Diablo invites you to enter a world of dark gothic fantasy. Play as a brave warrior, cunning rogue or mysterious sorceror. As you venture deeper into the labyrinth, you'll discover weapons, armor, and magical treasures, and develop your character's skills and abilities.
Near the end of 1996 in the United States, Blizzard North launched the Diablo game. Blizzard Entertainment, a world renowned video game publisher, that gained worldwide fame with the first and second Warcraft game, again confirmed it's name with a new hit that holds the average rating of 94 on Metacritica today. Regardless of what came out at the very end of 1996, Diablo grabbed GameSpot's GOTY prize and later the title of the best ever game by criteria of the same page. The madness that took over it in this world, so the game soon, at the beginning of 1997, was realeased to the global market. In 1998, the port for Mac was also released, and Climax Studio released PlayStation port at the same year and had a notable success.
Specific features of the PlayStation version of Diablo were those that it did not support online play, but in return provided the possibility of a very entertaining local cooperative gameplay for two players. In addition, the story could be traced through a monologue of narrators, rather than reading books in the game, which many players greeted warmly. However, the biggest controversy for this version of Diablo was that the size of the file save occupied as many as 10 blocks on the PlayStation memory card. For those who do not understand what the problem is, it should be noted that the standard size of the current memory card was 15 blocks, which means that save file for Diablo took up somewhat 66.6% space on memory card.
Diablo is an action RPG hack and slash gameplay set in the dark fantasy world of Khanduras kingdom within the world of Sanctuary, a place between hell and heaven which sank into evil. The game puts you in the role of an independent hero, that has to save the world from the plague of Diablo, the Master of Terror. You start an adventure in the town of Tristram, where you find hell underneath the ruins of the cathedral.
How the hell you are wondering? The background story is the following - the manipulation of the three lords of hell over the people in the Sanctuary has brought evil into this world between hell and heaven. Chaos reigned, and people hated and utterly murdered each others, while a group of wizards did not capture evil masters in so-called "soulstone". Diablo was buried deep in the country and a monastery was built over the pit. As the years passed, the monastery was forgotten and collapsed, and in his the vicinity the town of Tristram's was build. King Leoric again built it as a cathedral, but Diablo managed to manipulate the archbishop's of cathedral to release him from his prison. That evil then overwhelmed the king who waged war against the peaceful kingdoms in the surrounding area in the coming years. But evil did not stop, and took over the body of the son of Albrecht's son, whose nightmares were created by evil beings filled with catacombs beneath the cathedral. While there are sub-stories and sidequests (some involving King Leoric and his missing child, the Archbishop Lazarus' misdeeds, etc.), they're really not important to the game overall. Your mission is to kill Diablo-nothing else matters much.
The game can be finished with one of the three offered classes - Warrior, Rogue or Sorcerer. Each class has its own different abilities, and although each class can use almost all of the same items and spells, class-related abilities will reward players who can use them in an efficient way. For this reason, co-operative play was especially fun and multiplayer mode of Diablo at that time was extremely good. However, the game did not have a strong anti-cheating method, so many players were use various cheat programs, among which the Cheat Engine was the most prominent.
The game is presented in 2-D with a third-person overhead view. The camera is not rotatable, but despite the inherent rigidity of that set-up, it's rarely a problem. Character and monster sprites are fairly well animated, although there are some frame skips as well as some slowdown in situations where there are hordes of enemies on the screen. Spell animations are decent as well, particularly the higher end spells, which can illuminate the entire screen.Changing your armor and weapons makes your character's appearance change to highlight the differences. This is one of those simple things that never fails to impress me and I wish more RPGs would incorporate it. Sound effects are decent-everyone grunts and groans when taking hits, and there are lots of icky blade-on-flesh sounds scattered throughout the game. Each character screams when killed in battle, too-get used to it, you'll be hearing your death cry pretty regularly.
While the PSX version of Diablo will never replace the PC version, it is a decent port over of the game for those who weren't fortunate enough to get to play it on the PC. The two-player mode is a nice touch, although it'll never make up for online play, and the gameplay is just as solid as it's always been. If you're a fan of hack-and-slash action, then Diablo is well worth a look.
Specific features of the PlayStation version of Diablo were those that it did not support online play, but in return provided the possibility of a very entertaining local cooperative gameplay for two players. In addition, the story could be traced through a monologue of narrators, rather than reading books in the game, which many players greeted warmly. However, the biggest controversy for this version of Diablo was that the size of the file save occupied as many as 10 blocks on the PlayStation memory card. For those who do not understand what the problem is, it should be noted that the standard size of the current memory card was 15 blocks, which means that save file for Diablo took up somewhat 66.6% space on memory card.
Diablo is an action RPG hack and slash gameplay set in the dark fantasy world of Khanduras kingdom within the world of Sanctuary, a place between hell and heaven which sank into evil. The game puts you in the role of an independent hero, that has to save the world from the plague of Diablo, the Master of Terror. You start an adventure in the town of Tristram, where you find hell underneath the ruins of the cathedral.
How the hell you are wondering? The background story is the following - the manipulation of the three lords of hell over the people in the Sanctuary has brought evil into this world between hell and heaven. Chaos reigned, and people hated and utterly murdered each others, while a group of wizards did not capture evil masters in so-called "soulstone". Diablo was buried deep in the country and a monastery was built over the pit. As the years passed, the monastery was forgotten and collapsed, and in his the vicinity the town of Tristram's was build. King Leoric again built it as a cathedral, but Diablo managed to manipulate the archbishop's of cathedral to release him from his prison. That evil then overwhelmed the king who waged war against the peaceful kingdoms in the surrounding area in the coming years. But evil did not stop, and took over the body of the son of Albrecht's son, whose nightmares were created by evil beings filled with catacombs beneath the cathedral. While there are sub-stories and sidequests (some involving King Leoric and his missing child, the Archbishop Lazarus' misdeeds, etc.), they're really not important to the game overall. Your mission is to kill Diablo-nothing else matters much.
The game can be finished with one of the three offered classes - Warrior, Rogue or Sorcerer. Each class has its own different abilities, and although each class can use almost all of the same items and spells, class-related abilities will reward players who can use them in an efficient way. For this reason, co-operative play was especially fun and multiplayer mode of Diablo at that time was extremely good. However, the game did not have a strong anti-cheating method, so many players were use various cheat programs, among which the Cheat Engine was the most prominent.
The game is presented in 2-D with a third-person overhead view. The camera is not rotatable, but despite the inherent rigidity of that set-up, it's rarely a problem. Character and monster sprites are fairly well animated, although there are some frame skips as well as some slowdown in situations where there are hordes of enemies on the screen. Spell animations are decent as well, particularly the higher end spells, which can illuminate the entire screen.Changing your armor and weapons makes your character's appearance change to highlight the differences. This is one of those simple things that never fails to impress me and I wish more RPGs would incorporate it. Sound effects are decent-everyone grunts and groans when taking hits, and there are lots of icky blade-on-flesh sounds scattered throughout the game. Each character screams when killed in battle, too-get used to it, you'll be hearing your death cry pretty regularly.
While the PSX version of Diablo will never replace the PC version, it is a decent port over of the game for those who weren't fortunate enough to get to play it on the PC. The two-player mode is a nice touch, although it'll never make up for online play, and the gameplay is just as solid as it's always been. If you're a fan of hack-and-slash action, then Diablo is well worth a look.
