idk, man, it's Diablo 2, what do you want from me. one of the greatest to ever do it. hang Diablo 2's jersey from the rafters. frame it and put it in the louvre. let it retire to a peaceful life in the countryside.

A few years ago I reinstalled Diablo 2 from my battlechest disks and tried playing it and, man, all the quality of life type stuff that all the other ARPGs of the last twenty years is really nice and having zero of that in Diablo 2 was kinda rough because I am a big baby. But also it turns out Act 1 on Normal also just kinda sucks (at least for the classes I tend to play). You level up pretty slowly and it takes so long to really get going. So back in the day that made me put the game down pretty quickly. But not this time! I persevered and also they added just enough nice little QoL things that I truly do not mind the ways in which the game didn't get "updated".

I played all the way through on the updated graphics and they are, largely, fine but they really make me glad there's a quick toggle to swap back to the old graphics because it's so easy to see how artistically inferior the new shit is. Yeah, sure, it's all 3d rendered and got nicer lighting and particle effects and whatever but the vibe is wildly different. The darkness isn't as consuming and oppressive. There is so much more gray and brown. If you are interested in Diablo 2 as a Game To Click On Things then it doesn't really matter much but if you care about Diablo 2 as Art then it extremely matters!!

It's kinda wild to me that they've made balance changes and even added new items and runewords and shit! Somewhere there are people hiding in a basement hoping that the bean counters don't find out about them and ask "wait, you're spending how much time on this? for a game with no battlepass? or microtransactions? from how many years ago?" and I love that for them. It's cool to see it get items with some new mechanics and also they fixed Summoner Druid to be Actually Viable and I appreciate that a lot because I love all my killer puppies and big bear friend and weird forest spirit tentacle creature.

Act 2 was always my favorite act as a stupid teenager. But oh my god duuuude the fucking Maggot Lair!! All-timer for Worst Dungeon. Gotta be one of the worst. Trying to just move around is bad enough but then having to fight shit, too?? And good fuckin' luck if you're a dope like me who likes to play summoning classes. The rest of it is pretty alright. Just gotta watch out for those stupid lightning beetles, y'know.

Diablo 2 Nightmare Difficulty is still the sweetest sweet spot. You've got solid gear and you've got quite a few skills leveled up. You can actually kill shit and not immediately fucking die. It feels so good to play. It's the best part of the game. And then you get to Hell Difficulty. And it is so aptly named. You really gotta do a lot of extra farming for more levels and more loot and it's so miserable. I am simply past my "spending all day farming stuff" days. I got better shit to do. Apologies to socketed items and runewords and high-tier set items, I am simply in a different part of my life now.

Act 3 isn't good and it was never good. Annoying-ass maps with annoying-ass enemies, fuck Durance of Hate, fuck Mephisto, fuck Act 3, all my homies hate Act 3.

Playing this with someone who played the game once many years ago (long enough that this was essentially a fresh experience) was an absolute treat because so much of this game is deeply burned into my brain. Hearing reactions to story beats that I basically didn't remember because I was a hardcore ladder girly who didn't care about the story was fun. The first time we hit some beetles in Act 2 and got wrecked by lightning, they made some noises that were somewhere between a shriek and squeal and it was a delight. I highly recommend this extremely specific experience of playing the game.

The end of Act 4 is so fucking funny, dude. Like, imagine getting Diablo 2 before the expansion and the game just fucking ends there. Modern games could never. Extremely funny.

There's a new thing with "Terrorized" zones and I have no idea what's going on there? Like, the affected area has all the enemies made to be your level +2, so you can use areas you wouldn't normally be revisiting to get level-appropriate XP and loot but I don't fully understand if that's better than just your classic Baal runs or whatever-the-fuck.

Act 5 sure is Some Shit, huh. This time around I really noticed the small changes in things here. How, even back in 2001 or whatever, they were iterating and pushing on what was possible in the game.

I still haven't ever gotten to level 99. Or fought an Uber Diablo. Or gotten and Annihilus or Hellfire Torch. And I probably never will. And that's okay! But if I ever somehow get that desire, then this is a very solid version of the game to do it in!

In an industry that is so obsessed with franchises and selling you the same shit over and over and loves to do "remakes" that fundamentally change important aspects of games, this is one of the absolute least egregious examples of modern remake-thinking.

There's nothing particularly original delivered by Dead Space's synthesis of Event Horizon, Alien, Half-Life, System Shock, Resident Evil, and the many recurrent elements that make up the genre of deep space horror — but when a piece of genre work is executed this well, there doesn't need to be.

What Dead Space does deliver is a dense, eerie, exhilarating, and often frightening piece of sci-fi horror that, even as it riffs off the genre's mainstays, manages to avoid falling within their shadows. This is genre work at its finest: a set of familiar pieces polished to a mirror shine and placed in perfect configuration. As a longtime fan of this particular subgenre of horror, it's one of the best games I've played in a long time.