Hell Freezes over, Blizzard announces Diablo 3

After eight long years, Blizzard finally announced a sequel to the addicting-as-crack Diablo II game. Diablo 3 promises to be a doozy with a re-vamped engine and play system(hell, it’d better be if it made us wait eight years for this). The game will be fullly in 3d and hopefully play more like a fully fledged RPG. Some fans are complaining about the fact that they are changing the formula some because it worked so well for the first two.

To those people, I have to say that times have changed and you have to either change with it or get out. A 2d point and click adventure of aimless slashing simply cannot compete in today’s triple-A game title market. One of the big letdowns for me in Diablo II was that it was really almost the same game as Diablo one with bigger worlds and more character classes. Playing it reminded me of the same-old-same-old. It also was lacking many actual RPG elements that made games like Final Fantasy so great.

While this new game has taken eight years to come to fruition, I’m impressed by what I see. The 3D environment looks fabulous and now you can actually interact with the environment to destroy the enemy - something sorely lacking in D2. I still remain skeptical, but I’m actually excited for Diablo III, but not as excited as I am about Starcraft II. Still with these two games on the horizon, there will be plenty of wasted time coming ahead.