And, it’s official…

Blizzard sure knows how to announce something.

After teasing us all week with strange clues,wild goose chases, and clear red herrings, Blizzard has confirmed that Diablo III is coming.

But not only have they confirmed it, they’ve provided a wealth of information, including not only a cinematic teaser trailer, but a LONG gameplay video with commentary AND a beautifully designed website with even more information to host it all (I played both the cinematic and gameplay trailers this morning with only 1 slight hitch during the gameplay trailer… since it was early, perhaps it will get worse through the day, but I highly recommend you check it out).

In any case, the game already looks amazing, seemingly retaining that classic Diablo feel with significantly updated graphics and, what appears to be, far more interesting looking environments.  Something not completely clear to me right now is whether the game will retain the random levels, but the FAQ on the website hints at it right now as it says random scripted events “build” on the random level generation of the originals.  The game even already has a fantastic soundtrack to accompany it, something that I mentioned in an earlier comment was a key aspect of drawing you into the worlds of the original games. The other thing you can notice from the gameplay video is that it appears, as in the originals, there appears to be very little cooldown time for skills, another aspect that contributed to the lightning-fast gameplay of the originals that has often been lost in many “clones”.

One minor area of early concern for me is whether the controls will also retain the right-button-mouse reassign hotkeys that added to some of the franticness of the originals.  The gameplay video mentions a “swap” hotkey as well as mousewheel support, which is definitely helpful, but hopefully they did not also remove the individual keyboard hotkeys.  I doubt they did, and I think the commentary was just stressing that, as in the originals, Diablo III can be played entirely with a mouse again.

So far, I’m very impressed.  Unlike some companies that just release a crappy, brief, cinematic teaser with nothing else, Blizzard launches a full-out explosion of information for what is probably one of the most requested sequels ever. Call me a hopeless Diablo fiend, but this game immediately jumps to the top of my most anticipated games.  The only question now is whether I’ll be able to play it before the decade is out.  If I had to wager a guess, I’d say that they’re shooting for the 2009 holiday season… which probably means we won’t see it until summer 2010 (or beyond).  But, the game does already look pretty damn good, so here’s hoping that it makes it out sooner than later.

Minor Update:  Shacknews has larger and faster loading movies here.  You can also view a couple shorter movies that focus on some of the attacks of the two classes that have been announced so far (Barbarian and Witch Doctor), as well as an “Artwork Trailer” which is actually kind of cool.  There are even some HD versions of some of the movies, but you’ll have to register (for free) to download them.

Oh yeah, and if anyone from Blizzard is reading this, I’ll just let you know right now that I’m available for a beta… or alpha… or whatever. =)

Diablo III or Bust *UPDATED*

I just thought I’d put up my 2 cents that if Blizzard’s newest teaser is for the WoW expansion Wrath of the Lich King, something we already know about and have plenty of information available on already, and which is only aimed at people who have level 70 characters (or close), then that would be a massive disappointment.

For all the Diablo clones out there, for some reason, nothing has been able to match up to the original (and especially its sequel).  Perhaps nothing ever will, but that doesn’t mean that a sequel to the 2000-released Diablo II (and 2001 expansion) isn’t extremely anticipated.  A WoW expansion means nothing to me and only something to a (smallish?) subset of the 10 million WoW subscribers who have or are close to level 70.  But a Diablo sequel… that’s something that I, and probably a hell of a lot more people than the mentioned WoW subset, can firmly get behind.

*UPDATE*

Well, more teasers today from Blizzard but Diabloii.net supposedly has confirmation from “inside sources” that Diablo III WILL be announced this weekend at the Blizzard Worldwide Invitational (WWI for short).  Here’s hoping their sources are right (and that the game doesn’t take another several years to make it out).

Ni Hao Ma, Zon?

This seems like an interesting idea: use a game to teach languages and culture.  I’m currently taking Chinese classes, and it would be nice to see an easier way to learn the language, which is quite difficult - in 9 months, I barely have the vocabulary required to ask for the time, directions, or to order food (comparatively, it’s taken me about 2 days to learn how to read Korean).  And I’m one of the better students in the class.

More to the point, I’m amazed it’s taken this long to try something like this.  An MMO is a social, interactive experience that can do a great job of mimicking real-life situations.  I’ll report back once I’ve had the chance to try the game out.

Plagiarists do Oblivion

Allanon just sent along this story where Game Plasma’s eagle-eyed PC reviewer noticed some striking similarities between Oblivion and a new game from a smaller PC studio titled “Limbo of the Lost.” Well, maybe not so much “striking similarities” as entire environments, lighting, and furniture placement in the exact same place as in Oblivion.

When this was first pointed out to me, I wondered whether these were just temporary placeholders for a game as of yet unreleased. Given the fact that he is reviewing the game, and a quick scan of Amazon suggests that this is not the case. I have a feeling we’re about to see some legal action here, as, unlike the S.T.A.L.K.E.R/Doom 3 fiasco, it’s hard to imagine that these entire environments are part of a 3rd party package.

You know what they say… imitation is the sincerest form of… ah, never mind. This is ridiculous. Sample pictures after the jump:

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More Nazis! I Mean, Japanese.

Call of Duty 5 details have come out, and it looks like we’re returning to World War II.  This has of course prompted a whole host of complaints from sites like Destructoid, who argue that WW2 is played out and that we should be looking at other conflicts for inspiration.  I’d agree that there are plenty of games like this out there, but this complaint strikes me as largely unfounded.

First off, why are there so many WW2 games?  For one, it’s because the war was one of the few with undeniably, unambiguously ”good” and “bad” guys.  You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone - Pat Buchanan aside - willing to argue that this wasn’t a “good war.”  As a result, you can mow down hordes of other human beings without feeling too terrible about yourself.  And you get a nice warm glow inside when you accomplish your objectives.  Second, it’s epic: there just aren’t any other wars out there in the modern era with the same kind of epic scope and scale that World War 2 has… even WW1 was relatively uninteresting trench warfare for a significant portion of its duration.  As a result, there is a lot of ground to mine.  Third, it’s got neat gadgets.  WW2 was where many of the tools of modern warfare, like the tank and air combat, first came into their own.  Therefore, designers can make a fairly diverse and interesting experience out of combat.  And finally, it’s got a happy ending: the right people won.  Good gameplay scenarios in an epic battle between good and evil: sounds like it should get a lot of attention.

Additionally, there just aren’t that many other attractive scenarios.  The most obvious US battles of the last 150 years or so would probably include the US Civil War, World War I, Korea, and Vietnam.  Yet the first has quite a few games of its own.  And the latter three just aren’t very inspiring: Korea had an ambiguous outcome, and it’s not nearly as widely known as most other fights.  And Vietnam is such a cultural touchstone, with so many political connotations, that it’s tough to come up with a real game that isn’t also a political statement. 

Also consider the fact that even now, companies are able to advance the WW2 game in any number of ways - from CoD’s original European-focused titles, to RTS’s like Close Combat and Company of Heroes, there are plenty of recent games that do more than simply parrot their forebearers.  If the genre is stagnant, let’s hear complaints.  But “no more WW2″ is reflexively negative without due reason.

And lastly, it would be remiss to note that the Pacific theater is one that hasn’t been touched on in nearly the same detail as Europe.  The fact that CoD 5 is targeting this area seems like a great reason to consider it optimistically.  The CoD series hasn’t let us down yet.

PC Death Wish

Quick!  What’s the newest nvidia video card model?  I have no idea either. 

So I was in a Best Buy yesterday and took a peek at the weekly ads.  While most of the advertised products were pretty typical, my eye caught on the video cards section.  New low price!  Build a better rig!  The only problem was that I had no idea what I wanted, and I would guess that most other people don’t, either.  In fact, the entire PC video card industry seems premised on the argument that the less transparent their product line, the more they will sell.  Cards are an incomprehensible mixture of acronyms, arcane numerical systems, and gibberish.

(I’ll be picking on nvidia here, but ATI is just as guilty.)

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Duke Exists…

And God help me, it doesn’t look too bad.  Though you have to wonder at the marketing decision that kept this charade up for 12 years.  Wouldn’t it have been a lot smarter to cancel DNF, wait a few years, and then announce this as a new project?  The fact that people are going to instinctively deride Duke as vaporware, and that it can’t possibly live up to expectations, suggests that the negatives outweight the free publicity that they’re getting now. 

Color Me Skeptical

Nolan Bushnell says that a new computer chip will “absolutely stop piracy of gameplay.”

Really? Just like the XBox 360, eh?

Is it just me, or do these people constantly forget the golden-rule of software security: claiming your software is unhackable will only motivate hackers to hack it even faster.

New security steps like this one will certainly slow down some piracy for awhile, but it’s only a matter of time before it’s broken. When it is, expect the “next big thing” in software security to also be “unhackable” until it is, of course, hacked as well.

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When Good People Make Average Games

So the first installment of Penny Arcade Adventure is now out, and the reviews are in: the game is “not bad.”  This isn’t particularly surprising; after all, most games fall into that category.  I think what was slightly surprising though - at least for me - was the idea that guys who live and breathe gaming (who in fact make their living off of it) came in around the average.  This probably shouldn’t have been so startling.  After all, thinking about it provides plenty of reasons that it might be so.  But I suspect a lot of us play a mediocre title only to think, “I could make games better than these guys.”  So why couldn’t we?

Maybe the best reason is that we’re simply not a team.  Most reviews cite the Penny Arcade mentality as the game’s biggest strength; it’s got the humor and style that fans of the strip have always enjoyed.  (I’ll note that it also seems unfair to knock the game simply because you’re not a fan, as some reviewers do - you need to judge a game on its own terms.)  Naturally, since Gabe and Tycho have risen to fame due to that sensibility, it should be expected that they’d nail that part of the game.  But there’s obviously a lot more to a game than any one element.  And it seems like the gameplay, although inspired by Final Fantasy and related PA loves, didn’t get the same lavish attention that the storyline and setting did.  I would guess that the designers spent so much time trying to understand what Gabe and Tycho had in mind that no one really spent the time to think about how to keep the gameplay fresh.

I’m not trying to criticize them.  After all, the game isn’t bad.  It’s just not the revolutionary step that I think many fans were expecting.  And my point in writing this is to clarify that there are so many moving parts to a game, that we often lose sight of the fact that simply doing a great job in any one of them isn’t enough to provide a truly great game, even when made by one of our own.  To PA’s credit, their column has noted the concerns people have raised and have taken responsibility for them, suggesting they have to “work harder” in the future.  That’s refreshing, particularly since they don’t really have anything to apologize for.  I’m looking forward to seeing what happens to the series in the future - and I’m a lot more humble about my ability to do any better.

Whoa, Numbers

Interesting analysis from the not-defunct Eat Sleep Game on what the NPD figures miss regarding PC gaming sales.  This kind of analysis is often missing from actual professional media outlets in the industry, so I’m glad someone is stepping up to the plate.