I was sceptical of the console ports of Diablo III. The franchise is a PC game to me, indelibly linked in my mind with a blistered index finger and the need to buy new mice.
I was wrong. The port of last year’s PC game is pretty good, and the loss of control from point and click is barely noticeable.
Graphics quality isn’t quite as good as on the PC, even on my ageing gaming box. That’s a little odd, considering the punch the PS3 still packs, but isn’t a great loss. Superb graphics is not the point of Diablo gaming.
What is the point is mayhem. This is a classic, old school, dungeon-crawling hack and slash of the highest order. Kill the monsters, take their treasure. What more do you need?
And if your index finger no longer suffers, whatever digit you use to spam the attack button will soon develop blisters.
Some will ask whether a game such as Diablo, with its faux isometric viewpoint, has a place on consoles at all. My view? Absolutely. There’s precious little like this on consoles at the moment.
If you’ve got the PC version, there’s not much point in getting the console version — but if you lack a gaming PC, this is your chance to see what the fuss is about.
Just don’t expect much in the way of story or plot. There are bad things out there. Lots of them. With lots of level bosses. Your job is to make them dead.
Save often.
Box – Diablo III (console)
Developer: Blizzard Entertainment
Publisher: Blizzard Entertainment
Platform: Xbox 360, PS3 (PS4 version coming later)
Version tested: PS3
Genre: Hack and slash, dungeon crawl
Star Rating: 4/5
