Diablo

Published by Vivendi UIP
Designed by Blizzard Entertainment
Platform: PC CD/ROM
Price £9.99 Released: Out Now

System requirements
Windows 95/98/98SE/ME
Pentium 60 or better
8MB of RAM

RPG games at one time looked as if they were dead and buried. They would have been if it weren't for 2 classic titles. These titles were Baldur's Gate and Diablo. Diablo with its fast paced action and fantastic replayability has become hugely popular (Diablo 2 has sold an unbelievable amount too). You can choose to play as a sword wielding Warrior, an arrow firing Rogue or a spell casting Sorcerer. The major feature of Diablo is that it contains a lot of random levels and events and when coupled with the ability to play 3 different styles in the form of the 3 different characters you can see that it's going to take many months before you've exhausted every possibility.

The main focus of the story is to rid the Church of the evil Diablo. To do this you have to fight your way through all of the 16 (random, they are different every game) ever increasing levels which contain all manner of enemies. All the usual statistics are here as well as the ability to level up and you can even return to the town (outside the church) to purchase new, stronger armour and weapons with the gold that you win in the church.

The gameplay is compelling and if you ever get bored of the single player game you can go online and play on Battle.net and unite with other players to defeat Diablo. The interface is excellent and the text feedback is superb. Although the graphics may look a little dated now they still are adequate and do nothing to hide the fact that Diablo is top notch game which at £9.99 is an absolute bargain.

Recommendation: Highly Recommended. A 'Hell' of a game
Suitability for deaf gamers: Perfect, text feedback is superb.