On PC, it controls exactly like its predecessors, though your cursor can get lost and click on the wrong thing in the on-screen mayhem. On your smartphone, you can drag and drop icons to aim one of your four abilities, or you can connect a controller. The controls on both PC and mobile work beautifully.

And in the beginning, I had an absolute blast.

With all of this overburdened baggage, I still tried to go into Diablo Immortal without preconceived notions. (One dismayed player asked the devs if the announcement was “an out-of-season April Fool’s joke.”) For a while, it was unclear if Blizzard would ever let the game out of the crypt. Diablo Immortal was first revealed at Blizzcon 2018 to a chorus of boos from mobile-wary fans. Even after hundreds of hours, demolishing endless mobs still somehow feels fresh and rewarding. As you grow stronger, you fight more powerful enemies and get better loot.ĭiablo 3 came out in 2012 and remains one of the best-selling games of all time, with more than 30 million units sold for PC alone. Starting out as a weakling, you travel through dungeons and slay monsters to get items and experience. Activision BlizzardĮver since the first Diablo debuted in 1997, the franchise has followed the same formula. The titular Diablo barely shows up at all.

But Blizzard’s all-too-transparent goal of locking progression behind a paywall - and the absurd amount of cash you need to spend to stay relevant in the end-game - makes this one of the most disappointing games of the past decade. Diablo Immortal has all the ingredients for a blockbuster smash: stupendous graphics, an immersive yet familiar story, and stellar in-game mechanics. Released on mobile and currently in beta on PC, Blizzard’s freemium title brings the devil back to life. But the constant pop-ups asking me to visit the store to spend real money quickly dissolved that bond.

The gameplay kept me glued to my phone, constantly hunting for that next power spike or level up. Wolves in the Dark Wood, golems in the Library of Zoltan Kule, and bandits in the Shassar Sea - they all fell to my double crossbows. Once the tutorial was over, I continued to demolish anything with a health bar. When I first started up the tutorial, it dropped me into a nightmarish swamp where I slayed hordes of shambling enemies, collecting mounds of experience and loot. Diablo Immortal is a great game locked under a mountain of microtransactions.

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