Diablo

I distinctly remember playing Diablo for the first time. I was in elementary school and for all my friends and I knew, Blizzard was the only company making games for the PC. We would schedule specific times when our parents would let us take over the phone lines and use our dial-up modems to play Warcraft II against each other. Diablo, however was a whole other story. As we clicked our way into the dungeon for the first time and encountered an imp, we were so overcome with the creepy music and haunting scenario that we screamed and ran away from the computer and had to dare each other to take turns playing.
 

We were stuck on the first boss, a demonic, blood soaked cleaver wielding demon called "The Butcher" for almost a week because we were simply too afraid to open the door to his room after his introductory howl of "Ahhh! Fresh Meat!" 
 
More than 10 years after its initial release, with a critically acclaimed sequel already 10 years old, and a third entry slated for release in the coming year, how does the original hold up?
 
The answer? 
 
It's kind of a mixed bag, but overall it is still an incredibly enjoyable experience.
 
Lets start off with the good first.
 
The game absolutely oozes environment. From the moment you start it up, to the moment Diablo falls and the credits roll, the game is unforgivingly dark and foreboding. The music is unsettling, the enemies fiendish, the bodies that pile up around you grotesquely dismembered by the horrors you are fighting. The voice acting was unmatched at the time and holds up well to this day. The residents of the unfortunate town of Tristram are sympathetic and seem real. Their discussions with the player and motivations for staying are justifiable and if you're like me you'll take the extra time to talk to them on your frequent trips back to town just to have a deeper understanding of them and the towns history. The story of the game while sparse at first slowly develops as you delve deeper and deeper into the labrynth below the small towns church.
 
The downside? A 640 x 480 resolution. 
 
Now I am not a stickler for graphics- I love old games. However, for most people in the modern age, this is going to be a bit of an eyesore even if the sprites and environments are beautifully designed and realized. Also, sometimes the treasure or switches necessary to complete a quest can be a bit hard to spot and can take a bit of pixel hunting.
 
As far as gameplay goes, Diablo is essentially responsible for creating an entire genre. The point and click dungeon crawler hack and slash owes its existence to this game, and the core mechanics of clicking on a demon till it drops into a bloody pile are just as satisfying as they've ever been. You can choose from 3 separate classes with distinct play styles. The Warrior for your basic walk up to enemies and hit them kind of guy, the Rogue if you prefer picking away your enemies from afar with a bow, and the Wizard if you enjoy blowing your enemies away with magic.  The bonus of having each level of the dungeon be randomly generated helps to add to replay value enormously. 
 
The bad part about being the jumping off point for an entire genre is that it doesn't have the benefits of hindsight that all of the other entries have. Simple things that are mainstays of the genre now like item banks, weapon modifications, the ability to even... you know... run, are noticeably absent. The mechanics are at their most simplified and not necessarily streamlined here. Inventories are small, quests can be hard to keep track of or know what to do with, and if you don't build your characters stats up right- beware! The later levels, which can already be a frustrating exercise in striking once or twice then running away to heal, can become virtually impossible. 

Diablo was also the launch platform for Blizzards free multiplayer service known as Battle.net. This was my first foray into the online world as a child and I can still remember my utter shock at the amount of swearing people did on the internet and the pure joy of crawling through a dungeon with a pal. While it's still functional almost no one is still around playing this game, and those who are usually cheat since preventative measures were essentially unheard of back in the day and player characters were actually stored locally. The online mode could still provide the player with a chance to hack their way through endless dungeons and endless levels for slightly better loot and without the hassle of having to restart your character completely over due to poor skill point allotment early on like in the single player campaign.
 
Overall, I still had a blast playing through it despite the games age and rough points. It is an important piece of gaming history and if you can tolerate some rough edges and low resolutions, I can see no reason why you shouldn't grab your sword, bow or staff and slog your way through the worst hell has to throw at you.