For all video games have advanced technically, narratively, and by a host of other adverbs, for most people they peaked when we were kids. Though objectively we might look at the achievements of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us Part 2, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Elden Ring, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Tears of the Kingdom and recognise them as peerless, subjectively they will never replace the games we loved as children. I was 17 when my favourite game came out, and just seven when my second favourite released. Somehow though, Diablo 4 has recaptured this magic for me.
I have never played Diablo previously, so I’m not dining out on diet nostalgia here. I’m also, in a move that may shock die-hard Diablovians, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:playing it for the story. I don’t think I’ll stick around for the grind for the months and years that some of you will. Instead my Sorceress Tabitha and I will stop Lilith then I will move to another game and let my memories of Diablo 4 fade as the rest of you 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:grind all five classes up to 100. There’s just something charming aℱbout it that is rekind𒁏ling memories.
These days, I find myself playing games ‘for the story’, or ‘for the mechanics’, or you know, ‘for work’. When I was a kid there was none of that. You just played to play. There didn’t need to be a purpose, there didn’t need to be a hook. There were no expectations. Some games were good and some were ba🗹d, but I could go into them with my eyes open instead of considering their cost and value, or weighing up my work schedule against the release horizon. I could just play. Diablo 4 makes me feel like I’m just playing again.
It’s not that it’s ‘mindless’. That would be too lazy a critique. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:In his review, our own Eric Switzer noted that the 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:combat is more involved than in 3, no longer mowing down foes with ease but making considerations for crowd control and defensive balance. But it♐ is comforting to be able to move around the map killing demons and skeletons with impunity while chipping away at micro stories as I go. Diablo is relaxing in ways that still keep your mind occupied without the self-indulgent nature of modern triple-As. I’m looking forward to getting off work today, sitting down with a coldಌ drink, and just playing it for a while.
Video games have changed the way they reward players. I have a lot of respect for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us, but it’s never really ‘enjoyable’. Meanwhile games that still strive to be fun machines in a post-TLOU world have become serotonin spoon feeding systems, with bloated and repetitive open worlds designed algorithmically to keep you playing out of little more th⭕an obligation or habit. The rise of live-service has changed things too, with no ending in sight, only numbers that go up and up and up, despe🃏rate virtual fingers unspooling from fists and grasping at nothing.
Diablo 4 is an online game, and the Race to 100 is also built around this idea of chasing a meaningless goal, but at least there is an endpoint. Granted, grinders do not end their journey there, but it’s still a different format to the ‘play forever and we’ll add a skin to the battle pass’ approach of Fortnite. It’s also more optional - I can just play ‘for the story’, which other endlessly online games꧂ rarely support.
There’s obviously some sense of serotonin injection with Diablo, in moving t♚hrough short side quests, clearing dungeons or cellars, participating in world events, et cetera, but it feels more natural. I’m not naive - algorithms are in play here as much as they are in Assassin’s Creed - but there’s something in Diablo’s execution that makes these quests feel less laborious. They’re not chores, and I can’t stop whenever I want to, which only makes me want to play a little bit more.
I’m not sure if this feeling will last until the end, or if the online components and the grind will get in the way, but for now I’m just going to enjoy it. I still need to finish Dredge and Cassette Beasts. I’m probably never going back to Zelda. I’ve barely started 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Street Fighter 6. I’ve been meaning to try Coffee Talk 2. I’ll be getting 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 16. There are a lot of video games, and I can’t just drift through them like when I꧟ was a kid. But until then, Diablo 4 rem🍌inds me of what life was like when I was.