First, I must admit that I have never played a “Diablo” game before booting up the beta. I did play through “Torchlight” over the summer so I assumed it would be similar, but I was surprised by just how similar it turned out to be. “Torchlight” was developed by some of the same people who worked on “Diablo” and “Diablo II,” so one can safely assume that “Torchlight” is pretty similar to those games. Thus, using the transitive property, I deduced that “Diablo III” would be pretty similar to the previous entries in the franchise, so if that’s what you’re looking for from a new “Diablo,” you won’t be disappointed.
    
Much of the coverage of “Diablo III” boils the game down to a prettier “Diablo.” While the game obviously looks much better than 2000’s “Diablo II,” don’t expect the game’s graphics to send your jaw to the floor. The first time I launched the game I was actually shocked at how outdated the game looks. The character models in the class selection screen look like they belong in a PS2 game. The blurry, flat-faced characters looked so out of place for a modern major release that I rebooted the game, thinking it was a bug. The awful character models aren’t as noticeable in-game due to the pulled-out camera, but the characters and environments still have a muddy look about them.
    
The opening level is a foggy cemetery which is easily the ugliest environment in the game. The fog effects wash out the screen and look more like your monitor’s brightness is set too high than fog. Blizzard has always tried to keep their required system specs low, but the game looks significantly worse than their 2010 release, “Starcraft II.” Since this is a beta, it’s possible that Blizzard did not include all of the graphical settings that will wind up in the final game. Most of the graphical options could only be set to high or low, yet “Starcraft II” includes “very high” and “ultra” settings, so hopefully more options will be added in a future update.
    
My first hours playing the game didn’t do anything to improve my opinion of it. They consisted of clicking on people with exclamation marks over their head, then trudging through dungeons filled with slow-moving monsters that provided absolutely no challenge. All that was required to defeat the waves of oncoming attackers was to hold the mouse in their general direction for a couple of seconds. I couldn’t use much strategy, even if I felt the need, because although new spells are unlocked each time your character levels up, the number of spells you can actually take into battle is limited by your current level. Until level six, only two spells can be equipped at a time, which makes for supremely uninteresting combat. I started to wonder how “Diablo II” had possibly achieved such a revered status, because I was extraordinarily bored.
    
Shortly after hitting level six and acquiring a few new cool spells, I finally started to feel the game’s hooks slipping into me. Each class has three categories of spells at its disposal, and now I could use one of each. After a few minutes of experimenting with different combinations, I chose the three I felt had the best synergy. As a Demon Hunter, my skills were divided into spammable spells that built up my hatred meter, more powerful abilities that depleted the built up hatred and tactical use spells that used a slowly regenerating discipline meter. My basic strategy was to blast at enemies with my hatred builder, lead them into my slowing trap, then unload all my built up hatred with a spell that made my bow more of an emplaced machine gun. It wasn’t rocket science, but it did make combat much more entertaining.
    
After messing around with my new spell setup for a few minutes, I hopped into an online game to try the four-player co-op. This is where “Diablo III” really started to shine. Here I could show off the fat loot I had collected to make people on the Internet jealous, which is really what “Diablo” is all about. The loot system in cooperative play is one I’ve never seen before, and it’s one I hope future games will adopt. Whenever items or gold drop from an enemy or chest, they are totally unique to your game. There is no fighting over loot because everyone gets their own drops. You never even see what drops for your teammates. The loot consists of more than just weapons and armor; crafting materials and recipes also drop on occasion. The crafting system is almost identical to the one found in “World of Warcraft,” where new recipes are learned from trainers as your skill levels up.
    
You can find random crafting materials and disassemble items for spare parts, and, surprisingly, the items obtained from crafting were much better than any from random loot drops. Running around killing monsters with three other dudes proved to be much more entertaining than playing solo, but unfortunately Blizzard still needs to do some tuning on the difficulty level of co-op. We absolutely massacred every single enemy encounter in seconds and were never even remotely in danger of dying. I didn’t even participate in half of the battles because I was lagging behind picking up loot, but my team managed just fine without me.
    
Before playing the beta I was staunchly against buying “Diablo III” when it is released later this year. Blizzard’s game design philosophy of taking ten years to make extremely repetitive sequels to their established franchises frustrates me. I took the same stance before the release of “Starcraft II,” then wound up buying it on release day and playing over 1,000 matches. If Blizzard can patch up the graphics and add a little challenge, I’m afraid I may waver once again.