Reviews By Russell Holly Aug. 18, 2014 12:30 pm
I sat at my desk in a video chat with my friends for five hours the night Diablo 3 launched on the PC. We all finally got into the game after Blizzard’s launch stuttered, and for the next 48 hours we crawled through dungeons and ascended to the High Heavens together to take on Diablo. It was a fantastic ride, and I would spend the next month thoroughly enjoying myself while I continued to battle the dark hordes.
Blizzard sent Geek.com a copy of the Diablo 3:*Reaper of Souls Ultimate Evil Edition*for the Xbox One*to check out, and I admit that as I slid the game into the console I was not expecting to lose a weekend playing a game I had already beaten, several times, months ago, on the PC. As it turns out, this was the exact experience I felt was missing from my first few runs through Sanctuary.
While this is the first time we have seen the entirety of Diablo 3 on a console, this is not the first time Blizzard has attempted this experience. Even before Diablo 3 on the Xbox 360, Diablo on the PSOne was a fun way to enjoy local co-op at a time when laptops were not the portable gaming machines they are today.
Looking back at the PSOne port of the original Diablo, there were a lot of problems with all of the features*past*slinging spells and cracking skulls. The inventory and skill system weren’t optimized for the console at all, which means navigating them meant tripping across a grid of pixelated items and skills in order to optimize your character. Blizzard has grown considerably since then, but the updated experience takes some getting used to.
Depending on how you play Diablo 3, you will either hate the inventory system on the console immediately or just feel nothing towards it at all. For some of us, the PC version of your personal inventory meant you could organize items in a way that made it possible to rapidly switch between multiple kinds of gear. For characters like the Barbarian and the Monk, this was beneficial because it allows you to completely change your player spec as you entered different areas of the game. The gear and skill set you wanted when fighting a mob wasn’t the same as you wanted when fighting a boss.
The console version of this experience silos each item type, and loosely organizes them so the best items are at the top of the list. This is great as long as you aren’t the type to micro-manage your inventory, because it means you spend less time crawling over each item to determine which is best since you know the stuff towards the bottom is crap, and if you’ve never played the game before, this system is probably preferred to the PC grid of random things.
Everything in the menu system, your Paragon levels, skill tree, and mission reports are offered in this same format. It relies heavily on your left joystick, and once you get the hang of navigating it you can do so with ease. Within an hour of using it I was spending far less time in my inventory and skills, because I just remembered where everything was and could look at most things with a brief glance and never bother really reading everything about the items or skills. In a way, this system takes something away from the desire to obsess about your character’s spec sheet and keeps your mind in the actual game doing actual game things.
Diablo 3 with a controller is just plain better. It’s not even a matter of opinion, really. The game lends itself so well to being played with a controller that, at this point, I am not even sure I can play the PC version and actually enjoy myself anymore. Blizzard’s Console Senior Level Designer Matthew Berger once described the difference in an interesting way. “… you’re constantly repositioning your character with the thumbstick; you’re really never stationary on console, whereas on PC you’re a lot more stationary”. Unfortunately, due to this difference Blizzard has no plans to support gamepad gameplay on the PC version.
The gamepad experience has you constantly moving, because your left stick is used both for motion and for targeting. The means that you can’t just drop certain spells and abilities in a random area on the map anymore, which takes a bit of getting used to. Instead, you are targeting a specific creature and dropping that spell or ability. The targeting system allows you to very quickly shift from enemy to enemy with subtle twitches of the gamepad, which winds up frequently resulting in a better response in the game than trying to click on a single bad guy in a horde of enemies with a mouse.
The game itself is largely the same, though there are some made-for-TV differences that are a little frustrating. Your recently unlocked abilities, for example, take up a significant part of the screen and hover for a few seconds. If you have reached a level with multiple unlocked skills, each of them floats by for a few seconds. This would be cool if you weren’t in the middle of a fight when it happened, and in Diablo 3 you are almost always in the middle of a fight when you hit the next level.
The console version of the game also seems to make the health and Nephalem Glory orbs significantly larger than the PC version. It makes them easier to see, but compared to the PC version the yellow Nephalem Glory orbs are comically large.
I suppose what I really want is for Blizzard to make this experience possible on the PC, since all of my friends have the PC version and Blizzard won’t let me take characters from PC to console. After playing this game on the Xbox One, I would be happy with either option from Blizzard. While the Xbox One version is all about securing new players as opposed to catering to existing ones, allowing character transfers between the two versions would completely convert me to playing the game on the Xbox One.
For now though, there’s a level 50 Crusader in my living room who is ready to get back into the fight.
More...
Blizzard sent Geek.com a copy of the Diablo 3:*Reaper of Souls Ultimate Evil Edition*for the Xbox One*to check out, and I admit that as I slid the game into the console I was not expecting to lose a weekend playing a game I had already beaten, several times, months ago, on the PC. As it turns out, this was the exact experience I felt was missing from my first few runs through Sanctuary.
While this is the first time we have seen the entirety of Diablo 3 on a console, this is not the first time Blizzard has attempted this experience. Even before Diablo 3 on the Xbox 360, Diablo on the PSOne was a fun way to enjoy local co-op at a time when laptops were not the portable gaming machines they are today.
Looking back at the PSOne port of the original Diablo, there were a lot of problems with all of the features*past*slinging spells and cracking skulls. The inventory and skill system weren’t optimized for the console at all, which means navigating them meant tripping across a grid of pixelated items and skills in order to optimize your character. Blizzard has grown considerably since then, but the updated experience takes some getting used to.
Depending on how you play Diablo 3, you will either hate the inventory system on the console immediately or just feel nothing towards it at all. For some of us, the PC version of your personal inventory meant you could organize items in a way that made it possible to rapidly switch between multiple kinds of gear. For characters like the Barbarian and the Monk, this was beneficial because it allows you to completely change your player spec as you entered different areas of the game. The gear and skill set you wanted when fighting a mob wasn’t the same as you wanted when fighting a boss.
The console version of this experience silos each item type, and loosely organizes them so the best items are at the top of the list. This is great as long as you aren’t the type to micro-manage your inventory, because it means you spend less time crawling over each item to determine which is best since you know the stuff towards the bottom is crap, and if you’ve never played the game before, this system is probably preferred to the PC grid of random things.
Everything in the menu system, your Paragon levels, skill tree, and mission reports are offered in this same format. It relies heavily on your left joystick, and once you get the hang of navigating it you can do so with ease. Within an hour of using it I was spending far less time in my inventory and skills, because I just remembered where everything was and could look at most things with a brief glance and never bother really reading everything about the items or skills. In a way, this system takes something away from the desire to obsess about your character’s spec sheet and keeps your mind in the actual game doing actual game things.
Diablo 3 with a controller is just plain better. It’s not even a matter of opinion, really. The game lends itself so well to being played with a controller that, at this point, I am not even sure I can play the PC version and actually enjoy myself anymore. Blizzard’s Console Senior Level Designer Matthew Berger once described the difference in an interesting way. “… you’re constantly repositioning your character with the thumbstick; you’re really never stationary on console, whereas on PC you’re a lot more stationary”. Unfortunately, due to this difference Blizzard has no plans to support gamepad gameplay on the PC version.
The gamepad experience has you constantly moving, because your left stick is used both for motion and for targeting. The means that you can’t just drop certain spells and abilities in a random area on the map anymore, which takes a bit of getting used to. Instead, you are targeting a specific creature and dropping that spell or ability. The targeting system allows you to very quickly shift from enemy to enemy with subtle twitches of the gamepad, which winds up frequently resulting in a better response in the game than trying to click on a single bad guy in a horde of enemies with a mouse.
The game itself is largely the same, though there are some made-for-TV differences that are a little frustrating. Your recently unlocked abilities, for example, take up a significant part of the screen and hover for a few seconds. If you have reached a level with multiple unlocked skills, each of them floats by for a few seconds. This would be cool if you weren’t in the middle of a fight when it happened, and in Diablo 3 you are almost always in the middle of a fight when you hit the next level.
The console version of the game also seems to make the health and Nephalem Glory orbs significantly larger than the PC version. It makes them easier to see, but compared to the PC version the yellow Nephalem Glory orbs are comically large.
I suppose what I really want is for Blizzard to make this experience possible on the PC, since all of my friends have the PC version and Blizzard won’t let me take characters from PC to console. After playing this game on the Xbox One, I would be happy with either option from Blizzard. While the Xbox One version is all about securing new players as opposed to catering to existing ones, allowing character transfers between the two versions would completely convert me to playing the game on the Xbox One.
For now though, there’s a level 50 Crusader in my living room who is ready to get back into the fight.
More...
