Diablo IV

I have spend less time with games recent years. The games that I played a lot where mainly Nintendo Switch games, most first party like Zelda, Splatoon and Animal Crossing. On PC and PS5 games like Final Fantasy and first party titles like Days gone. Before that DOTA 2 was where I lived on Steam. I dabbled in some of the fight games from time to time, like any version of Street Fighter and Moral Kombat and Tekken, anything from Arc System Works and King of Fighters. As I love to get a fight stick out or sit behind my Vewlix arcade.

Almost 3 decades ago MMO’s where a thing. I stayed away of the first renditions of those type of games, like Ultima Online, Lineage and EverQuest. In this same period I did play online, mainly Diablo. Yes the original. The first time I saw this game, I was intrigued. The game looked like something not seen before and the music was enticing. It was a time where during the summer holiday (I was a teenager) you brought you PC over to a friends house, maybe the parents were on holiday, maybe there were more than 1 friend, maybe you all stayed over… You know a LAN party. Totally not a thing anymore.

I saw a friend playing that game, I asked what is it called? he said Diablo. And continued playing like no one else was there, focused on what was happening on the screen. He was only playing it when we had some downtime, so in between sessions of Quake or Doom or Forsaken or Warcraft 2 or Red Alert, or when the rest were getting a nap or making food. I didn’t have a big wallet so I had to pick and choose wisely what I wanted to do with my money. After that LAN I went straight to our local games retailer, and picked up Diablo. I remember well it was the time of big box PC games, a almost black box with red and yellow letters D I A B L O and a sinister looking demon head and a red Blizzard logo.

I played Diablo for ours on end, at some point I was able to Dial up and play Diablo online, online… It was the first game I played online with unknown people. I had done multiplayer before with dial up, calling a friend to play command and conquer and such but this was new. It brought all kinds of new excitement to the game that was already very mysterious and exciting. But also things like item hacks and instant death and cheating, it killed the fun a quickly as had begun. Non the less, gaming was never the same again. I wanted to be online.

Fast forward today, Diablo IV was released. I tried to stay away from any reviews or information about the game. The only thing I wanted to hear was, was it worth picking up day1 or not. As Blizzard used to be a sure thing back when it made history with Diablo 2 and WarCraft 3 and StarCraft. After World of WarCraft and it’s many expansions and other remake project’s that Seal of Quality (think of Nintendo NES and SNES days) with the Blizzard logo stamp wasn’t that same insurance any more like it was back then. Now that I have been playing this game for some time I can safely say…

Blizzard is back.