Grimrock

I quickly stormed my way to normal level 10 with a couple of friends, and then rerolled HC. We're currently at level 14, taking a break to eat.

Sure, at the start it's easy, but once you've passed the beta content, and nobody knows what to expect, there are some scary moments left and right.

It's more colorful than I expected, yes. The looks miss a bit of that grimmy atmosphere that the older diablos had. Which is kind of weird, because the story is as grim as ever. Maybe it's because I'm still in Act 1?

The combination of skills is pretty nice. Of course, at the start you have one skill, and you just spam it, but after a couple of levels, combining your skills, traps and special movements don't make it anywhere boring for me.

Thels wrote: The combination of skills is pretty nice. Of course, at the start you have one skill, and you just spam it, but after a couple of levels, combining your skills, traps and special movements don't make it anywhere boring for me.

Sound cautiously good.

Daniel.

The difficulty is supposed to ramp up considerably. Inferno is supposed to be brutal. Hopefully the servers will be stable enough to play by the time I get home from work tonight.

Here's one of the first impressions I've read of Diablo,

Charged Bolt stops working. Frost Nova stops working. The zombie I’m fighting keeps groaning and flailing his arms at me, but nothing happens. We’re both impotent. I run around and nudge some other zombies, also moaning but also unable to strike. My first disconnect!

I alt+tab out to check my net connection, and it’s working fine. When I get back in, the game’s quit to the main menu with an error saying there’s been an error – it has a number but no specifics. When I try to get back in, it throws up another error that says to make sure all of my party is ready. I’m playing single player. In a few minutes I’m able to log back in and play again. I’ve lost all my progress through the current zone and the world has reset and repopulated with monsters, but my character, items and quest status are intact.

There’s a lot to say about the fact that this can happen even in single player, but I’ll keep it brief: this is utter bullshit.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/05/15/diabl ... t-happens/

Daniel.

Nothing about this surprises me. Fortunately (for Blizzard), the number of people who care enough about these downsides is such a minimal impact to their bottom line that they can disregard the complaints entirely.

The thing is, if I buy Diablo 3 for £35 (€44, $56) then I'm gonna be annoyed if it's disappointing in anyway. And I have a bad suspicion that it will be. Why? Well, to be honest, I don't like the look of the characters. They seem...well, pretentious. All of the heroes or whatever they are look like they belong in a Final Fantasy world, almost as if they were designed by a child. Their appearances are totally arbitrary and over-the-top.

The battle: Is it me, or it does it appear to be incredibly simple? This is essentially what put me off World of Warcraft. I gave WoW a go one time, actually purchased the game. Went through the process of setting up an account, updating, creating a character and all the rest of it. I couldn't play it for more than an hour or so. I found it incredibly boring. To this day, I don't see how people can find battles involving the click of a single button engaging. I actually have a friend who's into these kind of MMORPG's, and I was round his place one day. He was glued to the computer with one finger on the keyboard...I knew he had Perfect World loaded up - I said, "what're you doing?", he replied "oh, I'm kicking their arses"...he wasn't even looking at the screen.
Now I'm not saying Diablo 3 is the same as WoW, but in terms of gameplay, it's no DOOM (original) or Super Mario World. It looks tedious and repetitive.

Diablo 3 so far seems to be more show and special effects than substance. And I'm not trying to put the game down. I really am borderline buying it. I'd really like to immerse myself in a great game right now...but, I know these things will annoy me. Maybe it's Blizzard...I don't know why, but when I think of the company, it just irritates me.

I had this feeling already with Diablo 1.
---
Even the original Warcraft (a Dune II-clone) was boring.
And also Dune II ('Command & Conquer'-predecessor) was actual boring - piffling 'Real-Time'-Strategy Games.
('click&swarm'-tactics instead of 'real tactics', that you actually had to think about, like in the old SSI wargames)

I preferred wargames like Steel Panthers and Close Combat or Combat Mission.

glyn_ie wrote:...almost as if they were designed by a child.

They are not designed by a child, but are designed for 'children' by intention.
You can not 'grow', when playing this boring stuff.
It's all industrial designed 'cock-sucking' for the crowd ... to make money.
These games have no soul.

glyn_ie wrote:The battle: Is it me, or it does it appear to be incredibly simple? This is essentially what put me off World of Warcraft. I gave WoW a go one time, actually purchased the game. Went through the process of setting up an account, updating, creating a character and all the rest of it. I couldn't play it for more than an hour or so. I found it incredibly boring. To this day, I don't see how people can find battles involving the click of a single button engaging. I actually have a friend who's into these kind of MMORPG's, and I was round his place one day. He was glued to the computer with one finger on the keyboard...I knew he had Perfect World loaded up - I said, "what're you doing?", he replied "oh, I'm kicking their arses"...he wasn't even looking at the screen.

Of course, with MMOs, you gain more skills the higher level you become, and each expansion adds additional skills. With WoW, it's mostly interesting in raids that, while you are dealing your damage (or tanking, or healing), you have to work with the boss mechanics. Anything solo or 5 player PvE stuff is really simple, yes.

glyn_ie wrote:Now I'm not saying Diablo 3 is the same as WoW, but in terms of gameplay, it's no DOOM (original) or Super Mario World. It looks tedious and repetitive.

Diablo 3 so far seems to be more show and special effects than substance. And I'm not trying to put the game down. I really am borderline buying it. I'd really like to immerse myself in a great game right now...but, I know these things will annoy me. Maybe it's Blizzard...I don't know why, but when I think of the company, it just irritates me.

What's with all the Blizzard hate lately. They made several high quality games, and canned every game that wasn't going to be high quality. Can't say that about every software house.

But yeah, combat in D3 is much more evolving than in WoW leveling/5 man. WoW doesn't really have dodging and that kind of stuff, while it's majorly important in D3. Also keep in mind that unlike D1 and D2, where you had LMB and RMB skills, D3 also places skills under 1, 2, 3 and 4, and you really need to use several skills to herd the mobs together and take them out.

WoW needed interesting boss mechanics for interesting fights. D3 has interesting fights on it's own, and then adds boss mechanics on top.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... wiQCTKqZwc#!