Diablo (PC)

Every so often there comes a game that people will hold close to their heart for one reason or another. For some people it's a classic console game they played when they were a child, for others it could be the first game they ever completed. For me, it has to be Diablo. A game very close to my heart for.............I'm not entirely sure why, but I know it is.

Diablo was released by Blizzard Entertainment about 10 years ago now (give or take a yr or two) on the PC, with a Playstation version coming out shortly after. The game is a typical action-adventure game, with you controlling one of 3 characters through 15 levels of a labyrinth until you reach the Lord of Terror himself and attemtp to kill him. Whilst attempting to find refuge, the Lord of Terror has taken up residence below the town's cathedral....fitting!! The 3 characters are the warrior, who specialises in melee attacks and is crap at magic; the rogue, who specialises in bows and just generally acts as eye-candy (though not very well, it must be said); and the sorcerer, who specialises in magic attacks of various kinds and is crap at close-combat.

Now before we get to the gameplay, let us discuss some of the story within Diablo the game. You begin the game in the town of Tristam outside what we are lead to believe is your house/shack/wherever you take hookers. Before you go down into the labyrinth you talk to people in the town to find out what they offer, and then the inn-keeper tells you about what happened after you'd left and before you returned....now. Apparently someone betrayed the king, found the soulstone that was holding the Lord of Terror and released him, at which point Diablo is very weak and finds the body of a weak human he can possess (in this case, the king's child). The king of the land, Leoric, then goes mad, fights his way through the labyrinth to find his son but fails and dies in the underworld. At this point, it's left to you to find the lost child, kill Diablo and generally save the town from falling apart.

The gameplay is very simple, you just point and click on where you want to go, who you want to talk and who you want to kill. It does get slightly annying when you have to click on the same demon hundreds of times just to kill him. The fact that this thing is trying to kill you and you SHOULD repeatedly hit him doesn't really make sense to your character, as when you click it once, you only attack once. So pretty soon your finger does get really tired with all the clicking, as well as you begin to hate the sound of mouse-click. Aside from that, everything seems to work fairly well. You press a button to bring up the map, another to use healing potions and others to........do other stuff. Generally speaking the whole point and click works. Well, for me anyway.

There are couple of issues with the gameplay though. As a I said, the repeateded clicking is very annoying. Another thing is the distinct lack of inventory space. You have about 60 squares to use, which sounds a lot, but when you consider armour uses 6 squares, a sword 3, a staff 6, a shield 4 or 6, a potion 1, a book 4, you see where this is going. On top of that, it takes quite a while to level up, which means (pending on your character) you have to use magically enhanced items and armour to learn spells and stuff. Personally I only ever use the warrior, who's magic ability is shockingly bad meaning you have to use numerous magic items to learn any decent spells.

On the plus side, the levels themselves are pretty well designed. Whenever you start the game on a different difficulty or character, you get a uniquely different map for each level of the labyrinth. The labyrinth itself is divided into 4 "zones", the dungeon, the catacombs, the caves and hell. Most of the monsters in these levels drop items but most levels will have a "special" monster that drops something decent. Well, somthing unidentified anyway. Whether it's decent pends on your character and what items you already have.

As a whole, I have to say I do love Diablo. No matter how many new games I play, I always find myself being drawn back to it. It's one of those games that, for me at least, has neverending appeal. I can simply throw it on, play for a few hours, and then not even realise where the time's gone, even though I've cleared 12 of the 16 levels without looking at the clock.