Postal Redux is a slightly peculiar game. On the one hand, it’s a fairly simple shooter that uses an isometric perspective. You enter a level, there are a certain amount of enemies, you need to kill 96% of them. The game couldn’t be more straight forward. At the same time, it’s a game that goes out of it’s way to be edgy. Part of this is because the developers had hitherto been working on children’s games. So for them, Postal 1 was a way of letting off steam.

And to their credit, Postal 1 and it’s remaster Postal Redux are certainly as far away from a kid’s game as one can get. You play as the Postal dude, and you go postal across the course of 22 levels. You can shoot yourself, and indeed are encourage to shoot basically everything that moves. Animals, civilians, the police, clowns, it doesn’t matter. Now you can play through levels without killing civilians, but I think that’s missing the point really.

As for the gameplay itself, it’s fairly enjoyable if a little basic. You do get access to a whole host of different weapons, although ammo tends to be limited. You just run around shooting everything that moves. There are some health kits to pick up, and that’s about it. Every level is largely the same, at least in terms of objectives. The whole thing should only take you around 3 to 4 hours to complete. Once you’ve finished all 22 stages, the game is pretty much over. Fortunately you can play through every stage with a friend, if you know any sick puppies.

Regarding the rest of the game, there isn’t much to say. The soundtrack was extremely minimal even if the soundscape is appropriately mad. The graphics are decent and have certainly been touched up since the original release. The performance was alright considering this is an Unreal Engine 4 game. The plot barely exists. One thing to note is that the camera is a bit all over the place, with the perspective changing between levels. Also the train station level is weirdly hard. Oh and the AI bots (the clowns) are beyond useless.

And that’s about all I have to say about Postal Redux. I know it’s a short review, but this is a short game. It’s nothing special, but it is nice to see a remaster/remake that adds some new content for a relatively niche release. The gun-play is fine, nothing special but the weapon variety does help. I do wish that there was a bit more to do, that the bots were better and that the OST wasn’t so minimal. Otherwise what you see is what you get. Namely a isometric shooter for people who want society to EAT LEAD.

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Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is not an RTS for the faint of heart. Not because it’s overly complicated or difficult to play, but more due to the fact that this is an extensive package. You see, not only are you getting all of the content from the original game and it’s expansion pack, but you’re also getting additional content. As a result, getting through all the campaign scenarios took me around 50 hours. Which is quite a task, especially for more casual RTS players. On the other hand, those willing to embrace this game and deal with it’s drawbacks (such as a piddingly small max population) will have a good time. You’ve got a decent range of skirmish maps, plenty of campaign scenarios and of course a solid pool of civilizations to play as. Unlike it’s sequel, I’d argue that Age of Empires: Definitive Edition does a better job of making each civilization feel unique to play. This is because once you start hitting the higher tiers of units, buildings and upgrades you’ll notice there are a lot of distinguishing factors between these civilizations. If you want to play as the Romans for example, enjoy having weak archers, no fire ships, lame towers and so-so cavalry. Want to play as the Carthaginians? Well your standard sword units are hopeless and so are your siege units. You don’t get to have everything as any civilization, and I think this is a good thing.

Why do I think this? Well not only does it make each faction feel different and thus encourage strategy, but it also helps with the campaign scenarios. For me this is the meat of the game, and while a lot of missions can be a bit of a grind they are generally pretty fun and varied. As mentioned above, one nice aspect of Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is the fact that you get access to the missions from the demos. These were hitherto semi-lost, as you’d need to seek out and get those demos running on more modern machines. Not only that, but these missions were also a bit of a mess sometimes and now they have been brought up to snuff. Ultimately there are over 60 campaign missions to play through, and they offer a decent level of challenge and do a good job of teaching you how to play the game properly. That’s not to say they’re all great, but the overall experience is pretty fun and has a nice difficulty curve to it.

As you’ll have noticed from the pictures, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition is a pretty great visual upgrade over the base game. It’s not only the visuals that have been upgraded though, as there are myriad tweaks and changes under the hood to make everything more intuitive. You’ve got more hotkeys, the ability to automatically reseed farms, notifications when you can move to the next Age (essentially moving up to the next tier of the tech-tree), improvements to pathfinding, balancing tweaks, the ability to see technology trees while playing and a lot more. As a consequence, the Definitive Edition not only looks better – but more importantly it plays better too. Of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention one or two things that frustrated me to no end during my time with what I otherwise consider to be a stellar game.

The first issue I have, and one that everyone will encounter, is that the enemy AI is an odd beast. Hopeless at macro-level decisions such as what to build or where to attack, but utterly insufferable at the micro-level. Enemy archers and siege units do a fantastic job of dodging shots and otherwise making a pain of themselves, with endless little hit-and-run actions. If you try to snipe an AI villager or fishing ship, they will drag it out and do their best to avoid every shot or hit. In a game where villagers can quickly become some of the fastest units, this does make things a bit tedious when you are trying to focus on something. As the AI is a literal machine, they can send a dumb little diversionary attack, while using a priest to convert a unit, while queuing up more units, sending villagers to repair damaged buildings and more all at the same time. You on the other hand are a feeble assortment of flesh and bone, and will find the AI an irritating opponent at times. Fortunately it’s never too much of a struggle to outlast the AI, but my goodness can the near endless “you are under attack” notification sound become a source of frustration. The second big issue, which I think all players will also encounter is that improved path-finding is still deeply flawed. It’s no doubt better, but it’s still annoying to see your units clump up and get in each others way near constantly.

On the subject of annoyances, Age of Empires: Definitive Edition has a few that to it’s credit are authentic. You can’t build gates in walls, for example. Similarly fishing boats will gobble up all the fish at one point and then need to be explicitly told to go slightly further afield (or asea?) to get more. Generally speaking this a pretty faithful reproduction of the base game, with it’s strengths and some of it’s flaws being carried over. Want to build a big army in your campaign battle? Too bad, here’s 50 population which gets you 50 units split between economy, naval and ground forces (further split between infantry, archers, cavalry and siege units). I’m not mad about these decisions because after all, it’s a remaster and they were part of the base game. I just mention them because I imagine most people reading this (if anyone ever does) will be more familiar with Age of Empires 2/3/4. Which all let you build gates, have smarter villagers and have bigger armies.

And at this point I’ve kind of run out of things to say. I suppose I should quickly mention that the soundtrack is great and that the game is very fairly priced. Not only that, but it frequently goes on sale for around £3.74 or $4.99 yankee bucks and for that price it’s an easy recommendation from me. Not only does this game generally play great, but it has tons of content and a nice presentation. For existing fans of the series, this is either a faithful reproduction or the best introduction to where this series started. For RTS noobs, this is an easy to pickup and play game, although it doesn’t quite have the same appeal as some of it’s successors. Ultimately I would recommend this game to anyone, although I would recommend Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition first. If you enjoyed that game, then give this one a shot too. You might just be surprised how well it holds up. Just don’t let the AI’s micro GOD skills get you down.

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Quick Note: Yes this is a remaster of a remaster, Microsoft really did pull that stunt. For what it’s worth, you can’t buy Age of Empires 2: HD any more and all of the DLC for that version of the game has been included in Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition for free.

Oh Microsoft you cheeky swine, I’ve already bought 4 copies of Age of Empires 2 and yet here you are asking for me to buy it again. Were my purchases of the base game, the gold edition (with the expansions), the DS version and the initial HD remaster not enough for you? Evidently not, because here we are again and in spite of my better judgement I’ve gone and bought my 5th copy of this infernal game. Why did I do it? Well honestly because I waited years and then made a £4 impulse buy during the twitch event for the latest “hidden cup”. Which was fun to watch (except for the final) and so I felt like buying another version of the game for cheap wouldn’t be a terrible idea. I mean it has some new co-op maps, three new campaigns and uhhhh…. shiny graphics! Plus some Quality of Life (QoL) changes and some new civilizations. Oh and just under 300 CHEEVOS to gather, if you are so inclined. As it’s hard to review a remaster as opposed to the initial game, I’m just going to go through those points mentioned above one-by-one. If you haven’t played Age of Empires 2 for some reason, then just go grab when it’s on sale. Otherwise, read on!

To make things easy, let’s start off with the new campaigns which have been introduced for Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. There are a grand total of three of them, with each campaign having 5 or 6 missions each. These missions are relatively varied and quite fun, although depending on your play-style they really can take a decent amount of time. Generally each campaign has sections where you have no villagers, and as such must make the most out of your modestly sized force. Alongside more traditional missions that let you play as per normal, albeit often with some restrictions. The most notable one is that in all of the campaigns, you aren’t allowed to just jump straight to the Imperial Age from mission one. Instead new tech and a larger population cap are gradually introduced over the length of each campaign. This is fine in principle, although in practice it means that you’ll often wrap up a campaign, start a new one and… oh we’re back to the Feudal Age with no villagers and a maximum population of 75. To be fair to these missions, you generally start with some units/structures already setup and often even some techs will have been researched (never had to research Loom for example). Regardless of the somewhat arbitrary limitations, the campaigns are all decently enjoyable and manage to feel varied enough that you’ll want to get through them all. Plus Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition has also reworked a bunch of the earlier campaigns from previous releases, including some balancing tweaks and an increased population cap for most of those campaign missions. Although it must be said, that the inclusion of the base game campaigns, expansion pack campaigns and then the DLC campaigns from AoE2:HD really does make the campaign menu a bit overwhelming at first.

Fortunately even if the campaign selection screen can be a bit overwhelming, the actual game isn’t. As mentioned before we now have SHINY NEW GRAPHICS (wow!!!), but honestly they are pretty shiny. Not only do we have new 4K resolution options, but there’s been a bunch of work done to make everything look more visually impressive even at 1080p. New building destruction animations, better zoom control functionality, new objects and effects for some buildings/units and the like are all included. As for the UI, it’s also been improved with the ability to see all faction traits alongside a real-time tracker which shows global production/research and also how many villagers are on each resource. There are also some relatively small gameplay tweaks like automatically re-seeding farms, the ability to rotate gates manually alongside a substantial improvement to the AI. Finally the soundtrack has been remastered, and some of the campaigns from Age of Empires 2: HD now have voice acting. Sure you don’t need much voice-acting, but it’s a nice little bonus and brings everything up to the same standard. Finally there are some more granular options in the menus, that let experienced players further control how the game operates. It’s basically a pretty extensive under-the-hood upgrade to the game, and it all adds up to make Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition the best way to play the game.

As for the multiplayer mode, aside from a new server hosting infrastructure and cross-play between Steam/Microsoft Store versions of the game, there’s some new content here too. First of all, there are now a batch of co-op scenario maps based on historic battles – just like those in Age of Empires 3: Definitive Edition. While these don’t add a huge amount of content, it’s a nice addition and hopefully more are added in the future. There are also 4 new civilizations in the base game (Bulgarians, Lithuanians, Cumans and the Tartars) which can be played in Skirmish and Multiplayer modes. These new civilizations are a nice bonus and all have decent cavalry units, as would be expected for their history. The multiplayer mode also received a new game mode in the form of Empire Wars. This mode is quite similar to a normal game, but players now start in the Feudal Age and have a selection of pre-built units and buildings including around 27 villagers. It’s therefore a nice way to skip the initial Dark Ages slog and go straight to combat, although obviously this can be a headache for newer players or civilizations who benefit from a stronger economy in the very early game.

And that’s about “all” that’s been changed for Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition. I guess it goes without saying that as it’s the new version of Age of Empires 2, there are also a bunch of new DLC updates that have added a bunch of extra civilizations/campaigns. But I don’t own them, so I can only judge the remaster on it’s own merits. Which honestly is enough for me to give it a recommendation. The gameplay changes to the campaigns are modest but appreciated. The new soundtrack is genuinely great and makes the game feel much more enjoyable to play. The new graphics likewise look great, and the myriad small tweaks do a solid job of making the game feel more modern. The new campaigns are fun, and generally this is just a great little remaster. If you have an older version of the game, there’s plenty of new content here to enjoy. If you’ve never played it, then be sure to give it a go!

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Super Mario 64 is one of the most famous games ever made and a memorable part of my childhood, albeit one that didn’t get resolve until the year 2024. I was on the fence about whether to even bother writing up a short review of this one, considering how exceedingly famous it is and consequentially how pathetically low my search engine result ranking for this game will be. Then again I have no readers, and nothing better to do so here we are. It turns out Super Mario 64 is a great game and still holds up pretty well (basic visuals not withstanding I suppose), with the exception of the camera. Everything else from level design, to the difficulty, to the soundtrack and even the controls has been done well. I’m actually surprised I never got the ending to be honest, considering the fact that getting the credits to play only took me… maybe a dozen hours?

Oh well, weird lapses in judgement aside I can safely reiterate that Super Mario 64 remains a great game with just the right amount of challenge across it’s 15 courses. The initial four are pretty easy and outside of some tricky parts where you need to shoot yourself out of a cannon with precision, there really isn’t too much challenge here. Once you start unlocking the latter stages however, things get a bit more challenging as the game loves to enforce some surprisingly precise platforming onto the player. One thing I should’ve mentioned earlier is that each of the game’s 15 courses contains 7 stars (no, not 6). When you enter a stage, you select which of these stars you are aiming for. These stars sometimes involve changing the level slightly, but generally there are 7 objectives within the stage. With two of these objectives always being “gather the 8 red coins” (that are scattered around) and gather 100 normal coins, however it pleases you. The remaining 5 stars will generally be hidden around the level, sometimes in the possession of bosses or requiring some environmental chicanery to unlock. To spice things up, Super Mario 64 locks segments of the overworld (Peach’s castle) behind minimum star requirements and locked doors. To unlock these doors, you’ll need to collect enough stars and then defeat Bowser. Each time you face off against the loathsome lizard is largely the same, although he gets new attacks with each encounter. For the standard 70-star ending, you’ll need to beat him 3 times across 3 separate levels. There are also 3 types of cap that can be obtained, each of which acts as a temporary power-up and requires you to activate a switch in one of the game’s many bonus levels. You’ve got a flight cap, a metal cap and an invisible cap which let you fly, walk in water (instead of swimming) and go through certain walls/objects respectively.

While these power-ups are cool, the main reason they work is that the game is able to successfully juggle some light puzzle elements with solid platforming and a mix of enemies and different objectives. Most of the time, these objectives aren’t too difficult. Yet the high quality OST track, balanced challenge and way that each stage successfully has it’s own theme makes the whole game a pleasant experience to play. These themes range from a water world centred around a ship that may or may not have sunk (depending on the star), to rainbow rides in the sky through to simple grassland courses and a desert level with an explorable pyramid. As for progression, the fact that you only need to gather a certain amount of stars, while having multiple courses unlocked at a time is a great idea. For the simple reason that it’s very hard to get stuck in Super Mario 64, with the range of stages available letting you focus on the ones that you actually want to do. Even the frustrating camera angles aren’t able to hold Super Mario 64 back, and the fact that you have essentially unlimited continues (at least if memory serves – the game isn’t particularly challenging) means it’s hard to stay mad at Super Mario 64. If you’re really struggling with a certain level’s obstinate platforming requirements, then you can always just jog on to another stage and come back to that one later. Plus as mentioned there are multiple hidden stages, and “free” stars given by talking to one of the various instances of Toad stuck in the walls. As such progression is nearly inevitable, yet the game is able to keep players playing due to the variety in objectives and solid control scheme which makes exploring the levels (and castle) quite fun.

To give some examples, one world (or course) can only be accessed by repeatedly “killing” a certain enemy, while others are hidden behind seemingly normal walls or are only revealed in a mirror. Some stages require you to stare at the ceiling, or enter an inconspicuous hole in a wall. Generally speaking the castle, while quite small in reality does a great job of making the whole experience feel like a unified whole. As for the stages, the modest changes that occur between each star do a great job of making them feel larger and more varied than they actually are. Plus having to track down secret stages to unlock the power-ups which are required for certain stars is a prudent move, as it forces the player to engage with exploring the castle even if they aren’t so inclined. Even smaller touches such as having the camera be controlled by a floating NPC (that you can occasionally see) or having Mario take a nap if you leave him alone for a little bit of time show that Super Mario 64 is a game that was made with a lot of attention to detail, in spite of the exceedingly modest polygon budget.

Which isn’t to say that the game is flawless, because that would just be silly. Every game has flaws, except maybe for Tetris. In Super Mario 64’s case, there are three that stood out to me. One that’s quite inconsequential but still bizarre is the way in which the game just resets how many lives you have every time you save and exit the game. It’s not a huge issue, but if you’ve gone out of your way to gather 1-ups and extra lives then… too bad! The game doesn’t care, and if you leave the game and come back to it then you go back to having 4 lives in reserve for some reason. Another issue that’s more of an issue is the way in which Mario can’t just turn around if he’s in motion, even if it’s a very slight motion. This isn’t a big deal, but for precision platforming it makes the game more of a pain than it has to be. If Mario is still, then moving back will cause him to turn around and move backwards. If he is dealing with the slightest bit of motion, then he will move forward in a radius and then start moving backwards. When the platforms are oh so small, this can and will cause you to fall off them (and probably die). Again a relatively small issue, but one I wanted to mention. Alongside the game’s biggest issue, which is a somewhat annoying camera. For the time the camera was fine, but by modern standards the lack of full rotation and fondness for awkward angles make platforming a chore sometimes. As mentioned, some of the platforming is exceedingly precise and with the inclusion of momentum physics and important of hitting a jump at the right angle or speed having an inconsistent camera can be a real issue. Even relatively basic areas like the boss fights against Bowser or jumping up a pyramid in the desert stage can really screw with the player, setting them back a bit. Does the camera ruin Super Mario 64? Of course not, but it’s by far my biggest gripe with the game.

But notwithstanding those modest issues, Super Mario 64 is just a great game. It’s a 3D platformer that shows everyone else how it’s done, with a solid colour palette, smart stage design (some levels even change based on how you enter them), memorable soundtrack, varied enemy roster, deft handling of an overworld that’s fun to explore and an intuitive control scheme. In conclusion then, this review is pointless but you should still give Super Mario 64 a go if you haven’t already tried it. There are plenty of small touches that truly make it something special, and even if you don’t get that far then you’ll be able to enjoy the first few stages which are all fun to play and do a good job of letting you just get on with the game. Those who can stick with Super Mario 64 will find a rewarding platforming experience, that isn’t afraid to force you to explore a level of repeat a particularly tricky jump to get the reward.

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Quick Note: I played the remake as evidenced by the title, but haven’t played the original. So don’t expect any comparisons between the two versions

Panzer Dragoon Remake is a great little arcade game at a reasonable price. While the original game has remained largely constrained to the ill-fated Sega Saturn (and the PS2… kind of). Those who haven’t played it before can now play it on multiple new platforms. In my case, I chose the PC release from GoG with only a faint idea of what the series was about. As dedicated readers of this blog – who don’t exist – will be aware, I’m a sucker for a bargain. At £1, I can safely say that Panzer Dragoon really was a bargain. Not only is it a solid rail-shooter that manages to slightly embarrass Starfox 64 (my previous favourite) with it’s gameplay. But thanks to this remake it looks and sounds great too. Even if it’s a very short experience, it has a couple of tricks up it’s sleeve that combine to form a compelling gameplay experience.

First things first. The Panzer Dragoon remake may only have one weapon that you can use, but there’s an interesting give-and-take at the centre of the gameplay as this weapon has two firing modes. You can just spam shots, as much as you’d like and in a way that’s par-for-the-course for shoot em ups. Where things get a bit more interesting is that you’re able to hold down the fire button for a lock-on effect. With this lock-on being able to stack shots so long as you keep the enemy in your crosshairs. This makes it useful for enemies who are hard to hit, but there’s a catch. You see while enemy projectiles can be dodged, it’s quite difficult to do so. After all, you are moving on rails as it’s a rail-shooter. Fortunately you can shoot down the majority of these enemy projectiles, but only while shooting “normally”. This forces you to shoot your (locked-on) shot, so that you can now shoot down the incoming projectiles. While this might not sound like much, during frantic parts of the game you really have to constantly think about whether it’s worth sacrificing the ability to easily damage multiple enemies that are darting around, so that you can make it easier to avoid taking damage. The game is therefore able to produce a subtle but constant balancing act. Where you need to maximise the damage you deal while minimising the damage you take. Further compounding this, is the fact that while you can dodge there’s generally a limit as to how much you can dodge. Especially because aiming the targetting cursor at enemies, causes you to move in that direction. So if you are trying to dodge incoming shots which will allow you to keep charging your lock-on shot, then you still need to be mindful of where you’re aiming. As otherwise you’ll end up moving back towards the enemy fire you were trying to dodge! I appreciate that this all might seem a tad verbose. Basically you move with the cursor and you only have a limited amount of room to manoeuvrer.

One other thing that the Panzer Dragoon remake does to keep you on your toes, is manage the health system in a slightly unusual way. You see you can’t get more health during each of the game’s 7 stages. And beating a stage only gives you some health back. Therefore unless you are a real expert, you’ll probably struggle to clear the game with one life. Fortunately enough, you can gain more lives (or credits as they’re called here) by shooting down enough enemies. As a consequence, you’re actively encouraged to be more aggressive. If you shoot down 70% of enemies, you’ll only get 1 extra life. Whereas shooting down 90% of the enemies will give you two extra lives. Of course, as mentioned above the more lock-on shots you use the harder it is to deal with incoming enemy fire. So Panzer Dragoon is a game that incentives aggressive play, while also kind of punishing it.

Another twist that Panzer Dragoon offers that other rail-shooters don’t, is that you can rotate your direction of view while moving. Most rail-shooters would only let you shoot targets in front of you. In Panzer Dragoon on the other hand you’ll be shooting to your left, right and even behind you. This mechanic is used to good effect when fighting larger enemies, who you overtake and who overtake you which makes the fights feel larger than they are. It’s also a way to add further challenge to the game. As while you do have a radar that shows all nearby enemies and where they are. You still need to prioritise targets lest you get repeatedly hit by enemy fire from a direction you’re not watching. These enemies themselves are also quite varied. There are a range of both larger and smaller enemies each of which have their own attack patterns. Some attacks can be negated by shooting them down, while others just have to be dodged. Considering how short the game is, the amount of enemy variety is actually pretty impressive. Plus each level obviously has it’s own unique boss. Some of these bosses even have multiple forms, but none of them felt unfair or overly difficult. Instead Panzer Dragoon is a game that manages to deftly handle it’s difficulty curve. So that the late game is a large step up over the early game, without ever being overwhelming.

And the stages themselves have a nice amount of variation, both in colour palette and theme. There are sandy dunes, Mediterranean-esque ruins, industrial bases and besieged cities to take in over the course of your mission. Each area looks great and manages to look distinct, without being so distracting that it makes spotting the various enemies difficult. As for the soundtrack, it’s pretty good and suitably high-energy for a game which while short is consistently entertaining for it’s full duration. Finally while there is a story (and the credits even mention three lore experts) it is pretty minimal. You get a surprisingly lengthy opening cutscene which could charitably be described as a bit mad. Then are thrust into the action with only very short cutscenes occasionally appearing between stages. The plot is unsurprisingly quite simple. You are given a dragon by a guy and you need to stop the bad dragon from entertaining some sort of doomsday device. Along the way various fauna, critters and soldiers of some sort of empire will try and stop you for some reason. Don’t worry though, because the main point of the review is that Panzer Dragoon looks good, sounds good and runs at a pretty stable frame-rate. At least in this remake edition.

And that’s about all I have to say about the Panzer Dragoon remake, because as mentioned it’s exceedingly short. To be fair, after playing it from start-to-finish in an hour, I did unlock the “secret menu” which allowed me to: browse an art gallery, watch the credits again and even play through any stage with cheats enabled. While these additional features are cool, they can’t mask the fact that this is a very short game and one without any co-op or multiplayer features. As a consequence while I do think it’s a great game, it’s one I can only earnestly recommend in two circumstances. Either you are a big fan of the original and/or rail-shooters more generally. Or if it’s available at a low price during a sale. As mentioned, I paid £1 for my copy from GoG and I imagine a similar price will be available during the next big GoG sale. At that price anyone should buy it.

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Diablo 2 is one of the most popular and influential PC games of all time, and over the years has garnered a massive fanbase across the globe. As not only one of Blizzard’s most popular games during it’s golden age, but also as a frequent addition to the myriad “greatest PC games of all time” lists I’d also felt like I was really missing out by not playing it. Now for a quick bit of context, I only really started caring about the PC during the 6th console generation and while I did plenty of older games I tended to stick with RTS games and some shooters. As such while I did buy Diablo 2 around 2005ish, I never really got into it and dropped it at the end of Act 1 in favour of playing more Red Alert 2 / World of Warcraft / Simcity 3000. Now that close to two decades have passed, I’ve finally gone back and played through the entirety of Diablo 2 after having played a couple of other ARPGs such as Torchlight 1 & 2, Titan Quest, W40K Inquisitor and even Diablo 3.

And boy oh boy do I not get it at all! That’s not to say it’s a bad game, but honestly the whole experience could be described as a graphically impressive treadmill. Maybe it’s due to the fact that I picked the Necromancer class and focused on my summon abilities, due to the fact that I thought it was pretty cool having a bunch of disposable goons in front of me. Maybe it’s the fact that I played a bunch of other successor games first, and so the novelty of Diablo 2 wasn’t there. Or maybe it’s just a case that I don’t see who this genre is for or why people bother with them. To give some context, once I hit around level 10 or so every fight played out exactly the same. My skeletons and golem would rush in, my mercenary rogue and skeleton mages would hang back, and I wander around occasionally resurrecting my minions or engaging in combat myself to expedite everything. This was every encounter for around 15 hours once I’d got my cool spells (prior to this I didn’t have a golem sadly). Now I can only assume people will point out “Hey LOSER, you can just play another class or build!!!” but that seems to be a solution that sounds great on paper but doesn’t actually achieve anything. I can say this with confidence because I initially played this game all those years ago as a… Paladin and it was really boring. Then while playing my Necromancer I switched between melee and ranged builds, then dabbled with the other spells and really the whole felt identical. I was wandering around like a big spooky simpleton, getting rushed by the same mobs and clicking on them ASAP before they made my health bar go down. Sure I could emulate President Trump and build a BIG BEAUTIFUL (bone) WALL to keep them at bay, or I could use an Iron Golem instead of a Flesh Golem but it really didn’t change the overall dynamics of the game at all. You’re just some feckless murder-hobo being pushed from big open plain to small dungeon to big open plain for about 20ish hours.

Fortunately the developers at Blizzard came up with an ingenious system by which losers gamers would be kept endlessly amused by this entertainment juggernaut. That solution? You can pick up items, that give you some bonuses to some stats that make you better at clicking on things! I guess the name for their MMO originated from players yelling “WOW!!!” at the prospect of fighting the same enemies in the same places over and over and over and over so they could have another Crossbow but this time with BIGGER NUMBERS. You probably think I’m probably being facetious (and I am) but honestly the max level is 100 and you can beat the game before you’re level 30. So why the hell would you spend the incredibly large amount of time grinding up that main number so that you can then grind for the other items that contribute to the little numbers? This is what I mean when I start my review with “I don’t get it”. It’s not that the combat is bad, as it’s fine and honestly the enemy variety is pretty decent for an RPG. There are cases where enemies are reskins, but it’s not a big issue and most enemies fit into a clear archetype that when combined results in some fun target prioritisation. But unlike say… Serious Sam which does the same thing in a frantic FPS environment where you are dealing with dozens and sometimes hundreds at a time, Diablo 2 is only giving you at most a room full of guys to deal with (around 20). Otherwise you’d just get melted by everyone punching you at the same time. Instead of having progressively higher stakes and needing to learn movement mechanics like in a good FPS game, you instead get a big ass unnecessary grind for you to brag about on the online servers (and/or forums). It’s baffling to me that this is not only one of the exemplars of Blizzard’s existence, but that this grinding simulator is held up as the pinnacle that inspired an entire genre of successors. Who the hell wants to do the Act 2 boss fight 50 times in a row so that they can maybe get the Ultimate Halberd of King Knut (+30 life +30 energy +1cm penis size +2 Dexterity +15% chance to cast bear mace (Level 3) on hit) so that they can then have a powerful build for when they replay the same game but at a higher difficulty level? Why do these people exist???

Of course I’m not being entirely fair, as there are a few points in the game where the gameplay changes. Don’t worry, there’s not a mandatory stealth section or anything. Instead when you have to face Bosses, you’ll quickly realise that they have a shitload generously large amount of health and deal a fucking retarded significant amount of damage. This changes the game a lot, because you lose a lot of gold (It’s your current level as a percentage of the gold you had) when you die and indeed when you die you need to find your corpse (to loot so that you can regain your EPIC gear), which in this case will be right next to the boss that just kicked your ass. Act 1 doesn’t really have a boss, but the final quests in Acts 2, 3 and 4 involve dealing with a very large demon that makes every other enemy in the game look like a pussy. In fact most of these bosses could shred through my big health golem very, very quickly and my other summons (and mercenary) even quicker! This obviously presented an issue, as even with my more powerful spells and abilities I was in trouble. Fortunately I devised an expert strategy that almost never failed, which was to bring a lot of potions… and use the shared section of my stash so I didn’t lose any gold when I died… and just teleport away when near death to regain health for free. So in a sense, they were kinda broken in terms of balancing and I was super broken. I did feel kinda bad, because it seemed like the heroic thing to do would be to rush in like a crusader of yore and batter them into submission, but even my fancy golden crossbow did bugger all damage to them and missed like a third of it’s shots. So each boss fight became a battle of attrition between my character and how many mana potions I could fit on my belt to keep spawning golems so that I could shoot more crossbow bolts that basically just tickled the bosses. I also tried melee and died really quickly. Plus I did try using spells, which did more damage (yay!) but meant that I burned through way more mana and so it was much harder to keep golem meat-shields around. I’m sure there’s some build that makes the bosses a cakewalk, but after double checking how to deal with the Act 2 boss without being a little cheating bitch I found out that my build was actually considered one of the best ones. Go figure.

On the subject of mercenaries, these are NPCs you can recruit that function as companions and followers. Unlike in many fully fledged RPG’s they have no dialogue (well, they say thanks you give them items) and don’t impact the plot at all, but they’re still useful to have. In my case I kept my starting rogue, as these mercenaries level up and have a variety of abilities they use automatically. They can also equip a weapon, a helmet and armour that you give them but not the other item slots such as rings, boots, gloves. On the flip side they don’t need ammo which is great, but when they die you need to pay to resurrect them. Which would be fine, if they weren’t suicidal when dealing with bosses. You see the companion AI is about the same as the minion AI which is the same as the enemy’s AI which is on the level of charging the nearest hostile and being dumbfounded by chasms. Due to this, I’d say keeping my emo rogue alive constituted almost the entirety of my gold expenditure throughout the game as death was free, shop items sucked and so many potions and teleport scrolls were dropped by the baddies that I never had to buy them. Even this source of expenditure was fairly low, except for the final boss when my occasional death to Diablo’s basically one-hit kill death-beam would cause them to kill themselves in solidarity. So even after abusing the stash gold loophole, I still had to pay some money to bring them back. Which would’ve been fine, if they had been able to avoid Diablo’s attacks, which they couldn’t, so they often died really, really quickly.

But all my negativity aside there are some aspects of Diablo 2 which are actually pretty impressive. First of all having the entire game be playable with friends (or randoms) is cool. No doubt about it, if you couldn’t afford an MMO then this was an interesting way to interact with people and I can say that even when I last played the game close to a decade after release it was still popular. Plus as mentioned there is plenty of enemy variety, you’ve got multiple classes with different builds and the challenge of grinding out the harder difficulties. Why you’d bother is a question I can’t answer, but if you enjoyed the game for whatever reason then hey you can play it with other weirdos online and there’s a ton of (repetitive) content to explore! Perhaps more noteworthy for me as someone who wasted around 20 hours of their fleeting, worthless existence on this game due to the peer pressure of strangers, I will admit that the art style is pretty good. There’s plenty of variety between the zones of each Act, with the general look and feel of each area being handled well. It’s a good looking game and the remaster does a solid job of bringing it up to modern standards, without losing any of the appeal. Even the font and UI have been chosen with care and the whole game successfully captures the feel of a Gothic low-fantasy world. The music is also a good accompaniment to the game, although I have to confess that it loops like a motherfucker because there aren’t really many tracks here. The ones that are there are good, but I’d personally say they kinda peak in Act 1. Last but certainly not least, the cinematics show that Blizzard really know what they’re doing in this department and as ever they’re great. Not only they are visually impressive, but they’re a good way of providing context to the events in the game’s world and are a good way of breaking up each Act. In fact I’d say they provide a better reward than the loot on offer, but I’m probably just biased because my class couldn’t use half the late(r) game equipment due to not having enough Strength.

In conclusion then Diablo 2 is a game I really don’t understand. It’s a perfectly serviceable ARPG for those who are desperately seeking more carpal tunnel syndrome in their lives, but for the typical player I don’t see the appeal. It’s a game that looks great and has a striking art-style, with well made accompanying music and plenty of content for you to grind through if that’s your bag. For those seeking a good story, that’s not here. For those seeking a varied and engaging combat experience, I don’t think that’s here either. Instead it’s an RPG for that subjection of RPG gamers who only wants to make the numbers go up. The plot is minimal, there are no choices, there isn’t even much of an ending, but there are numbers. By the light, are there numbers. So for those who love grinding, or are seeking a co-op game at short notice then by all means give Diablo 2 a go. But for me, it’s just the cause of one big inescapable question – Who are these games for???

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