through the levels.

In the first levels, discovering a new monster might mean running around a bit to avoid getting overwhelmed. In the 5-10 areas, in the catacombs, that experience became the process of opening doors and wondering what you might have to face inside. By 10-15, in the caves, merely taking a few steps in a new direction might result in a torrent of invisible enemies, acid spitting dogs, and magic flying fire. This progression of circumstances might drive you to stay at an earlier level (you know, among the skeletons — where it’s safe) just to avoid finding out what hell is like. In a way, this made Diablo one of the most effective tools of Christianity in the digital age.

Eventually, if you fought the game’s namesake in his final, hideously empty room full of danger, you could, if you wanted, turn him to stone and destroy him without much trouble. However, if you were in the grips of the game’s intended mood, you wouldn’t *dare* expend something so precious as a turn-to-stone scroll on an actual monster. God knows when you might need it, and then where would you be, having expended it? In fact, it’s probably best to just sell it, so that you’re not tempted to waste it.

Diablo was paced, and each one of its set pieces had the feeling of magic when you discovered that, yes, this configuration of hallways should mean that X was about to happen. When X is about to happen, there is Y reward. You didn’t expect the thirty-third goat-man to drop trow and reveal shimmering riches with which to equip yourself. The majestic thoroughbred special characters were the harbingers of those rewards, and the confrontations with those characters were suitably epic. We enjoyed fighting King Leoric every time we saw him, even though he was stale. We must have killed the dead king several times before we ever got up the courage to go down and tangle with the slippery wet passageways of “hell” (stocked with batwinged tits that shot energy balls (just to put some previous comments, which we will not revisit, into some kind of context)).

Milano cookies are now sold in packages containing “100 calorie pouches.” This is due to the fact that behavioral science has produced a coherent theory that shows people can control their weight better when their food is individually packaged (one, assumes, in packages that are not liars — for instance, a foil wrapper which must be torn off and discarded to eat the food it contains, yet, mysteriously, is meant to contain four servings, or the abundantly more insane 4.5 servings), as opposed to a portion they themselves construct from an amount which is legitimately Too Much. The packages in question contain two (2) Milano cookies, but it would be more accurate to say they contain 1.5 legitimate milano cookies, as they are, each, roughly two-thirds the size of the kind you may be used to purchasing. When presented with the genuine article, you may eat one cookie, and while swallowing think, This experience is great. I should get another cookie loaded into the pipeline in order to continue it.” Cookie might follow cookie, until you reach the end of the package and think, “My god, what have I done? That stupid bag represents four hours of time in the gym, or two hours of wandering around the hilly countryside of northern Italy, or twenty minutes trying to find your friend’s apartment in Kobe.” With the microscopic package, not only are we amused by how tiny they are (we fantasize about being a gay giant), we also have no recourse but to savor the damned things, because we know they won’t last forever. The other mini-cookie languishes in its hilarious, clear plastic casket, awaiting our sick pleasure. Taunting this cookie is almost more amusing than actually eating. Though we do feed on the suffering of biscuits (as the English call them).

As well as the biscuit proper.

We’re probably being pretty obvious here, but the only reason Blizzard made Diablo II the epic, endless bag of cookies they did was because that’s what they believed their audience wanted (and they were right, as they are always right, and the audience doesn’t really get that the pigging out it wants to do isn’t good for it — you have to be firm with your audience and act in their best interest even when they don’t know that’s what you’re doing (and the audience has to eventually tell you to screw yourself, and they’re marrying him, and they don’t care *what* you say)).

There is no atmospheric escalation in Diablo II. You appear in what passes for a verdant field a la late 90s computer graphics (I say late 90s, because Blizz aimed for the proletariat’s machine specs, to reap the greatest harvest of cash money). You appear there without any kind of prelude or explanation, ex nihilo (again), because that’s what happened in Diablo. I’m not saying you necessarily have to have a reason to be in a weird hold-out camp full of lesbian archers, especially if you’re a shirtless barbarian, but I doubt anyone thought about it one way or the other. The character from the first Diablo fell out of the sky, so this one should too. Also, the character select screen sort of lies, in terms of how exciting it makes you look, but we’ll get to that later. If you talk to the domineering pussy cat standing nearby, you find out . . . something. I forget what. Honestly, it’s been so long, I have no idea at this point. You almost inevitably cut to the chase.

The chase is just outside town, across a bridge which demarcates an invisible no-demon zone. However, upon exiting, you might still think it’s a no-demon zone, since all you see are hedgehog muppets wandering around in broad daylight. If you walk up to one of the muppets, they’ll make a cute growly noise like Fizgig from The Dark Crystal and launch paperclips at you.

These are reasonably easy to dodge, if you happen to have a mouse plugged into your computer. As you run around the green fields, again, in complete daylight, and swipe at the stuffed animals, you will find a well marked road that leads onwards through a gap in the obsessive low stone walls which seem to have been erected to keep the deciduous forest in check. There’s probably some interesting back story there. Also, there are no crops where you run around bopping the bunny foo-foos, so the whole circumstances under which these walls were built are ambiguous. You do, occasionally, find what seems like must have been a farm house, even, occasionally, with fresh bodies in it, but the supposed infrastructure of this community seems tenuous. What did they export? Where are their specialty laborers? I suppose the husky lady in the camp near an anvil qualifies as your skilled workforce, but she supposedly came from somewhere else (you later discover). In any case, wander around long enough, and one of three things will happen.

1) You will find a pit into the ground labeled “The Den of Evil.” It has a road leading up to the entrance, most likely for the easy and convenient access of purgatorial cleaning services such as yourself, and, once inside, at least looks slightly more hellish. In a hobbit-home kind of way. Down *there*, the muppets are augmented by various other denizens, including huge hairy things which I can’t properly identify. If you kill every moving thing in the place aside from yourself, holy light will erupt from an unseen ceiling, and you will be informed that you have purged the den of evil.

2) You will find a strange gap in the stone walls that leads to a graveyard full of people with skin conditions, and their coke-fiend leader: the pale, bisexual evil version of Conan the Barbarian’s Scarface, as played by Charlize Theron. She will run around like she needs a fix, pausing long enough to put more worthless minions in your way until you run out of healing potions or succeed in getting enough hits in on her for her to die. When she collapses, abundant lightning froths out of her body, killing most, if not all of her minions, and you are free to notice two standing structures with stairs. I forget the names, but it’s something along the lines of “Crypt” and “Mausoleum” (there are several important differences; for instance, do you know that blah blah blah blah?). If you go down into one of these, you will see something vaguely similar (identical) to the first part of Diablo. Further adventures will reveal crazy shiny ghosts, and barrels that explode for no good reason. They are both very short, contain only one floor, and have nothing of substance to discover or achieve. They are complete wanks.

3) A fairly nondescript brown pad with a target on it that lets you teleport back to town instantly.

If you take too long doing any of these things, the lighting will transition to a faux nighttime.

What’s happening here is very specific. Rather than being on a journey to reach a specific ending (and therefore to feel some kind of tension or . . . anything at all, regarding that ending), you are simply wandering around. When you find something vaguely climactic, it is, really, a dead end. You have to leave the way you came in. In the case of the waypoint, there is a very specific suggestion going on; you will be *skipping* content on a regular basis. The difference between Diablo, where you found entrances every 5 levels, and therefore acted like a save system of sorts, and Diablo II, where every significant area, and most insignificant ones have a tram system connecting you to them, conveniently and quickly, for pennies on the dollar, is striking. Don’t feel tense about moving onward; you will always be able to return to where you were. In fact, you will have to. In fact, do it right now, because we’re done here — this cave is empty, except for dead bodies, and there is no resolution awaiting at its bottom. Meanwhile, time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking into the future.

How copacetic.

 

[Kosma]

Part 2

The day night cycle is particularly defusing. In Tristram, it was always night. A hideous black (and blue and orange) night, the end of which might never be seen by any man living. If you didn’t plumb the depths of that church, was there any certainty that there would be a dawn? While you were in the crypts, what sense of time did you have? The longer you spent in that pit, the more certain you were that it was driving you mad and sapping your will to live. Diablo wasn’t a virtuoso performance, but it was a classic and well executed example of mood — it fulfilled the rogue-like sense of isolation. Your quest was against evil. The world was crumbling with this black, cancerous seed at its center. When the final scene revealed a self-imposed sentence of damnation on your character, how was it not obvious? You weren’t in it for the +10 sword. You weren’t in it to survive. There is only one logical conclusion to bravery and purity in the face of uncompromising evil, and that is death. That is why soldiers come home and smirk at your half-assed attempts to distract them, or glean some kind of personal exposition from them that doesn’t come off as matter-of-fact. Yes, my friend was killed by a piece of white hot metal that traveled so fast it left a blue line in my vision that made it hard for me to see where his head landed for several seconds; are we having burgers tonight, or what, because I’m kind of hungry.

Or else they won’t speak of it at all. It depends on how enchanted they are with survival, I suppose. Volunteer armies have more cavalier soldiers. Drafted armies are full of … well Diablo II characters. Your orders are to purge this field of muppets and report back on the status of any holes in the ground you find. A lack of enthusiasm on the part of that man is not a surprise — what’s a surprise is trying to roleplay someone unenthusiastic. This is a forum for another art form. Protein!

I suppose it might be an incredible piece of breakthrough art that was later continued by World of Warcraft. Yes. I see it now. What can be more enlightening than a game which makes you explore boredom and disinterest? A game that makes you explore reluctance. Escapism which says, “Imagine how hard it would be to escape from *this*’, and, by contrast, makes you long for your dreary-ass life, where, at least, you can choose to play games sometimes.” A game which never makes you feel remote, because no matter where you go, there you are.

The best thing about Diablo II are the cutscenes, and the cutscenes are asynchronous insanity. They track the travels of a potato following his sack through a series of strange circumstances where he tries not to betray an angel, and helps to secret one of the gems that was used to capture the spirit of Diablo, Mephisto, or Baal. I forget which. Probably Baal. The sack ultimately becomes Diablo again, and sets up shop in a cathedral (step up from a church) which, at least, is at the end of several hellish areas, but each of those areas is more like Milton wandering around in his own lost paradise than the series of squared circles which lead to the main event. There’s no trepidation when you’re crossing the final series of lava spanning bridges (with more strange dead-ends and offshoots) to the Death Star attack run that results in summoning and killing the big D.

The crazy part sets in after you do this the first time. Diablo has difficulty levels. Diablo II has repeats. You aren’t playing it on hell mode; you’re playing the game through it, and that involved playing it fully three times at least. However, the game’s level cap at 99 necessitated far more than that. It’s not that you had to do this, but that the lifespan of the game had to be the leveling system, because there was no other purpose to the game. You were listlessly wandering around, destroying piñatas in nowhere in particular. There was no context. Unless you count the secret cow level. Eventually, the SCL would be expanded to encompass a special, Super-Diablo killing process involving more farming and collecting quests. A kind of instanced, non-persistent Everquest. Like a weekend rider meetup to go sixty miles, with an all you can eat pancake breakfast and “bike blessing” to occur before hand. Or Destiny Riders, a Christian Rider’s association in which you and other likeminded individuals share your love of the open road without all that dreadful secularity. God is everywhere. Especially when you’re trying to have fun.

Remember when we said the character select screen had false advertising? That is the cruel hook sunk into your guts to get you on bored (see what we did there?) this meatwagon. Sure, killing Diablo forty times is idiotic. Why do it? Play the game and be done, right? Wrong. That character select screen shows you a character resplendent and confident. They aren’t immaculate, but they promise power. Power that you couldn’t possibly have. That only comes after playing the game for a long time. Unlike the first one, where every spell could be maxxed (and, therefore, what was the point, other than as an academic exercise), Diablo II’s rigidly limited amount of points, and ways to improve skills beyond the cap, became a form of completism that set up the goal of the game.

Starcraft is, at its best, about the effortless moment of victory when your superior force, with virtually nothing opposing it, finishes hammering the last building into oblivion. In Diablo II, there is no moment of victory; however, there are many small moments of satisfaction, like a mild sub-orgasm that happen when something falls down. To string these mild impulses together into more satisfying circumstances, you must kill handfuls, dozens, even scores of muppets and monsters within spans of seconds. The bigger the pop of trinkets that comes out of them when they fall, the more the immediate emptiness you feel might be less of a concern, so you find yourself, eventually, utterly uninterested in cutting a swath through hordes and hordes of enemies, and focusing *only* on Diablo, or Mephisto (since he was particularly easy to reach in a matter of seconds for an experienced player).

Meanwhile, the game seems to think its own metaphors through without really caring about the implications. The first chapter starts with an endless, midwest series of fields. The kind of oppressive feeling that comes from grassland and small towns with nothing to do is no accident. In that respect, the monsters are welcome company. In this barren series of empty places, they are, at least, inhabitants. There’re caves and the final monastery too, but that’s almost like sight-seeing and revelry in comparison to the nothingness. Then there’s a desert. We know about deserts — they’re empty places where we must walk. At least there’s a city of sorts to return to, and much of the action happens in and around that city. Honestly, they could have done alot more to crush the human spirit in a completely unterrifying way in that chapter, but luckily, they make up for it in the jungles of Kurast, which have given us a bizarre window on the hellishness of being a GI in vietnam, at least in the sense that the jungle never seems to end, all looks the same, and is filled with difficult-to-see shit that’s trying to kill you. When you get to the ashen, post-apocalyptic wasteland that comprises Hell, is it any surprise? Special bonus Expansion Disc commentary: a frozen tundra is *refreshing*. Well, it’s a soothing bright blue.

They’ve learned their lesson in terms of art direction in Diablo III, though, it’s the wrong sort of lesson. III is beautiful. It’s inviting. You get all the action of Diablo, with an exceptionally well executed faux “edge”: deep black rat turds cropping up in the middle of your epic fantasy fruit loops. This is sincere; they’ve fixed the off-putting stuff in Diablo II from what we’ve seen of Diablo III so far. But what kind of statement is that? No definitive voice — just the state-of-the-art in “attract mode” for the modern arcade cabinet in your own home (via the internet). Obviously, we don’t know on the surface whether there’ll be the kind of tension that made the first game what it was, but we’ll take a stab with some syllogistic reasoning.

When we saw the adverts for Silent Hill 4, there was a scene where the character was stomping triumphantly on a dog-like thing. This was meant to be one of many gritty visions that upset you.

It shared a reel with the same-old hallways full of organs that most of us are pretty inured to, unless, for whatever reason, that was our first time seeing one, and a classic Japanese crawling ghoul with hair-over-the-face that we became acquainted with in The Ring; always far more effective in a presentation that was mostly silent. These would leave you unsettled, if it weren’t for the triumphant picture of a man beating the ever-loving shit out of a demon antagonist. What kind of message is defiance in a vision of terror? *We’ll* supply the defiance. You supply the hopeless struggle.

Which is the point, isn’t it. There’s a fine line between being Compelling (whateverthefuckthatmeans) and cordially inviting your clients into a welcoming embrace of a Blue Hawaiian, only to wake up the next morning in your hotel room wondering how they managed to blow their whole evening without remembering any of it — and why are they sore?

Diablo II doesn’t ask our consent. It puts a treadmill down in front of us, trying to entice us to stand on it and move. “Just put one foot on. See? I’ll run it slow. That’s not bad, right?” Then it starts to stack the deck. As I get caught up, it makes it move faster and faster. Eventually, I’m pounding along at a break neck pace going nowhere, and feeling no satisfaction. There isn’t the pump of struggling with a weight. There isn’t the satisfaction of traversing real distance. We suppose we could watch the heart monitor to determine if we’re in the “zone,” as determined by a provided chart that you cross index with age and weight. When we’re sweaty at the end of the twenty minute timer, and it says we’ve burnt 240 calories, well. Fine. So? Where was the fun part.

This is why people don’t go to the gym to run on those damn machines consistently. Sure, you can throw those in occasionally, but if you’re a man, you go to the gym to feel your entire body Come Alive after you’ve picked up a piece of metal that is Too Heavy. If you’re a woman, you go to feel the acceptance and mutual permission that you give a room full of other women when some way-too-exciteable jazzercise instructor tells you to try to keep your leg as high as you can — but just make sure you really *go* for it — as you determine, yourself, that you’ll be doing what *you* can do, and to hell with that psychotic bunny at the head of the room. We’re all different, but everyone is beautiful, etc. During that bracing experience, you may even go so far as to enter a mild frenzy state in which you get what the guys are getting every five minutes by lifting, but every thirty seconds, as you complete short series of exercises that burn deep in the muscle mass. Of course, the guys have a luminal period (ALWAYS I AM COMING — Yes, it is safe for work).

Your barbarian either plays hot-potato with the monsters until they fall down, or he cuisinarts through their throng until you can’t hear any screaming. If there are other players in the game with you, then it becomes a perverse uncooperative game where you pool your resources to either A) liquidate monsters together, as a unit, and fight like animals over the orgasmic fragments of the loot drops or B) diverge into smaller and smaller groups until someone finds the “goal” of the area, and everyone comes together.

Ahem.

You’d really have to sit on your hand, though, to get what feels like the satisfaction of a real game out of any of this, and even then, you’d be using your imagination to get all the good parts.

But why zero stars?

Because we spent hundreds of hours doing this bullshit. We’ve spent even more time playing World of Warcraft. Like it or not, we are dull animals that have come out of a jungle where, if it moves, and it makes noise, and produces a *reward*, then . . . shit. It must matter! Right? Why would a brain develop to determine the difference between empty rewards and real ones? It just spent umpteen-million years developing the capacity to recognize rewards which are above the primal level of basic needs — avoiding pain, consuming energy, and screwing as often as possible; the fact that we recognize liars is already kind of amazing.

But if we were all lie detectors, liars would have no place: and they do. In fact, most of our social interactions are based on lies with a genuine basis (restraint is the most basic form of lie — but we won’t get into this right now). Diablo II plays on our vulnerabilities to the hilt. Victory. Ease. Laziness. Suggestibility in a state of confusion. A monster? Kill it. Avast, a thing o’ th’ ground? Pick it up. A dead end? Come about and find another path. A bigger monster? Repeat previous behaviors . . . only moreso.

Atmosphere goes a long way toward making these useless escapades more enticing. For that reason, Diablo would be a one-star game. But when it is nothing but a soulless and, seemingly, cynical attempt to ensnare you, without any thought to *what* feeling “addicted” to an experience really means to a thinking being, then it is evil.

The highest compliment of a game could be considered that you must keep playing and playing endlessly. That it’s just the kind of “one more turn” experience, or “one more round,” or “one more level.” We’ve inadvertently seen that *this* is the environment. This is the selection pressure on entertainment in gaming. Games must make us play them . . . forever and ever. Those twins in The Shining are Blizzard entertainment. Jack Nicholson’s “Here’s Johnny” moment is the hours of your life that go away when you could have tried so many other experiences in the time that you spent killing the same boss, in the same way, for the five-hundredth time hoping not to see Isenheart’s Case fall on the ground again.

Diablo II gets zero stars. It might as well be World of Warcraft, as well, but why say the same thing essentially twice? Besides, the formula in Diablo II is what makes WoW what it is. The fact that it is more enticing and popular is really a matter of refining the grim evil hatched in Blizzard North.

A zero star game has to kill other games. It has to not just be empty, but wither any other genuine and good things that might try to grow in its presence. If you crave personal competition, you will fight other players . . . in Diablo II. To make matters worse, you will have to play the fortune cookie monster game part to get the equipment you’ll need to compete. How about playing cooperatively? Same story. What if you meet a monster that you can’t defeat? Skip it. Walk away. You won’t come back later, because if you start a new game, it won’t be there. You’ll probably be too busy running past most of the content to get to the”‘good stuff,” anyway, that it won’t be an issue.

Diablo II took Unreal Tournament from me. It took Freedom Force. It took Dead or Alive (whichever). It took Soul Reaver, and Power Stone, and ReVolt. It took Hunter: The Reckoning. It took Ikaruga (note: It did not actually take Ikaruga).

Those discs are *still* in our collection, and, through the magic of Blizzard Online, will always be like an old needle and a shrunken balloon that we don’t want to think about. Every now and then, we’ll look at mods that have been made which adjust the dosage and high, and be tempted into reinstalling. Or at least, we might, if we weren’t already hooked on the far more debilitating World of Warcraft — the struggle against which is a daily concern. Our friends are all dead but for that addiction. Dawn of War II came out. It’s not the-most-amazing-thing-ever (in fact, it seems to be learning entirely too much from Diablo II, but it’s not nearly as shallow and evil), but will we be able to get six friends to join us? No. We have more than six friends. More than six with the money, time, and computers who might want to play games for several hours a night. But they are in the harsh claws of the wailing banshee which Blizzard has created.

Sure, it might have started in Everquest (I would argue that anyone who plays Everquest is pathological, rather than getting taken advantage of — if you can give yourself over to *that*, then you’d give yourself over to anything, and it’s not the game’s fault; still, I suppose Valium looks like a pussy drug to a heroine user), but so what? Blizzard crossed over, and they did it by applying genuine talent to the development of a sinister destroyer of worlds. You might not like a given Halo 3 or Gears of War, but at least people who play those games are capable of passing the controller to whoever’s next without having lost a relationship and endangering a career in the mean time.

Thus Spake Zarathustra.

 

[Baraka in the White House]

Zero out of four means the game lacks even a single conceivable redeeming quality which, when applied to Diablo 2 - or any Blizzard game for that matter - is patently ridiculous.

 

[nincompoop]

He means that there is no differences between the classes other than the starting stats. They can all do exactly the same thing.

Unlike Diablo 2 where each class is unqiue with different skills.

I'm not entirely sure that's the case, I seem to recall stat boosts providing varying amounts of benefit to each class (Sorcerers would have more mana and could cast spells faster than another character with the same magic, Rogues could move and fire a bow faster than other classes with the same dexterity, etc.) Even if that's not the case, the starting stats were different enough that it would be pretty much impossible to build a character who could function as a different type of character, at least not until very late in the game. Not to mention that each class had a unique skill (Warriors could repair armor, Rogues disarm traps, Sorcerers recharge staves). Obviously Diablo 2 had a lot more in the way of customization, but saying all the classes in Diablo were the same is ludicrous.

 

[Lothars]

Okay this is the longest Diablo 1/2 comparison I have ever seen. I'm still reading through it. Batshit insane or genius I can't decide. :lol

It's easy to decide it's batshit insane and just completely wrong at least you can tell he doesn't really know what he really is talking about.

 

[BlazingDarkness]

Diablo 2 is better

Diablo 2 is probably my favourite PC game - I have weird cravings to play it every six months or so, so i have to search my cupboards every time for the CD key (i've bought the game 3 times in total, couldn't turn down that battle chest!)

Yeah, i love it.

The multiplayer was awesome too, hacked characters and all:lol

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

That article by actionbutton.net is amazing. If I didn't quit Diablo 2 before I read it I certainly would have quit now.

Despite how dated D1 has become it still nailed the atmosphere a hundred times over and managed to generate real thrills and scares. Turning a corner in hell only to get jumped by a dozen huge-breasted fireball flinging naked succubi that kill the player off near-instantly truly never gets old.

Soundtrack was also better, even though it only had like 5 songs compared to the seemingly 50 or so in D2.

 

[KillerAJD]

I never really got to PLAY Diablo I until after Diablo II, so maybe my opinion is a bit skewed. I would basically sit next to my cousin while he played Diablo I. This was during the summer, so he would play for hours at a time, up until like 3 a.m. I never got to play it (mainly because I was too scared, lol) so it was always me just watching. That was fine though, and I still loved watching.

When Diablo II released...it was a different story. I played that game for nearly 3 years straight. Throughout the summer, I would play with a younger cousin, nearly 12 hours a day. That shit was like crack. I eventually tried to play the first one, but I could never get farther then the 3rd floor of the dungeon before getting bored. Still love DII though, and I can't wait for number III.

 

[byropoint]

Single Player- Diablo I
MultiPlayer- Diablo II
Overall- Diablo II

Can't wait for Diablo III

ditto here.

 

[Camwi]

Diablo 2 is better than the first game in every possible way. If the third game is as big of a jump as 2 was to 1, then I think my head will explode.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

You don't remember Diablo very well. Nearly any enemy that uses projectile attacks in the catacombs, caves, or hell tries to run away if you ever get close. Satyrs and Succubi in particular.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz_gJlWlxXs

You must not have read my post. I clearly stated "projectile enemies, of course". Are you suggesting that an enemy with a bow (making his advantage to be damage over distance) to stand next to you while you hack away with an axe?

Maybe it's just me, but playing as a warrior I'd always hit the first wall at some point in the catacombs, and I'd have to restart the game to level up some more since all the previous monsters are cleared out. The second wall would usually end up in the caves because of those damn poison spitters.

It's funny you mention the warrior, since the warrior is likely the easiest class to play (rivaled only by the rogue of course). I can't argue with your experience, but I've played Diablo a million times and there's definitely no wall to hit in my experience.

 

[mYm|17|]

D2 just rocks so much. Cousin and I finally beat Hell a few months ago

 

[Ninja Scooter]

funny this thread should pop up when i just D/L'd Diablo 2 for my iMac last night from Blizzard's site. Bringing back lots of memories.

 

[Lothars]

That article by actionbutton.net is amazing. If I didn't quit Diablo 2 before I read it I certainly would have quit now.

Despite how dated D1 has become it still nailed the atmosphere a hundred times over and managed to generate real thrills and scares. Turning a corner in hell only to get jumped by a dozen huge-breasted fireball flinging naked succubi that kill the player off near-instantly truly never gets old.

Soundtrack was also better, even though it only had like 5 songs compared to the seemingly 50 or so in D2.

I definitely disagree with you about the article but Diablo 1 definitely has better atmosphere but not gameplay it's still an alright game but has been bested in almost every way by Diablo 2 including soundtrack but it all is just difference of opinion.

I also think that it's also some nostalgia regarding Diablo 1 now.

 

[Arzehn]

This thread makes waiting for the new D2 ladder reset harder than ever.

 

[Jerkapotamus]

There were a couple of issues with Diablo 1 that made me enjoy it a bit less. I'm not sure if it was always this way, but multiplayer was just full of dupers and hackers by the time I got around to it. Duplicating items was just way too easy. The single-player was still fun, and facing the Butcher is still the defining moment in the series for me.

I think the character customization and variety is what really makes D2 a bit higher in my book than D1. The diversity of the classes and skills was what made D2 so awesome for me.

 

[ChoklitReign]

So if Diablo 1 has the best single-player experience and atmosphere, and Diablo 2 has the best MP and variety, what should a Diablo noob like myself start with? Can you even find a lot of servers for the game nowadays?

 

[notsol337]

I can't trick Diablo into running on my PC anymore. I can get Diablo II to run easy as pie though!

 

[bill0527]

Diablo 1 will always be special to me. I first saw this game back in 1997 on a feature CNN was doing about this new thing called the internet and how this was game was turning into a sensation because of it. After seeing the feature and buying a PC magazine that talked about the game... I ran to Best Buy and bought my first ever PC - a Packard Bell Pentium 1, 166mhz processor, 16MB RAM computer with a 15" CRT monitor and HP Printer for the low, low, package price of $1799. I then got online for the first time ever through AOHell (don't laugh, most everyone used AOHell in 1997).

So in essence, Diablo 1 broke my online gaming virginity so it'll always be my first love.

But Diablo 2, is really a much better game in terms of depth, length, customization, and variety. You can debate that Diablo 1 has the better atmosphere and sense of creepiness and those are valid, but IMO the total gameplay experience is much better in D2.

Godspeed to my wife and children when Diablo 3 is released. It'll be the last they see of dear old dad for a while, so best of luck to them.

 

[DownLikeBCPowder]

So if Diablo 1 has the best single-player experience and atmosphere, and Diablo 2 has the best MP and variety, what should a Diablo noob like myself start with? Can you even find a lot of servers for the game nowadays?

Man, if you haven't been tainted at all yet I urge you to start from square one - Diablo.

 

[JesseZao]

Diablo II for me by far, never got into the first one until later. I think I was playing age of empires or maybe dark forces/jedi knight at that point in my childhood.

I did have a friend who was one of the first legit 99s in D1 though, BlueFalcon. :lol
We played D2 together, but never got past the low 80s.

 

[ZealousD]

So if Diablo 1 has the best single-player experience and atmosphere, and Diablo 2 has the best MP and variety, what should a Diablo noob like myself start with? Can you even find a lot of servers for the game nowadays?

You won't have to chose because the Diablo Battle Chest comes with both games. Try out Diablo first and if that doesn't go over well switch over to D2.

Finding a server for Diablo 2 is very easy, since Blizzard has been running the Diablo 2 battle.net servers nonstop since release. The Diablo 1 servers are filled with so many hackers that a newbie attempting to playing on them is essentially suicide.

 

[YakiSOBA]

D2 for me... I will never forget when (back in highschool) my friends and I would leave pindlebot running during the day, and then rush home to see what new treasures our characters found... or the one morning when I was in line to get something from the caf and my friend taps me on the back and shows me a screenshot of his character with a windforce in his inventory (I had a crazy amazon at the time who was only missing the WF to complete my decked out gear)

 

[Kosma]

D2 for me... I will never forget when (back in highschool) my friends and I would leave pindlebot running during the day, and then rush home to see what new treasures our characters found... or the one morning when I was in line to get something from the caf and my friend taps me on the back and shows me a screenshot of his character with a windforce in his inventory (I had a crazy amazon at the time who was only missing the WF to complete my decked out gear)

I didnt know there was botting in D2. Then agaian I never got caught up in that duping scene either.

 

[Belgorim]

Diablo completely rocks... especialy with ironman-rules.

That being said... I have spent a lot more time with Diablo 2 and I completely love that game, but it does lack some of the atmosphere and the awesome yet unvaried soundtrack of Diablo.

 

[tomasdk]

Diablo 1 for me. The usual reasons, better atmosphere, scarier, darker, much much harder than Diablo 2. I love playing warriors and I remember practicaly having to reset the game because I couldn't beat the Caves(9-12) because of the enemy combinations. Good times.

 

[Zaptruder]

I really liked the super deep Diablo 1 dungeoning, and kinda missed it in Diablo 2.

I hope Diablo 3 combines the two; overworld exploration areas peppered by massively deep dungeons and massively tall towers.

 

[babuchy]

diablo I so far... and wating for diablo III!!!

 

[Raide]

While I loved Diablo 1, there was 1 major issue that put me off. After playing for hours and hours, collecting awesome gear, a co-op jaunt to Hell was stopped when one of us died. Trying to save face, I volunteered to take the trip back to hell and loot my partners corpse....only to die myself.

Stuck with all of your best gear in hell and no good backup gear, we had no choice but to start again. After that, the desire to play Diablo was well and truly gone.

I did love having the useless weapon drops too. :lol


Diablo 2 just had so much more variety. More weapons, more set items, runes, sockets, damn Diablo 2 had a load of stuff going on. Add to that the huge amount of varied monsters, Diablo 2 just did everything so much better than Diablo 1.

 

[Almak]

All this talk of Diablo made me reinstall my original (D1). Man its been a while!
Though I was wondering, should I just go ahead and play it as it is or should I try and get a hold of Hellfire? Would I even be able to find it on sale anywhere? Back in the day I only played it without the expansion so I'm wondering if it even matters? Does it add anything significant enough for me to care?

 

[Truant]

Going to replay D2, singleplayer

I want all the fancy graphics mods, help me out, GAF.

 

[Almak]

Going to replay D2, singleplayer

I want all the fancy graphics mods, help me out, GAF.

You might want to give this one a look but its not perfect. There are some instances when it glitches out. Nothing drastic though just due to the fact that the game wasn't originally intended to be played like that.

http://www.moddb.com/games/diablo-2/news/d2multires

 

[BigAT]

Oh, Diablo Canyon 1, why can't you be more like Diablo Canyon 2?

 

[Solo]

Diablo 1 by a landslide. Its one of my favorite games ever, and one of the most atmospheric titles Ive ever played. The first second I heard the Tristram theme in D1, I knew I was in for an incrtedibly unique experience, and the game just totally blew me away. Its still probably in my top 5 PC games ever.

Diablo 2 felt like more of the same, but less focused and with better gameplay. Being that Im not a huge MP gamer, I didnt spend years playing it, like many. Whereas I have replayed Diablo 1 about 10 times.

 

[orion434]

I really can't decide on which one was better, but I played Diablo 2 way more. I could never get into the Multiplayer in the original because by the time I got online people already hacked all the best equipment.

 

[Fraeon]

Diablo 2 is just a bigger, better and more badass Diablo. Diablo had The Butcher but I thought enemies like Duriel in the second game were also pretty nightmare inducing.

So, uh, yeah. Diablo 2, definitely.

 

[KTallguy]

I have amazing memories of both games, but I think I've never been hyped for a game before release quite like I was hyped for Diablo 2. I mean, downloading character generators, thinking about it during class, visiting diabloii.net every fricking day, just for a hint.

Diablo 1 was some scary stuff though. I remember being very impressed from the flames licking up from the title on the main menu, and telling my dad "wow, it's like real fire!!" (of course it's a simple loop, I was a dumb kid.)

Man those were the days...

Edit: Any high res patch for Diablo 1 out there?

 

[Rezbit]

Diablo 1 had its AWESOME moments, and I don't think anyone would doubt that it is creepier than Diablo 2. However, D2 still oozed atmosphere, and I really liked the setting and story. Those cutscenes still look fantastic today. The advances in gameplay also mean I gotta give the edge to D2.

Even though Act 3 is a little shitty at the start, I feel it finishes pretty strong at Travincal. Then of course, you have the totally fucking awesome descent into Hell. Man I can't wait for D3.

 

[Fonds]

Okay this is the longest Diablo 1/2 comparison I have ever seen. I'm still reading through it. Batshit insane or genius I can't decide. :lol

That was a good read. Can't decide whether or not they have a point though. Diablo II needed to be bigger and it does give you a sense of 'going somewhere', but in doing that it lost the focused feeling of dread Diablo 1 had. I guess you can't have one without the other.

As for DII being like WoW... a little maybe. But I can play DII for an hour and feel satisfied. No chance you'd have accomplished anything of note in an hour with WoW. And the combat is just better in DII. Much more direct than WoW's semi-turn based nature. So there's fun to be had in simply playing it. More fun than with WoW at least. That only ever came to life for me in 5 man instances.

 

[Ettie]

Man, if you haven't been tainted at all yet I urge you to start from square one - Diablo.

I started late, and from square one. A good decision on my part.

 

[KTallguy]

If you like Diablo 1 or 2, and you have a PS3, you better buy Demons Souls. The atmosphere and style is very, very similar.

 

[hiro4]

I have no idea if this has been said in this topic, but the main reason for me why DI was better in single then DII was the fact that DII always had the same quest line ALL the time.

DI had some variable quests like Poisoned water and the butcher or the Mage in the Library. I hope they bring this back in DIII.

 

[Aru]

AAAH Fresh Meat !

 

[Raide]

AAAH Fresh Meat !

BISHI-BOSH!

 

[Truant]

Missing the third disc. NO!!!!!

How does the Blizzard Store one work? Does it come with all the latest patches?

 

[Almak]

Missing the third disc. NO!!!!!

How does the Blizzard Store one work? Does it come with all the latest patches?

I don't remember it patching anything after I installed D2 + Expansion.

 

[Redd]

Has anyone here ever found a SoJ? My entire time I played with all my thousands of MF runs I never found a 1 single SoJ.

Found only 3. Found waaaaay more Bul-Kathos rings which were just as good for trade purposes most of the time. I cursed every time when I found a unique ring, id it an it turns out to be a low mf nagel ring.

 

[SonicX_Zero]

One of my favorite moments in playing Diablo 2 was in act 4 when we trigger all the pentagram or seals to summon Diablo. Beating the crap out of him with all our skills/spells was awesome.:lol

 

[JDS 1977]

I never played the first until after I had played D2. I couldn't take the slowness of the moving in Diablo. It also seemed really hard compared to the start of D2 which was more forgiving during the beginning. I kept getting ganged by skeletons right off the bat and having to run away constantly. So I quit, maybe I'll try it again some day. but there would have to be a run mod or something.