Becky
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Diablo III has been out for over a week now - Hardware Heaven and Hot Hardware have taken a look, warts and all:
- Hardware Heaven"Diablo 3 is a dungeon crawler, allowing our hero to explore the dungeons and caverns of Sanctuary while working through the storyline. The games uses a custom 3D game engine that presents an overhead view to the player, like the isometric view used in previous games in the series. The game engine features destructible environments which allow us to use the world to our advantage during battle. For example, we can pull over a dungeon wall on a mob of enemies which makes taking them down that little bit easier.
There are five classes available to choose from, each class can be played as either a male or female avatar. The Barbarian is the only returning class from previous Diablo games, bringing the classic hack and slash melee combat. New to the Diablo series are the Witch Doctor, Wizard, Monk and Demon Hunter. Each class offers a different style of game play, from the ranged combat of the Wizard and Demon Hunter, to the up close melee style of the Barbarian. Magic features in both the Wizard and Witch Doctor classes and the Monk uses classic martial arts skills to cripple foes but also to self-heal."
- Hot Hardware"D3's gameplay is great. It retains all the addictive elements that made Diablo 2 so much fun, but streamlines and simplifies cuts down on the frantic clicking (my tendonitis thanks you). The new skill system works and scales well. Users who complain that the new flexible skill implementation results in everyone's Wizard or Witch Doctor being the same, are wearing a blinding pair of rose colored glasses. In Classic D2, poor skill implementation, death penalties, and an inflexible skill point system meant everyone used cookie cutter builds or risked being crippled by their own poor choices farther down the road.
There are disquieting signs of improper balance testing at higher difficulty levels, but the Normal and Nightmare modes are both quite a bit of fun. On a simple, visceral level, Diablo III remains a lot of fun -- when you can play. We'll discuss that shortly."