Trapped in the Hells

So. Like (almost) every other gamer on the planet right now, I purchased and have begun playing the long-anticipated Blizzard game, Diablo III - the sequel 12 years in the making after the ridiculously successful Diablo II.

I, for one, absolutely adore the universe and the gameplay in these games. The world is filled with interesting characters, the missions are intriguing and the monsters are grotesque and evil. You, as hero, stand as the lone light of salvation in the doomed world.

Set 20 years after the events of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction, wherein the last of the three Prime Evils, Baal, is killed last after his brothers - Mephisto and the eponymous Diablo - were killed, the heroes must rise again to fend off the encroaching hell hordes. The last of the Lesser Evils have surfaced after a mysterious fireball smashes into the Earth and causes the dead to rise.

If you were one of the many who received their game on its May 15 release date, odds are, you were met with the various Error messages, informing you that you couldn't log on. The servers had crashed with the traffic.

"What?" you may ask. "How can the servers of a single player game crash?"
Good question. Let me tell you.

In a move that has royally pissed off more than a fair share of people, something which is concisely summed up in this article. The main problem being that, in an attempt to curtail piracy - which has run rampant in the gaming community for, well, ever - Activision/Blizzard have decided that you have to log in to the server to be able to play your game.

"Hell," you say, "that's not so bad! You have to do that for Starcraft II and it works just fine!"

Oh, but you see, for Starcraft II, you have the option to play offline. Not so with Diablo III. You must be online at all times with Diablo III. It's no longer a "single player game with an online/multiplayer option", it's an online single player game that has the option of being played alone. But never offline.

And god help you if you have anyone on your friends list, because they can just pop into your game whenever they please. Without asking. Just PING! and they're in. But, that's neither here nor there.

My main gripe is the fact that, as happened to me on Tuesday night, if their servers are down or if my internet just plain isn't working that day, I have paid $69 for a game that I can't play. I know this is the case with World of Warcraft or any other number of MMORPGs, but those are designed for online play. You play them, you accept that servers need maintenance and sometimes they're going to go offline. But, when I purchase a single player game, I expect to be able to play it whenever I damn well feel like.

This means that unless my train has wireless, I can't play on the train. I can't play at someone else's house who's internet I can't get into. I can't play anywhere where there is no internet. And that just shits me.

That said, it's a pretty damn great game.

Mahalo.

Official Verdict: StarCraft 2

Well, well, well. So the date came and went for the release of the much anticipated (for some fans, 12 year wait) StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty. And lo and behold were we not disappointed.
While I sure had strong opinions on what Activizzard had done regarding the multiplayer system of the game, the single player mode is better than I hoped - if not slightly easier than I expected.
The story continues the story of the all favourite Jim Raynor four years after the end of Brood War. Kerrigan is mysteriously silent and Arcturus Mengsk is still in control of the Terran Dominion. The fight goes on in it's normal fashion and then Zeratul returns bearing grave news.
StarCraft 2's campaign allows for a varied and interesting form of play, allowing and disallowing certain units and creating intriguing choices for the player - allowing for moments of role play.
Also, while I may complain about the multiplayer system - and the integrated RealID (which was NOT removed) Facebook friend finger - the multiplayer games are fun and really are nostalgic of StarCraft 1. It is most definitely not "an online experience so good you won't want to have a LAN party", but it's fun - which a game this good should be.
Now I just need to wait for the two expansions to see if this praise is at all founded.

An Addendum

I feel an addendum must be made to my previous post about Bioshock 2. While my opinion of the single player aspect to the game remains unchanged, the multiplayer aspect is a different story. It would appear as if it was added as an afterthought, rather than a pre-thought-out portion of the game (Hmm, much like this addendum to an already fine article?). While it is cool to play a first person shooter game with others over the web using superpowers as well as weapons, the fashion in which it is done is slow and not worthy of the high status of game that fans have come to expect of Bioshock.
That is all. Mahalo.