|
| |
|
|
PowerMac 8600/300 w/32 mb RAM |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reviewed by Jonathan Dreyer, MGA Editor-In-Chief
Diablo is here! Finally, after a long and painful two year wait for the much anticipated PC "Game of the Year 1996" it is available on the Macintosh. Was it worth the long long wait? Probably not. But is it a fun and addictive game? You bet! Does Diablo have it's share of drawbacks? Of course...
(Click on Picture to Expand)
Gameplay:
One of the main draws of Diablo
is it's unique role playing game style with real time combat
elements. In Diablo you play one of three different styles
of character's, a Warrior, a Rogue, or a Sorcerer, each have
there own special skills and abilities to be used at your
discretion in your quest to defeat the evil Diablo. Using a
local town as your starting point you advance underground
thru the Dungeon, Catacombs, the Caves, and finally to Hell
where you will face Diablo. Throughout those sixteen levels
of action you gain experience points, learn new spells, or
find more items and weapons to try to cram in your
space-limited inventory. An interesting note about Diablo is
it's randomization factor, every time you lay the game the
underground levels will be different, you will never play
the same game twice! Single player Diablo, although fun, is
easily beaten within a few days of playing and then becomes
boring and repetitive. The really fun part of Diablo is
multi-player over the Internet thru Blizzard's Battle.Net
server system.
(Click on Picture to Expand)
Easy to access multi-player gaming is definitely the gem in Diablo's crown. Using Blizzard's Battle.Net server thru the internet made Diablo the easiest game to setup I have ever played over the internet. The biggest problem with Battle.Net internet play is the large number of PC players online using hacks and other cheats to make a lot of Battle.Net games very unfair to Mac users who have no cheats available to them. Still, if you can find legitimate games to take part in you can have some real fun.
(Click on Picture to Expand)
Graphics and Sound:
The graphics in Diablo are
definitely nothing to brag about! Although they're decent
gaming graphics a few minor flaws are exaggerated through
some of the games features. One of the most annoying
features of Diablo is the zoom feature, game zooms in on
your character but the graphic begin to getting very
pixilated. They should have just left that feature out
entirely for all of it's usefulness. Another inherit flaw of
the game is it's fixed view point. There is only one view of
you character, no on the fly rotating, just one fixed view,
which while in deep battle can become a very mean
curse.
The sound effects in Diablo are average for a game these days, nothing spectacular or exciting just your average everyday sound effects. The music on the other hand was horrible! I found the music so annoying to play with I just turned it off all together. I don't know why Blizzard would put such mediocre music in a game like this.
Interface:
Interface's like the one found in
Diablo are seeming to becoming the norm these days.
Interfaces with in-game graphical control boxes and no
Mac-like interface dialogue boxes. I assume this is for
faster porting times but, I don't see how this would be the
case in Diablo.
(Click on Picture to Expand)
Difficulty:
Diablo has no difficulty. Not
literally but in a manner of speaking, Diablo simply is not
challenging under single-player playing. The only challenge
in Diablo comes from multi-player play where you have to
match wits and might against actually humans.
Conclusion:
During the long porting time of
Diablo for Mac it appears they really did a good job of
optimizing and bug checking it. I encountered no bugs over
the 100 plus hours of time I spent playing it.
Diablo is a great "multi-player" game! I would only reexamined this to gamers with lot's of internet time to spend on Battle.Net, forget about single-player gaming altogether.
