So a few of my friends visited this weekend, and they brought with them a PS3 with Diablo III on it. We completed the main quest and the expansion act in the space of four days.
This was partly because they skipped ALL the exposition at the start despite my protestations, so by the time they actually listened to me I already had no fucking clue what was going on - although honestly I got the sense story was not this game's strong point anyway.
The other day I thought of (or remembered. No idea if I stole this from somewhere) the pun 'The Magnificent Steven.' I wanted to call my character that, but I also felt like being an internet douchebag so I tried to call my character MagnificentSteven69420nWo4lifeDXOFWGKTA.
Then I found it had a 12 character limit, so even 'MagnificentSteven' was too long (WHY WOULD IT LET ME ENTER MORE IF THERE WAS A LIMIT stupid game) so I ended up being mGnFcNtStVn. And once I had enough money, I bought 420 health potions, and refused to use any of them. If I picked up another one, I dropped it for my buddies. I am that obtuse. If I ever get to level 69 (of 70 available) I guess I have to start a new character!
It was quite fun, eventually. I enjoyed it, but largely because of the bonding experience with my friends.
This is the kind of game I would never play on my own, I just enjoyed it for playing through with my friends, supporting each other, screwing each other over, just having a laugh and actually playing a game with people in the SAME ROOM for once, so that was nice.
There was zero difficulty curve, even though we kept cranking it up every time the difficulty could be increased. We only actually all died on one occasion, and that was on the final boss on the expansion act, who after a shitload of easy minions was rock fucking hard and kept killing all of us. I even had to use health potions and ended up with 407 after we beat him, which we did on only our second try, because what the fuck this game is easy. It's also one of the only parts I actually enjoyed for the game rather than for playing it with my friends, because it was hard. One other early boss wasn't hard, but at least took concentration - The Butcher. I can't remember my tactic, but the environmental obstacles and the way he telegraphed his attacks meant that it was tough to beat him, but not impossible. That was some great game design - it just lacked that at basically all other times.
I do not care for this kind of game. It amounted to, basically, 'hammer X until you win.' While all games are essentially that, the games I like usually require more effort than that to achieve. It was bordering on being a Quicktime event game.
Once I could customise my appearance, I went all pink (as I do on any game where I can customise things) but once we beat the final chapter, I dyed all my different clothing items different colours so that now I look AWFUL.
Overall, I had a blast, and it's cool that we managed to finish it. It showed me one of the things that video games originally were about for me, which is bonding with the people I care about most.