Hey Everyone,
Well, Diablo 3 has officially launched. I’ve put an unboxing video up on youtube. Man, I had so many problems getting that thing encoded. I love Vegas Movie Studio, but sometimes (all too often imo) the compressed encode options are so full of fail. The encoding crashed three different times, then I decided to just encode it in AVI fully uncompressed and then run it through handbrake. That works like a charm, but it definitely adds time and steps to the workflow. Although, how much time did I waste with the three failed attempts?…
I gotta say, Wyse – Pocket Cloud deserves a big shout out for this one. I couldn’t have gotten the video uploaded today without it.
With all the up and down of the battle.net servers, bashing my head against the super meat boy of video encodes, and just life in general, I have only gotten to put a little bit of time into Diablo 3. Even though my time was limited, I was ecstatic to see new and updated abilities on some of the bosses and elites. That combined with a slight increase in HP has made these fights much more engaging. Really excellent!
The cinematic’s, as usual, are amazing, but I did not expect the more hand drawn style animations that communicate some major pieces of story. These are beautiful and remind me of how satisfying this style of animation is to watch. It reminds me of Berserk.
Honestly, I am kind of blown away by Blizzards ability to surprise even though this is the third iteration in the series. This type of touch makes it feel like something wholly new and not just a sequel. Although, don’t get me wrong, this game feels more like Diablo than Diablo did! Tight controls, tons of combos, action RPG mastered.
I’ll have more opinions and analysis of Diablo 3 as I get into it more, but let me just briefly talk about the CE.
The CE is $99 US. I’m not sure if there are many left in the stores, but big electronics stores would be a good bet, something like Fry’s Electronics always seems to have at least a few extra collectors editions on Blizzard games. I was really blown away by the entire package. The two other CE’s I’ve purchased were definitely awesome and totally worth the price of admission, but this one really set a new bar. Maybe it is my bias towards the Diablo universe, but right down to the box itself, the entire package is very display oriented. The white and beige tones stand out as very unique while helping to make the box lettering that much more pronounced.
The USB drive is beyond cool. Magnetized, well detailed, iconic Diablo imagery, fantastic! I mean Raynor’s dog tags are cool, but as a display piece they don’t really stand out, this is something I can put next to my mini Tyrael.
Art book as usual is fantastic, so gorgeous I hardly want to touch it. I can’t wait to get into the Blu-ray and watch some of the interviews, always so much great stuff in there. It sounds goofy, but as awesome as the entire package was, the thing that just blew me away was the game manual in the game disc package. I assume everyone got this manual, but what a tip of the hat to the PC die-hards.
In an age where manuals are increasing going online, living in forums, wiki’s, or PDF files, Blizzard put together a gorgeous little booklet that not only stands alone, but reminds me of how nuanced the bad-assery over at Blizzard Entertainment really is.
Well, I’m clearly a bit of a fan-boi, but from where I’m sitting, it’s hard not to be.
Have a good one and…
Stay Safe Out There,
~Aten