0135F: Diablo Day at the "New" Compuworks

When I was still in high school, Dad put up a computer store along Katipunan Avenue. This became my first introduction to network gaming. There are a lot of good memories associated with the Compuworks years like Mico's first Zergling rush or me finishing Suikoden on the original PlayStation for the first time. But there was also when we all played Diablo for the first time - it was an experience like no other.

I visited the folks today to recapture a little of that old magic since Dad had purchased two computers so they could run network games again - or at least just one game in particular. This would be Diablo III of course - currently one of the hottest games on the market. And naturally the family had two copies of the game so that Dad and my brother Mico could play.

But for today I got to play with my brother. And I quite literally mean the whole day.

As a first experiment, I decide to go with the Witch Doctor character type, given my past love for other summoners like the Necromancer and the Druid. He's not quite your usual summoner, but he comes pretty close. It's a tad annoying that he's depicted as a very old man with ridiculously large hips (especially compared to the female version of the Witch Doctor), but you work with what you have, I suppose.

I have rather mixed feelings about the new Diablo given the changes to the core system. Gone are the skill points and character stat points - instead the system automatically determines how your character's stats change and skills are now linked to your level instead of you figuring out where to put your points. Thus you can no longer create like a "summoner druid" versus a "tank druid" (to use the Diablo II examples). You just go with what's there.

The story also feels highly linear, but then again this is still Diablo we're talking about. It was never meant to be all that expansive as a game.

With luck we'll be able to get a computer that can handle the game here at the Sietch sooner rather than later. Then I'll be able to put together a more proper review.

But outside formal review constraints, I'll admit that I did have a lot of fun. And that has more to do with playing the game with my brother, which felt a lot like old times at the computer shop. With the two computers side-by-side, there was the usual need to coordinate how we'd explore the map, enjoying the little nuances of the game such as making sure each player gets his own set of item and gold drops from killing creatures instead of letting us compete and of course the little teasing that goes on when one player levels up before the other and starts showing off his new skills.

Thus we end this blog post with an image of me getting spammed by my brother's exploding frogs. Ah, what fun indeed.