Note that I have only “played” Diablo III for one hour as of the time of this review. First, I want to detail my pre-release ritual as fans all over the world have already shown off the various ways in which they’ve prepared for the coming of Blizzard’s next masterpiece.
Getting ready
After rallying Jasmine R. from Bitmob and Wesley R. (no relation) from GameFan for my all-night Diablo III marathon, I hit the grocery store for some basic necessities:
I forgot the Snowballs and almost panicked, but I quickly remedied that issue. With mere moments left before the Diablo III servers were set to go online, Jasmine, Wesley, and myself began what was sure to be an epic adventure.
Amazing graphics
Almost immediately it’s obvious Blizzard has put a ton of detail into Diablo III. I don’t want to be one of those overly positive game journalists who blurts out “game of the year” at the drop of a hat but…game of the year!
Superb sound design
Again, Blizzard is an expert when it comes to making top-tier entertainment. They even put “Entertainment” in the name of their company, so you know they must be good at it. So far, Diablo III’s one music track I’ve heard repeatedly is an excellent supplement to the breathtaking graphics.
Technical support
I had a slight issue where my mouse wasn’t working. At all. So I temporarily paused my adventure to visit the support forums. Here is a shot of Diablo III’s highly touted Battle.net website in action during launch day:
It turned out that I needed to reduce the text size in my screen resolution on my PC’s desktop to make the mouse cursor work in Diablo III. I blame myself though for not automatically knowing such an obvious solution to the problem I was having.
Summary
Overall, I am impressed by the production values and execution of Diablo III’s main menu. It’s admittedly a very slick menu, and definitely puts Roger Ebert’s whole “games aren’t art” argument to shame, but I’d expect nothing less from the most preordered PC title of all time.
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FINAL SCORE:
