Fantasy worlds: Diablo

The kids have been introducing me to a multiplayer computer game called Diablo. I have talked about Oblivion before, but it's not possible to play that in multiplayer mode, and I have mentioned Sacred, but that is not very satsifying when played as a group. For one thing, in Sacred only one person gets the bonus point when a quest is completed, and for another there are problems when the characters get too far apart.

So we've been playing a game called Diablo. In this game, I've been playing the character who casts healing spells and long range explosions, and most of the time I run around wondering where everyone else has got to. The kids have gotten finding me and bringing me back to the rest of the party down to a fine art.

Diablo is a very simple game. You run around in a landscape a lot helping to fulfil quests which the kids know about, sometimes using portals to get instantly back to town, sell stuff, finish the quest, cache stuff in a chest, and jump back through the portal to start where you left off.

In Diablo, when your character dies all the stuff you were carrying at the time falls beside your body and you find yourself back in town. Then you have to run to where your body is and pick up all your stuff, i.e. the latest armour and weapons etc that you've found along the way, and find the party again.

Yes, it's a fantasy game a lot like D&D in that the group can provide various skill to help the party succeed.

The landscapes are not especially appealing, not that I get much chance to look at them, and there is no reason to become particularly engaged with the characters. It's a chewing gum sort of game, which is to say that it passes the time.

This is a highly rated game, according to reviews. To my mind it's fun but not addictive.

However, it is a particular kind of game style and by learning about it I was able to pick upon Torchlight fairly easily. More about that next time.

Cheers