The Devil In The Corporation

Even if I was a great fan of the original Diablo and D2, I was late in deciding to take on Diablo 3. It was a combination of factors, from the bad reviews the game kept getting, to the constant servers errors I kept hearing about and to me being too busy to take up such a time-eater. However, I came across it at a great discount and, on an impulse, decided to give it a try. Three weeks of (casual) gameplay later this is what I think.

DIABOLICALLY GORGEOUS

The game is beautiful to look at and a visual pleasure to play in. The environments are meticulously rendered and yet they loose none of their details when zoomed in or acted upon. Blowing up tree trunks or exploding bodies of enemies is both fun and physically accurate. Sure, some heads or pieces of wood can be seen to spin for too long, but that is part of the game's appeal, right? You are become Death, the destroyer of Worlds!

YOUR CHORD SOUNDS FAMILIAR

The sounds are better than the music but they are both quite well made. What I found strange was that, at least once, throughout Act I, the background music clearly reminded me of the main theme from Baldur's Gate. Let's chalk this one off as ...tribute.

GRINDING BUILDS CHARACTER

The bad news is that it builds exactly the same kind of character for everyone. There are no choices when leveling up. Everything eventually gets unlocked for you and you only get to choose what 4 skills to use and which runes to combine with each one. Your strength, dexterity, intelligence and vitality get automatically increased, depending on your class. No more making a tank out of a ranger I am afraid. And this is where the game looses a good chunk of its rating.

The fact that you get to have a sidekick that does practically little more than keep the mobs occupied until you dispense of them, does not help either.

CULTURAL PHOBIAS DO NOT A GOOD STORY MAKE

Yes, the story plot is infantile, disrespectful to the original games (I will refrain from spoiling it) and it offers very little help in immersing into the game world. It is unfortunate because, Blizzard has proved in the past that they can produce games with a very good back-story, such as Starcraft II.

However, this a game franchise that is heavily invested on the Judeo-Christian culture of the Devil. Just read the name on the box! So, taking away demonic pentagrams and most religious symbols (some crosses can still be found) fools no one. Because once you go down that road and then decide to backup, you should make sure not to step on yourself and trip. As in: if a golden-eyed Fallen Angel (Hello!) is helping you fight Diablo, are you sure who is the Devil and who is not?

LOOT. LOOT NEVER CHANGES

Well designed and clearly labeled items make all the difference in the world. I would love for Borderlands 2 items to have such a clear Damager-Per-Second (DPS) number to make comparisons easier. Pair this with an inventory that is big enough and free of the need to play item-Tetris in (all items take up either one or two vertical squares) and you have yourself almost loot haven. Almost because you still get too many unusable items, mostly because of class restrictions.

You can stash such items in your common stash to share with your other heroes (on the same BattleNet account) but make sure to find the necessary...700,000 gold to pay for all the extra stash space. Hint: use the Auction House while you still can.

The only thing I found missing is the ability to add sockets to magical items and enchant regular ones.

THE AUCTION HOUSE: BRILLIANT! (WHEN IT WORKS)

I am going to go against the current here but here it is: I found the Auction House a brilliant idea. Well designed and decently executed. I am going to be sad to see it go on March, as announced. I can only hope they change their mind before then.

In all honesty, I am currently a Demon Hunter at Nightmare difficulty. And I have heard the complaints that it is impossible to finish Inferno without Real-Money Auction House (which is clearly not how it is supposed to work) but up to Nightmare, using the Auction House is the only way to get enough money to be able to do the enhancements you want, craft or buy the items you covet and unlock the precious extra stash space you need.

CHAINS IN NEED OF BREAKING

I had to rate the game even lower because of the always-online requirement. Because it is indeed a hassle and a hindrance (just try pausing in town for longer than half and hour and see what happens). Yes, the game does offer some gameplay features (namely, the Auction-House) to compensate for the inconvenience but they all give way to anger and frustration whenever Blizzard's servers go down  and you are unable to play a Single-player game for days at a time(!). Take away the Auction-House, however, and the always-online requirement becomes a severe and now unjustified hindrance!

THE ORIGINAL SIN

No, D3 dips to an even lower rating for managing to be both short and boring at times. There, I said it. Yes, it is a well balanced eye-candie, with tons of loot, problematic character development yet the gameplay feels like at chore at times and it is over before you know it. I even found Act I (the one offered for free as a demo) to be better designed and longer than the rest.

It is like that old Woody Allen joke: two old ladies are complaining about their retirement home catering. "The food was awful, barely edible", "I know", her friend replied, "and such small portions!".

This Is The Universe Singing To Itself

At the end of a job interview once, I was asked to choose between Star Wars and Star Trek. I made a favourable impression when, instead, I replied, "Dune".

Because the Dune Universe is as emotional as it is scheming and so deep in human accomplishments and  shortcomings as it is rich in mythos. 

The lyrics of this song are written in Chakobsa, the language of the Fremen, the desert people moulded upon the Arab nations and their control over the Spice that allows the world to function. 

Do yourself a favour and pick all six of the original Dune books. Try to steer clear of the latest fun-exploitation novels churned out every year in the name of Frank Herbert. They do little more than soil Frank's vision. 

And even thought the 1984 David Lynch's Dune film is considered canon, do not overlook the Dune (2000) and Children of Dune (2003) Mini Series. This where this magical music comes from.  

The Most Touching Ballads By The Most Haunting Voice You Will Ever Hear

Compared to its population, Canada is blessed with a disproportionate great number of talented performance artists - and Sarah McLachlan is one of the best examples.

Maybe they are inspired by the endless expanses of the Great North and the blandness of the Toronto sprawl; maybe it is the English and French cultures creating unique sparks as they reluctantly merge; maybe it is living in Vancouver, one of the most ephemerally beautiful cities of the world, set on the ridge of the Pacific ring of fire; or maybe it is the eternal adolescence of the Canadian psyche or the freshly disillusioned naiveté of a nation of great poets and dreamers in the shadow of the bordering militaristic giant. Who knows.

Sarah McLachlan is a great Singer - and this is her very best album! I have Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (together with all her albums) since my university years - God bless the Due South TV Series that exposed me to her absolutely haunting voice! I have been playing it numerous times over the years, one could not get tired of this collection. The pieces are all gems, from start to finish! The music speaks directly to the soul, such poetic lyrics are so hard to find any more.

And, I promise you, Sarah's voice will haunt you forever.

It's A Brand New PostApocalyptic Dawn

I am old enough to have played the original game when it first came out in 1997. I was a great fan of the series that followed and, thus, was very eager to get my hands on this latest installment. In a short sentence: Fallout 3  is a dream come true.

It is a cRPG game in which the player can alternate between the First and Third person perspective roaming a world comparable in size with Oblivion. The action has moved from Vault 13 and Southern California to Vault 101 and Washington, D.C. and the story brakes away from the previous bloodlines. However, the atmosphere of the original has been maintained and its scents sharpened: veterans will find it fitting like and old glove - whereas the new gamers are in store for a bag of pleasant surprises.

The graphics are wonderful, the guns detailed and the environments highly interactive. Short of a screenshot, imagine what would HalfLife-2 would look if released today. And similar to HL2, Fallout 3  does not require an...übercomputer to run smoothly. Once you see a NPC move though, you understand where the corners were cut.

Character customization is carried out in great style using the new and improved PIP-BOY at the beginning. You exit the vault and the harsh reality of a world that barely survived annihilation slaps you on the face. Adapt or perish.

The main storyline is there to be followed but Fallout 3 offers the greatest number of alternative choices I have ever encountered in a game! There is always a great number of paths to follow in order to achieve any goal - but every choice comes with a consequences tag. This is common feature of most classic cRPGs but in Fallout 3  I saw it implemented like never before. If nothing else, this sends replayability through the roof.

Side-quests offer little besides distraction and experience points (XP) to be spend on character improvement. XP are gained solely by completing quests, emerging victorious from fights, finding locations, picking locks and hacking terminals - and they are not limited by the action they were earned. Levelling up is based on 7 basic attributes [Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility & Luck - acronym?;)] that, in turn, affect your (13) specific skills. Since levelling

up is capped at Level-20, the game designers wanted to encourage replaying the game. On the other hand, it also means that your character will never realize its full potential (in case you are wondering why I withheld a star from fun, that's the second half of it).

The game is violent and gory but well within tasteful limits. Not so with the language - but it is tradeoff with realism. In a radioactive world, Sunday-school niceties are bound to go out the window.

What deserves a special mention is V.A.T.S. (:Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System) which opens new vistas in cRPG design. It is an ingenious system which lets you pause the game and target specific body parts of your opponents. The success of your attack still depends on your skills but the end effect is cinematic and amazing (remember the movie Swordfish?).

After the nuclear summer of 2008 (with all the LimitedInstallation-defective EA releases), this seems like a postapocalyptic dawn indeed! Bethesda decided to listen to the gaming community and did not cripple this beautiful game with any idiotic DRM scheme. Inputting a serial number and a DVD-check is more than reasonable.

The publishers of Fallout 3  understand that there is a fine balance between "protecting the product" and..."insulting your own customers". And they obviously view respect as the two way street that it is - and for this they deserve our support: buy this game, today.

Voting with our wallets is the only argument the gaming industry cannot afford to ignore. And it is about time to cast some well deserved positive votes.

In The Valley Of Colours And Kings

After Zuma's success, a number of clones appeared - but the Luxor series is the one that actually improved on some aspects of the concept. As the series progressed, Luxor games became more and more self-reliant. With Luxor 4: Quest for the Afterlife the franchise flexes its own muscles.

A series of coloured balls (with the number of different colours increasing every few levels) gets pushed and you have to match them in sets of three or more in order to remove them - and prevent them from reaching the end zone. Instead of having the "shooter" in the centre, it is located at the bottom and it slides left and right. This makes for some quite difficult shots (especially when obstructed by the advancing row of balls) and raises the difficulty of the game.

On the other hand, the power-ups are more powerful, at the end of every round a number of coins and gems drop and "catching" them add lives to your paddle. It seems pretty straight-forward yet it can become highly...addictive!

Compared to the previous instalment of the series, Luxor 4 is graphically even more impressive, enriched as to the dropping bonuses (and...penalties) - yet it will seem somewhat easier to seasoned players of the series; nevertheless, it will fulfill the fans craving for more pharaohnic fun!

This is an example of what has come to be known as Casual Gaming: small, resource-light games that are fun for the whole family.

It would be a good idea to download the 60-min trial version from a casual games site, such as Reflexive and decide for yourself whether this is indeed your cup of tea. It wouldn't hurt to wait for the price to drop either: most casual games sell for no more than $10.