Diablo III is the fastest-selling PC game of all time, picking up rave reviews from most respected media outlets, including a 9.5 on IGN. But what is it about this game that makes it so damned fine? Is it a work of art, or is it a devilish psychological trap?
After long hours of play, the fear I have with this game is that I’ve been suckered into a mini-addiction by fiendishly clever psychological manipulation, that Blizzard’s evil magicians are playing games with my base-instincts. “Yes little fellow,” they mutter, “look into the glass, look.” My eyes swirl.
The game is a 1990s-style top-down RPG with a shaky story-line and a bombastic mythos. It’s a click-click-clickathon, a drudge-mechanic of commanding shapes on screen to disappear. Diablo III drags players into an endless quest for more stuff. It’s based on a compulsion to earn, consume and self-improve. In this respect, it sounds like my life, without vacations.
I want to know what it is about the game that appeals to my dancing-among-daisies emotional nature, rather than my gruntish, acquisitive sub-conscious. I want to convince myself that I’m playing for pleasure and not just to scratch some itch to acquire imaginary stuff.
Most reviews of the game have focused on the mechanics of the game, the business of slotting skills and trading loot and leveling up. The people at Blizzard, makers of impressively addictive games like World of Warcraft, understand these tricks better than any other organization in the world.
I want to believe that, alone, these feedback devices cannot compel me to sit in front of a screen for days and nights, clicking. The game must have an emotional core, a heart. Otherwise, it is merely a one-armed bandit, a diabolical ‘complete gatcha’ trickster.
Having played for a good while, here’s what I think I believe.
Taken individually, its parts are perfectly tuned. Placed in concert with one another they hum, tick and melodize in angelic harmony. Blizzard has delivered a beautifully realized symphony of all its classical skills, honed and practiced over long years. Yes, these do include the thrum of gaming addiction, the dark underscore that keeps people playing farming sims and fruit machines. But there’s a lot more at play here.
The mesmerizing timpani of its feedback loop, the blaring brassiness of its loot system and the smooth vibrations of its combat are perfectly unified to create a siren song. But the art is in the detail. It’s in the arboric perfection of the Gnarled Walker; in the creepy bleating of demonic goatmen, in the crazed cackle of the Skeleton King.
Audio effects delight; the clashing of axes against ancient earthenware, the orgasmic squidge of defeated enemies, the distant wailing of the crypt. It’s amazing how much these effects matter, how they transform pleasure into desire for more.
Visually, it’s a Victorian tin of wrapped chocolates, all dazzle and temptation. The ghoulish climes of Diablo III, its graveyard hue, haven’t limited the artists’ palette one smudge. This game splashes about the screen like a demented Mickey Mouse, a fizz of greens and reds and oranges and, of course, sparkly gold.
The story is, of course, absolute rot, but that isn’t a problem when the characters you are playing are so, well, playful. One might have expected Blizzard to summon a cast of underworld cut-outs, but the humor in each of the character classes is merciless. Occasionally, the things they say can faintly tickle the ribs, but they things they do are genuine comedy, schlocky and silly.
And it’s in the doing that Diablo III excels, meaning, it’s in the killing of things. The never-ending execution of violence is Diablo III’s most thrilling offering, its unique selling point. What this game delivers is the pleasure of destruction, guiltless and glorious and gory. Your enemies are a muppet-show of corpses, ghouls, dementors, zombies and stitched-together monstrosities. When they appear on-screen, I am not filled with dread, but with bloodlust. Like Sandor Clegane, the seduction of destruction quickens my soul.
Naturally, these enemies are able to hurt you, but primarily they are designed to die, deliciously. They fairly beg to be slain. In return for the favor, their death throes offer a sting of pleasure. Grotesque’s delivery of writhing lampreys never gets old.
Plenty of games offer up hordes of enemies to snapple the synapses, but with Diablo III, mass murder gives generously. They come slithering and tottering in monstrous congregations, slobbering goofy mayhem. But if you are playing the game right, they’ll die, all of them, together and noisily.
Somewhere in the coupling of me doing the killing and them doing the dying, I find emotional satisfaction. This must be okay because, otherwise, Blizzard would not have made this game just this way. It must be okay because millions of other people feel the same way as I do. (I recognize the flaws in that last argument.)
The game’s rules state that you must have fun playing with the many toys you have earned to hack, slash, prick and torture. You must experiment, tweak, personalize and perfect your own preferred style of killing, seeking out the build that suits you best. Every person plays the game their own way. Each of us likes to exterminate things in our own special way. We sweep evil away as an act of creation.
This is what makes Diablo III such a joy, the shamelessness of its central premise. Killing things is supposed to be a nasty thing to do, but when a game designer has made it this much fun, their work demands to be played for long periods of time, with other people, and with dedication. This isn’t a simulation of killing, a run-and-gun skill-test set in a war-zone. It’s not a story with death and peril attached. It’s all about killing as a central act of pleasure. Diablo III is a work of subtle psychological playfulness, a cheeky nudge-and-wink, an act of permission to hurt and destroy, completely free of moral baggage. It’s great fun.
Source : http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/06/01/what-makes-diablo-iii-so-darned-good
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