Diablo 3: Open Beta Impressions

BMini is a smart guy who plays lots of games, and writes up sometimes insightful and almost always entertaining reviews in our ongoing email chain during the day. He also refuses to write any of it up in this blog for us. He will have a permanent byline soon, but in the meantime I will just copy and paste his stuff from email to here. Enjoy!

My impression was very simple:  It took them 10 years to make this?

The Diablo format really isn't the freshest thing out there for gaming.  So many games have followed the random loot craze method that going back to Diablo just feels like a ho hum fantasy game.  The actual loot system is all white noise now because we all know how rare it is to get different types of gear under Blizzard's format. So that old excitement is shot...it needs to be supplanted with something new.  What Diablo needed to do was make the actual game aspect more compelling.  This could have been done in two routes, 1) more character customization/skill choice, or 2) better stories or a compelling quest line.  Given that most gamers have taken #2 and dropkicked it out the window with the grind society that we've become, #1 was the more viable option. 

What the hell happened to games where you pick several different skills from a list of dozens at the beginning of the game so that you have some depth to your character before destroying your first skeleton?  I know that is more of a DnD thing...but am I supposed to believe that my avatar is being called on to DEFEAT THE Mother F'n DEVIL with one/two skills?  Am I some kind of wunderkid who is atop Fantasy Worldwide's top 100-prospects-in-thwarting-evil that people expect that I will develop new skills along the way?  Yikes.  Without digressing any further, right clicking on bad guys and slamming 1 over and over was exactly what I didn't want to do with my time in this game.  Sure, the game WILL flesh out as you put the more serious levels into the game, but as both of you pointed out...what makes me even want to invest the time?

Editors Note: For the record, I agree with BMini, as I often do. I'm going to get him to rant on here more often. Give it time.  - Tom