Just picked up Diablo II at Meijer's

[Dumac]

Originally posted by: Martimus
I was saying that even at the time it wasn't anything special. Maybe I expected too much, but it seems like a rehash of the first game. More like an expansion than a sequel. I did finish it a couple of times, so I eventually got into it; but I remember thinking, "what is so special about this" when I first started playing it. I only finished it later when I didn't have any other games to play.

Uh...it's a sequel? How much did you expect it to change?

D2 added so many gameplay elements to that gameplay type (skills, classes, items, story-telling methods, etc), but the basics weren't going to change. What series changed dramatically from one game to it's direct sequel?

Lets look at other famous series...

TW Series...all very similar

Does SC2 look much different than SC1? Nope

COD series...very similar though the fourth made some (arguably) large changes

Oblivion is like Morrowind, with a few changes, both good and bad.

Sequels are similar to their predecessors. I don't really get your comment.

D2 just took an already fun game, Diablo, and just ramped up the fun and addictiveness with more options and more serious venues of gameplay.

 

[Martimus]

Originally posted by: Dumac

Originally posted by: Martimus
I was saying that even at the time it wasn't anything special. Maybe I expected too much, but it seems like a rehash of the first game. More like an expansion than a sequel. I did finish it a couple of times, so I eventually got into it; but I remember thinking, "what is so special about this" when I first started playing it. I only finished it later when I didn't have any other games to play.

Uh...it's a sequel? How much did you expect it to change?

D2 added so many gameplay elements to that gameplay type (skills, classes, items, story-telling methods, etc), but the basics weren't going to change. What series changed dramatically from one game to it's direct sequel?

Lets look at other famous series...

TW Series...all very similar

Does SC2 look much different than SC1? Nope

COD series...very similar though the fourth made some (arguably) large changes

Oblivion is like Morrowind, with a few changes, both good and bad.

Sequels are similar to their predecessors. I don't really get your comment.

D2 just took an already fun game, Diablo, and just ramped up the fun and addictiveness with more options and more serious venues of gameplay.

To be honest, I have never played any of those games except Starcraft and Oblivion. I played a lot of games in the 90's, but not so much since then. The difference between Diablo 2 and Diablo reminded me of the difference between Doom and Doom 2. I was hoping for more story background, like what happened to the character from the first game (I am assuming he turned into Diablo, but that isn't really addressed in the second game.) I was hoping for better graphics and sound effects in the sequel, but it looks almost identical to the original. I honestly don't remember what I didn't like about the game because it was so long ago, but I do remember being disappointed that it wasn't better than the original.

 

[gorbs]

another vote for TitanQuest and The Immortal Throne expansion.

 

[ShawnD1]

I seem to remember Diablo 2 running like shit even when using a system from that era. The problem was that it used data from the CD to play; it wasn't just a copyright check. Whenever something big happens like killing the act boss, the game would completely freeze for about 5 seconds while the drive spins up.
That game also had a horrible lag problem when using Direct3D. The frame rate would say it's over 60, which should be ok, but my character walks at an irregular speed; slow-fast-slow-fast-slow-fast. DirectDraw would get the same frame rate, but it looked a hell of a lot smoother.
Another problem with Diablo 2 was that it would never skip frames. If your computer did the freeze after killing a boss, the game would still draw all of what happened in the past 5 seconds, but condense it down to maybe 1 second by drawing everything really really fast. It's nice that it doesn't lose any information, but it looked pretty retarded.

It is a pretty horrible game by today's standard, but back then it was badass. I also thought it was unreasonably big at the time since the install was about 1000mb.

 

[Paladin]

I picked it up last summer for my 9 year old, thought he'd enjoy it. he couldn't get past the 'bad graphics', as he put it. LOL. I then proceded to fire up some of my Atari 2600 roms to show him how us 'old schoolers' used to play. His jaw dropped, and got all bug eyed. :Q
Adventure FTW

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: KevinC
I picked it up last summer for my 9 year old, thought he'd enjoy it. he couldn't get past the 'bad graphics', as he put it. LOL. I then proceded to fire up some of my Atari 2600 roms to show him how us 'old schoolers' used to play. His jaw dropped, and got all bug eyed. :Q
Adventure FTW

He's right ya know. Atari is such a piece of shit that I'm amazed it even sold. Now, I'm thinking about whether or not I should get Hitman 2 on Steam for $20, but people in the 1980s would pay $50 for Pong. If you include inflation, it's more like $100 for Pong.
Nintendo and Sega Master System were just as bad for this. Very few games (Zelda and other rpgs) were actually worth $50. The rest of the games were more like back to the future - bad controls, no story, impossible, bad music, bad graphics.

 

[Fenixgoon]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
I seem to remember Diablo 2 running like shit even when using a system from that era. The problem was that it used data from the CD to play; it wasn't just a copyright check. Whenever something big happens like killing the act boss, the game would completely freeze for about 5 seconds while the drive spins up.
That game also had a horrible lag problem when using Direct3D. The frame rate would say it's over 60, which should be ok, but my character walks at an irregular speed; slow-fast-slow-fast-slow-fast. DirectDraw would get the same frame rate, but it looked a hell of a lot smoother.
Another problem with Diablo 2 was that it would never skip frames. If your computer did the freeze after killing a boss, the game would still draw all of what happened in the past 5 seconds, but condense it down to maybe 1 second by drawing everything really really fast. It's nice that it doesn't lose any information, but it looked pretty retarded.

It is a pretty horrible game by today's standard, but back then it was badass. I also thought it was unreasonably big at the time since the install was about 1000mb.

if you were too much of a cheapass and only did a "CD install" instead of a "full install" then yes, gameplay would be degraded.

if you played in glide (voodoo FTW) diablo2 never lags. EVER

 

[Dumac]

Originally posted by: Fenixgoon

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
I seem to remember Diablo 2 running like shit even when using a system from that era. The problem was that it used data from the CD to play; it wasn't just a copyright check. Whenever something big happens like killing the act boss, the game would completely freeze for about 5 seconds while the drive spins up.
That game also had a horrible lag problem when using Direct3D. The frame rate would say it's over 60, which should be ok, but my character walks at an irregular speed; slow-fast-slow-fast-slow-fast. DirectDraw would get the same frame rate, but it looked a hell of a lot smoother.
Another problem with Diablo 2 was that it would never skip frames. If your computer did the freeze after killing a boss, the game would still draw all of what happened in the past 5 seconds, but condense it down to maybe 1 second by drawing everything really really fast. It's nice that it doesn't lose any information, but it looked pretty retarded.

It is a pretty horrible game by today's standard, but back then it was badass. I also thought it was unreasonably big at the time since the install was about 1000mb.

if you were too much of a cheapass and only did a "CD install" instead of a "full install" then yes, gameplay would be degraded.

if you played in glide (voodoo FTW) diablo2 never lags. EVER

QFT

 

[ShawnD1]

I did do a full install. It still reads from the CD.

 

[gamepad]

It's too late to enjoy Diablo II. It was fun in 2000 when millions of people played on Battle.Net and nobody had cheats; It was basically a MMORPG.