[spoilers] Over the weekend I had the opportunity to complete Diablo III on my xbox, yay!  I've been looking forward to this game since I heard about it last year, however I only bought the thing this past August when it came out for xbox, the price was right, and it included the Reaper of Souls expansion.  I've been playing it over the weekend ever since I came back from my doctoral orientation in August.  I guess I can go to school and have a fun time with games (note to self: need to spend a little more time copy-editing assignments).

One of the things that I was really hoping for in this game (although I knew that I couldn't have what I wanted) was to be able to use the Necromancer class of character, like in Diablo II.  I remember playing a whole heck of a lot of Diablo II back in 2000 both on the PC with my friend Theodore when I was vacationing in Greece, as well as on my Mac at home when I returned. The necromancer was awesome because as soon as you killed an enemy you could resurrect them to fight on your side.  Oh well.  Maybe in Diablo IV?

So, my preferred class for Diablo III was the Demon Hunter.  I like the idea of a ranged weapon like a crossbow, and Demon Hunters seem like a nice class to start off with.  Assassin's Creed has put me off templars ;-)

In any case, the game starts off in New Tristram.  The lesser evils have been up to no good, and our good ol' friend Diablo will eventually be freed from the soulstone (side note: the special edition of this game with the Diablo skull and the USB soulstone looks pretty amazing!). Corpses are re-animated, tusked bogans are attacking the realm, angels are on the loose killing humans…it's madness all around. So, the hack and slash adventure begins and it takes 5 acts to conclude.  I really liked the animations that took place between acts (and sometimes in acts).  I think they told the story really well.  I also really liked the journals that were peppered throughout the realm that told various stories.  I was surprised to recognize the voice of David McCallum as one of the journal writers.

I ended up going through a lot of side missions and ended up with a character that was level 52.  Not bad considering that I went through a semi-scenic route in the game. I played the game mostly on Hard (didn't want to potentially beat my head on the wall if I picked Extreme), so I guess I leveled up appropriately.  Once the game was over I was expecting adventure mode to kick in, but I saw nothing after the credits.  The whole ending of the game was pretty disappointing.  Part of me expected a happily-ever-after ending, however the ending was more "blah".

For instance you kick ass throughout the game, you come to the end, and you're told that you are an awesome Nephalem (human) who has bested the demons and angels (who are superior to humans), and you did so for good.  However, it may only be a matter of time before you use your awesome power for nefarious purposes, and when you do the Angels (the good ones fighting on your side in the game) will be there to punish you (or something).  I mean come on!  I've just spend many hours exploring this world, saving it, and preventing the prime evils from escaping into the world, can't I just put my legs up on a tropical island, have a mai tai, and chill?  Doesn't saving the world give my character some privileges? ;-)

At the end of the game I looked at my achievements.  Pretty pathetic if you ask me. I earned 10 our of 43 achievements (23%). Not bad, but also not great for the time I invested in the game.  I was, briefly, considering continuing to play from the beginning again, at the Extreme difficulty level, with my level 52 demon hunter, however I have other games that I haven't touched yet. Maybe Diablo is something that I will come back to at a later time when I forget a bit about the story and it will be all new for me again.  Now, if only I could play Diablo and Diablo II again…should have saved my old PowerPC Mac I guess :-)