Can Diablo III Succeed Where Hellgate: London Failed?

August 7, 12:13 PMGames ExaminerDaniel Nations

Previous Next

4 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Games Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

I have to be honest with you, I wasn't all that excited about the prospect of Diablo III until recently. Oh, don't get me wrong -- I think Diablo and Diablo II are two of the best games of all time. I just wasn't looking forward to Diablo III as much as I was looking forward to other games.

Why?

Because the people that made the Diablo games such addicting fun had left Blizzard to form their own companies. So, instead of anticipating Diablo III, I looked forward to Guild Wars -- and was disappointed. Not that Guild Wars is a bad game, it's just no Diablo.

Hellgate:London just didn't cut it.

And then there was Hellgate: London. I thought this was for sure the spiritual successor to the Diablo series. After all, it shared many of the same developers and it has the same basic story: a hellgate opens up that spews forth a bunch of demons.

I canceled my pre-order to Hellgate: London after a couple of weeks in the open beta. Part of it was that the developers were essentially charging for battle.net and -- worst -- charging for extra character slots. I know they tried to dress it up like MMO fees, but Hellgate: London is not an MMO. They also tried to dress it up like paying for expansions by the month, but why limit character slots so much on the basic account if you aren't trying to squeeze the players? After all, the charm of the Diablo series was their replayability.

Now, I would like to say that my decision to cancel my pre-order was all about taking an ethical stand against 'the man', but one other thing played a part in it: the game just wasn't all that fun. It was okay, and had they not been trying to get me to pay for something they should have been giving me for free, I'd have probably stuck around to see if they could patch it into a good game, but at the end of the day, my lack of being blown away played a big role in not going down that road.

The wait for Diablo III begins...

So, when Blizzard finally did announce Diablo III, I was pretty fired up. Hey, if the original developers aren't going to get it done, maybe the original company can do it. And, unlike some fans who are upset, I like what I've seen so far.

The truth be told, Diablo has a very simple formula: Take Gauntlet and mix in old Rogue-like games. For those not familiar with the Rogue-like genre, Rogue was an old text-based role-playing game that featured random dungeons. Because each game was different, you could play the game over and over again.

That's where Diablo shines above the crowd of Diablo-clones. Replayability.

And it certainly sounds like Blizzard is keeping that theme in the game. In fact, the developers hinted that not only would we get our random dungeons, but we also might be seeing some random quests and/or events. This is way overdue! Dynamic quests are something I've been wanting to see for a long time and could really add a whole new level to the idea of replayability.

Are the graphics not dark enough? Who cares. So long as the graphics are good, they can be a little more bright. What I want -- and what I think most Diablo fans want -- is the solid gameplay and replayability of Diablo and Diablo II.