Now this has got me stiffening down below. Diablo 3 is coming and I'm going to be there, standing proud, to meet it.
As you may know if you've read my Titan Quest review, I'm a large Diablo fan. So Blizzard's recent spate of trailers has got me rather excited at the prospect of mashing up monsters for goodies. Although the game is still a long way off - I've even heard rumours of a 2010 release - it's looking remarkably solid and Diablo-like. And the World needs another Diablo, doesn't it kids? It seriously does, as Diablo made a genre for itself - the loot collecting RPG - and nobody has come close to matching it’s quality. Many have tried and have ended up soulless, so it's about time that the master came back and showed them all how it's done.

Details are still sketchy at present and Blizzard have only released a couple of gameplay trailers featuring old fave the Barbarian (complete with his beloved whirlwind attack), and new class; the Witchdoctor. It's already looking superb though. The amount of enemies you take on at once is HUGELY increased from Diablo 2, and makes me fear for my CPU - it appears that you may actually take on literally millions at once. OK, so that's pure hyperbole but I am really excited by this, so please forgive me. They also appear to have streamlined the interface. Not that it was long-winded to do anything before, but they seem focused on minimising the amount of mouse clicks it takes to destroy a houseful of minions and then hoover up their bonuses. Obviously the graphics and sound have been spruced up and look suitably polished for today's Futuretech_2000tm PC's. The multiplayer aspect is also looking worthy of saliva down chin. The game can be played solo or you can get a friend to join you, and Blizzard sound dead set on making this the meat of the game. You'll be able to jump in and out of the game at a whim and, as everyone knows, a killing shared is a killing multiplied in joy.

So, it's all sounding rather spiffy so far. To be honest with you, I never expected for one minute that Blizzard would let the good name Diablo sink without a trace, and I always thought they'd do a good job of the resurrection when it came - I mean, since when do Blizzard mess things up? That still doesn't mean that I'm not absolutely overjoyed at the thought of playing this again. The only reservation I can possibly have at the moment is that Blizzard seem a bit too focused on MP - some people are going to want to play this single player and I hope that they're not compromised in any way. Hell though, the only reason I mentioned that was to have some balance in this preview - Diablo 3 is coming, and I don't think I can hold on.