Diablo III is amazing, engrossing, addictive and superbly made. Blizzard has once again delivered an almost perfect gaming package (bar a few minor server issues). It would be easy to continue to heap praise high like those piles of decapitated heads dotted throughout the New Tristram and beyond.
There is however one small part of Diablo?s pedigree that isn?t so perfect. You begin your adventure on the outskirts of New Tristram. Built on the ruins of Old Tristram (lightning never strikes twice right?) it quickly becomes apparent something awfully terrible is happening. The player knows this because there are humans eating other humans and their not even using a knife and fork! After wading through the corpse party it?s up to you to save the incompetent militia from the hungry ghouls. This is surprisingly easy considering how much trouble captain crap sword was having.
Fast forward a little while and your hero is despatching Skeletor in theDesolateChamber. No complaints so far. Next stop is The Fields ofMisery. A few (well many) clicks later are theFesteringWoods. At this point it is becoming apparent that this world is not a happy one. This is lucky because without these handy verbs it would be hard to see what is so dreadful about the place.
Except from the walking dead, the crawling dead, the immobile dead, the lack of daylight, the animated skeletons with giant blades, the fat men that explode into snakes, a lot of things seem to be on fire, the angry Goatmen who want to chop your hands off, the fat men that explode into smaller snakes, every insect is ten times the size it should be, the insects also want to murder you, there is a dead villager every five steps and an old completely evil witch calls you a dickhead every so often.
Very useful lexical choice on the writer?s part. Fortunately the theme of negatively named areas continues throughout the game. There is The Cellar of TheDammed, TheWeepingHollow, The Cemetery of TheForsaken, TheGet KilledHighway,RapeBeach, TheScaryGatehouse, TheMolestedRiver, TheIf Your Happy and You Know It I?ll Eat Your FeetPlains and TheNothing Here Has a Pulse and Neither Should YouInn.
It?s easy to see that Blizzard was going for an ultra-bleak tone. This is the end of the world of course. The atmosphere created by the music and lighting does a very good job of creating this. Sometimes though it goes too far and becomes a little goofy. The game is excellent and this is a very minor matter. It is nevertheless very easy to poke fun at.
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