NPCs so far are fairly flat and boring. There's this one technician who hits on you with equal fervour regardless of which gender your character is. The few subquests range from decent (finding Wart's leg – haw haw) to expectedly stupid (kill this many monsters) – the quests in Titan Quest felt way more real, even if a lot of them followed the same format. Anyway, I wasn't expecting too much in this regard, so I'm not overly disappointed.

Gameplay, then. The Blademaster was always going to be the class of choice for me. I started using a grapple gun-sword combo – shoot a gimp, reel him in and then start lopping. Quickly did the grind till the level 5 cap, so I could unlock the dual blade wielding ability and really go to town on them. It's all fairly slick, but there are still niggles. One of the smaller ones is that after he does his slash, he holds the pose for a moment. The first few times it looks cool, but with repeat views, it starts coming off like something Don Quixote would do. Also, the character's gaze shifts to wherever the mouse pointer is. In theory, that sounds cool, but what happens is when you spin the view around all the way, it looks a bit like he's sniffing his own ass. Which negates all the style points he earned wearing that fancy gear. This could be either humiliating or hilarious in LAN sessions, depending on whether you're the one who likes spinning the view around the most. And he generally has this ungainly sideways loping run that lacks heft, causing the sprint action to look even more absurd.

The Marksman wasn't as bad as I thought, but that doesn't mean it's good. I can see these guys being the lame ducks of the party, holding back and firing (quite a few skills require that the player be stationary) while the melee guys wade in, hacking away and the magic users throw an array of impressive looking spells into the fray (all the more impressive if they have summoning skills). These guys just have guns. Even my uncle has guns. Granted, these are a little bigger and have somewhat more punch than his but still, marksmen are probably going to be the geeky kids that tag along with the cool group. Still, it's a decent try to bring something different into the whole Diablo experience.

The really annoying part is I'll probably still play this once through to the finish, because it's great fun picking up loot, equipping it and seeing your character brandish it in full 3d. Yeah, Oblivion's already done a way better job of it, and so has Fable for that matter, but the Diablo simplicity has a charm of its own. Plus, there are upsides, as dire as I've made the situation sound. The gear and weapons all look mighty cool, while suffering from the 'same damn thing with longer name' syndrome. And they've got this nifty colour matching thing where all new gear you pick up matches the colour scheme of your existing outfit, so you don't end up looking like a pinata – I approve heartily. The character creation is also pretty nice and straightforward, though nowhere near as detailed as stuff in Oblivion, The Godfather or The Sims 2. It also brings up the question of why you'd want to customise your face and then wear a full-face helmet like those from the promos so that you can't even see it. Hmpf.

Anyway, how long I'll play it after depends on how much fun LAN sessions are. More reports to come once the full version arrives.

Developer: Flagship Studios

Publisher: EA and some other buggers

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