Diablo

Title: Diablo
Platform Played On: PC
Release Date: November 30, 1996
Date Played: Winter 1998, Summer 2001
Time Played: 20 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 4/5


Opinion:
Diablo is an interesting game, and although I didnt play it until years after its release it was still a unique experience.

I was first turned onto the game in 8th grade by my friend David. I cant recall his exact words, but it went something like this. "Hey man, have you heard of this game called 'Diablo' ?" (mind you the game was 3 years old at this point). I replied with a "No".  I remember his excitement as he said "Dude, my sister's friend's mom is into it.. im going to see if we can borrow it". Dave being the man of his word came over a few days later with his sister's mom's copy of Diablo in hand.

First thing that was amazing about this game is Battle.net, whaaat? You can play with other people from all over the world? Online play was a new concept to me (and David). Before Diablo we would just play LAN games over a serial connection (thats right, serial).

We've spent a couple hours running around Diablo while agreeing that its pretty sweet. Unfortunately with Delta Force, and Half Life out, not to mention the need to give the game back we had to stop playing.

It was not until years later, after spending hundreds of hours on Diablo 2 and its expansion Lord of Destruction that I went back to Diablo 1 and its expansion Hellfire to revisit the roots of one of the most additive games I have ever played.

Not surprisingly Diablo 1 looked extremely dated after playing Diablo 2, its game systems and level layout were primitive, and it was missing things that seemed fundamental to the game. Instead of featuring a handful of diverse locations and towns it had only one town, and one dungeon, and even though this dungeon would vary its visuals a little bit, it was still the same one dungeon. The character animations and movement seemed bulky and combat was restricted to only a few styles.

Hellfire Expansion Cover

Now, we have to take into consideration the fact that we are comparing a 5 year old game to an entertainment media marvel here, so it is unfair to hammer Diablo for these things.  The point I am trying to make here is that I did not enjoy Diablo 1 as much as I probably would have if I had the chance to beat it when it first came out, or even in 1999 when I first played it, so I stuck with it for the sake of seeing the story. I must note that the word Blizzard meant nothing to me at the time. There were a great number of marvelous games coming out from all sorts of publishers, and Blizzard was just another EA (Red Alert 2), Valve (Half Life), Sierra (Homeworld) etc...

I was glad to complete Diablo and its expansion Hellfire, and although I now understood the origins of this franchise the story itself was very loose and have very few plot point to it.  Speaking of Hellfire, this was a weird expansion introducing really strange levels and almost no story elements. It did fix some of the mechanics (such as run mechanic), but overall is a throwaway experience, which is perhaps the reason Blizzard does not consider it canon.

Diablo was a technological masterpiece, it introduced the isometric hack and slash gameplay and defined a genre.  It introduced a concept of dungeon crawling with your friends from across the world via Battle.net; however it would feel extremely primitive if played today, so unless you want to play it for the legacy sake, I would jump straight into Diablo 2, or wait for Diablo 3 next year.

One Of The Weird Themes From Hellfire Expansion