Six Reasons Why Diablo III Triggers a ‘Geek-Gasm’

GamesRadar apparently thinks that Blizzard’s third installment in the Diablo series is worthy of a “geek-gasm”, and has even provided us with six reasons why.

#2 – The current gen upgrade has been very kind to Diablo

Just like Starcraft II, the new Diablo has received an astonishingly appealing visual overhaul. Looking at the screens and watching the videos, it’s impossible to not be won over by its deft blend of the cartoon and the gritty. Character designs and animations burst often literally with personality. Every living thing onscreen is instantly recognisable through the way it looks, behaves and moves, and some subtle but mightily effective lighting effects bathe everything with a sense of solidity that makes killing the shit out of things look almost dangerously satisfying. No small feat for a combat-focused RPG using stacks of tiny monsters.

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#4 – You can smash up monsters using the environment

Why environmental interaction isn’t done more often in RPGs, we simply do not understand. It’s always seemed at odds with the genre’s philosophy of immersive, living game-worlds that the physicality of everything bar monsters usually seems completely oblivious to your presence.

Not so in Diablo III. Environmental damage will apparently play a big part as you use your character’s attacks to shatter and manipulate the world to your advantage in battle. You can smash the crap out of scenery to clear a path to your prey, and we’ve already seen a Barbarian tear down a wall to flatten a bunch of zombies. More of this sort of thing please!

Lots of salivating going on over there.