Heaven can wait I need longer in hell! PETER HOSKIN reviews DIABLO IV

Heaven can wait – I need ten more minutes in hell! PETER HOSKIN reviews DIABLO IV

Diablo IV (PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £69.99)

Verdict: Addictive as hell

Rating:

Pleeease can I have just ten more minutes battling the denizens of hell? I promise I’ll go to bed straight after!

Sorry, don’t know what came over me there. Or, rather, I do — because I’ve spent practically ever waking minute of the past few weeks playing Diablo IV, and it’s brought me right back to my teenage dependency on the original Diablo. 

If a more compulsive game is released this year, my marriage will be in trouble.

In many ways, this new Diablo is much like its predecessors. A moody demon lady in a plunging dress has risen to engulf the fantasy world of Sanctuary in… yadda yadda yadda. 

As the chosen hero of this realm, you still have to frantically click-click-click your mouse to battle waves of hoofed monsters.

In many ways, this new Diablo is much like its predecessors. A moody demon lady in a plunging dress has risen to engulf the fantasy world of Sanctuary in… yadda yadda yadda

As the chosen hero of this realm, you still have to frantically click-click-click your mouse to battle waves of hoofed monsters

If a more compulsive game is released this year, my marriage will be in trouble

But Diablo IV is also the perfection of the form. Sanctuary itself is beautiful, a series of colourful diorama-esque landscapes and dungeons. 

The options for personalising your character are thrillingly extensive. The story is great, schlocky fun. 

Even all that clicking seems somehow… fine tuned, as though it’s been designed to stimulate particular nerve endings.

There’s just one nagging question: is Diablo IV too perfect? Perhaps. 

It’s such easy, mindless enjoyment that it feels like gaming’s equivalent of empty calories; really, really good junk food, but still junk food.

The inclusion of both an extensive endgame — new challenges for when you’ve completed the main story — and a shop for spending real money on digital costumes only adds to this feeling. 

You’re trapped in here with these hell-beasts.

Or are they trapped in here with me? Either way, I’m not leaving. Just ten more minutes, pleeease.

But Diablo IV is also the perfection of the form. Sanctuary itself is beautiful, a series of colourful diorama-esque landscapes and dungeons

It’s such easy, mindless enjoyment that it feels like gaming’s equivalent of empty calories; really, really good junk food, but still junk food

You’re trapped in here with these hell-beasts. Or are they trapped in here with me? Either way, I’m not leaving. Just ten more minutes, pleeease

System Shock (PC, £34.99)

Verdict: Shockingly good

Rating:

Back in 1994, when the original System Shock was released, they speculated about a future in which unregulated artificial intelligences would gain more and more power until they decided to take on humanity itself. Computers run amok.

It couldn’t happen in real-life, could it? Nah. Not possible. We’re fine.

What has happened instead, in this year of 2023, is a remake of System Shock. 

We’re back aboard the Citadel space station, facing off against the rogue AI known as SHODAN and her — its? — assortment of traps and tragically mutated humans. 

Except, this time, the graphics are prettier and the gameplay more attuned to today’s sensibilities.

It’s those graphics that stand out initially. 

Here, thankfully, prettier doesn’t simply mean more photorealistic: the developers behind this remake, Nightdive Studios, have gone for a half-and-half mix of modern gloss and mid-1990s pixellation. It’s inventive, colourful — and very striking.

But it’s the gameplay that really draws you in. 

The changes made to the original’s mechanics — particularly when it comes to the combat, which was always a little clunky — are all improvements, but they’re not too extensive. 

Nightdive clearly understands that the core experience of 1994’s System Shock, creeping around a creepy space station and figuring out ways to progress, was already great enough. 

This game was influential on so many others, from Deus Ex to the BioShock series, for a reason.

In a way, it’s System Shock’s influence that limits this redo. It’s hard to play it without hankering for similar remakes of the other, even better games that came after the original — including one of the best of all time, 1999’s System Shock 2.

Happily, Nightdive is working on that one, too, so it’s just a matter of time. 

Unless, of course, the AIs get to us all before then.

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