Diablo III, Blizzard's long-awaited fantasy action-RPG, went on sale at midnight (both as a boxed copy and digital download), sending the gaming community into a tizzy. I admit that I, too, was caught up in the Diablo III fervor, as I signed up for a Battle.net account and began downloading the installer well before 12 a.m.
I didn't feel the need to jump into the fray right away, so I signed into Diablo III before the morning commute. Forty minutes later, I walked away with some impressions. They are, by no means, a true view of the game's scope ( I didn't even play multiplayer!), but simply a few early likes and dislikes based on a relatively short gaming session.
Liked: Diablo III Doesn't Require High-End Hardware
Blizzard has a knack for creating deep, highly addictive games that don't require dual GPUs running in tandem; Crysis this is not. Diablo III should run smoothly on most Macs and PCs released in the last few years. If you're curious about your computer's ability to run the game, check Blizzard's rather non-demanding minimum system requirements, which include lower-end discrete GPUs, 1-2GB of RAM, 12GB of free hard drive space, and a 1024-by-768-pixel resolution. My Alienware M11x gaming laptop with a 1.6-GHz Intel Core i5 2467M CPU, Nvidia GeForce GT 540M GPU, and 6GB RAM rendered the game with ease.
Liked: Diablo III Lets You Select a Character's Gender
Previous Diablo games intertwined gender and character class—not anymore. If you've dreamed of the day when you could vanquish the dark ones with a female barbarian, the time has come. In fact, when you enter the character creator, Diablo III displays each warrior as a female by default. Progressive, Blizzard. Progressive. Solidios, my female demon-slayer, is now ready to open a can on all evil-doers.
Liked: Diablo III Has a Basic, But Intuitive, Control Scheme
Movement and combat are handled with the mouse, which was a relief as I'm mainly a console gamer. Navigation works by pointing and clicking to the spot you wish to move to; the left and right mouse buttons handle attacks. Those are the basics. Naturally, the keyboard comes into play when dealing with other aspects of the game (such as when I need to use a healing potion), but I was overjoyed that my fingers didn't have to touch the WASD keys.
Disliked: Internet Connection Required to Play
Most Diablo III players will mix it up in multiplayer matches, which demands an Internet connection. That said, there are always a small number of lone wolves who want to complete missions without others, but they're also required to connect to the Battle.net servers to play. That's right, even if you adventure alone, there's no true "offline" mode, which was most likely implemented to counter rampant copyright infringement and piracy.
These talking points serve as a quick hands-on overview of the game, but you can expect a full Diablo III review shortly. Until then, check out PCMag's unboxing of the Diablo III Collector's Edition above, and fill us in on your first impressions in the comments.
