Video Game Hall of Fame: Diablo II

Blizzard is one of the most impressive video game companies in the business. They've established three huge franchises in WarCraft, StarCraft, and Diablo, and every game they've released in each of those franchises has been a rousing success. While it's likely that a number of Blizzard titles will eventually be members of this personal Hall of Fame, the first inductee will be Diablo II, as well as the Lord of Destruction expansion pack.

The game was a tremendous upgrade over the original Diablo (not to knock that game, either), offering improvements on every level. On top of improved interfaces, vastly expanded skills, greatly individualized character classes, and sharper graphics, Diablo II offered a lot of features that created a much richer and more rewarding online gaming experience, without the hassle and psychological burden of a monthly fee.

While individual games are limited to 8 players, players of many of the larger massively multiplayer games will acknowledge that you only rarely find yourself interacting with more than four other players in those games. The game doesn't boast an exceptional trading system, instead relying on game names and discussion in the Blizzard-supported chat channels to facilitate player-to-player exchanges. Despite its weaknesses, the rewards of trading with other players can be profound, as Diablo II introduced the concept of "set items:" various weapons and pieces of armor that, when equipped at the same time, offered one or more bonus boosts to your character. I've found many of these complete sets to be useful well beyond the required character levels.

But I do have sort of a love/hate relationship with Diablo II. Recently, I've encountered periods of cripplingly high latency, resulting in game freezes and occasionally my character's demise. While the death penalty isn't terrible, it does cost a great deal of money when you die, and the run to my corpse to retrieve my items is frustrating. I've ended my evening of play on more than one occasion due to excessive lag.

Still, the single player or direct IP connection games that you can set up with friends offer the opportunity to play the game without the risk of slow network operation ruining the experience. And the game itself is extremely fun, offering seven different classes of characters with very unique skills to give you very different playing experiences between them. They also do a good job of appealing to a number of different playing styles, from the bruising barbarian to the frail but powerful sorceress.

Diablo II seems to resurface on a regular basis in my gaming life cycle, and I have no doubt that it will continue to do so until the next sequel to the series comes out. It's certainly nowhere near as broad as the big MMORPGs of today (especially World of WarCraft), but it's got plenty of depth to keep players coming back for more. And of course, it's got a ton of different loot to go after. After all, both the original Diablo and its sequel have been, at their core, treasure hunting games. And they were both among the best games of their time.

Welcome to the club, Diablo II.

Diablo Battle Chest