There’s a reason the name evokes hallowed memories in any PC gamer over the age of twenty, and a reason a sequel to a game that came out twelve years ago has us desperate to delve into its depths: the Diablo games, like the soulstones and enchanted gems its players pick from its dungeons, are polished to an insane level.
The previous game saw a band of adventurers stomp the archlords Mephisto, Baal and Diablo, as well a host of their grotesque followers. But it’s been twelve real-life years and twenty pretend ones since those events of the PC-only Diablo II, and the people in the town of Tristram are forgetting their land’s troubled past. But just as society collectively decides all those stories from two decades ago were total myth, a new evil rises in the undercity beneath Tristram. Enter you, your weapon, and your insatiable desire to murder things by pressing buttons very quickly.
Fortunately for these forgetful folk, you’re handy in a fight. New technology and that twelve year wait hasn’t significantly altered the formula. Monsters – from lowly zombies to hell’s favoured lieutenants, via rotting, bloated aberrations and bleached skeleton warriors – swarm the screen, necessitating swift, tactical fighting to keep them away from your soft skin. Batting them back to the hole they crawled from is a case of whacking them with your favoured weapon or ability, and Diablo III amps both the number of enemies and the scale of enemies: the result is daunting, even if you’re not a weakling.