Experiencing Diablo 3

While at Blizzcon I, too, was goo goo over the Diablo 3 gameplay demo and naturally ended up being the game I played most while at the convention. Not only that, but there was a chance for players to come across a hidden artifact that would award the finder with a signed piece of Diablo 3 concept art. If that isn't enough motivation to play the game as much as possible, I don't know what is.

Though I didn't end up finding the artifact, even though I did speed runs to explore as much as possible as fast as possible, I did get a lot of experience in this second act. Over the times I played the game, I tried out the Wizard and Monk. As I was playing with a party of 4, I had a good amount of team support as we ravaged the desert. One thing I found interesting was that we came across two different types of dungeons. One being a regular dungeon like those we all are familiar with, and the second being a timed dungeon. These timed dungeons start counting down upon entering. In this particular dungeon, the dungeon was about to collapse and you had to get the treasure inside before the counter reached zero.

This is one of the things that was extremely frustrating. The demo only allowed you to play for 15 minutes. Yeah. Sucks. So we have this big act to explore, dungeons to explore, and quests to complete - all of which must be completed within 15 minutes (of course if that's what your goal was when you played the demo). Each subsequent time that I played the game, I gave myself different goals. First was to explore the first dungeon, then to explore the timed dungeon, and then to speed to everywhere I can, opening any chest that I could find.

And I personally must admit - it's REALLY difficult to get through the vast amount of mobs unscathed. If your goal is to evade monsters on a speed run, it isn't easy.

But anyways, I also wanted to go over a little bit about the skill trees. Not going to lie - they were lackluster for this demo. I know they were trying to showcase some new abilities. But seriously? Why cut off the other half of your abilities just because you want to showcase something new? The monk only had 5 abilities, and the other heroes had similar amounts. (Though I must admit - way of one hundred fists and exploding palm were extremely cool) The Wizard had a new trick which I found rather entertaining. The best way to describe it is shooting a small black hole which explodes upon impact.

But I digress. Diablo 3 seems to be shaping up beautifully and the developers are stopping at nothing to make the game spectacular. One of the coolest things I experienced while traversing the tundra was the formation of a tornado that ripped up the dunes. The multitude of visual affects and realistic environment was amazing.