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For a “point ‘n slash”, the Second Coming of the Lord of Terror is gargantuan. Gone are those blasé days of frequenting the same docile town. At our disposal are the services of three separate habitations. Amateurs at the game will familiarize themselves with the gameplay in the sparsely forested grasslands of the Rogue Encampment, where familiar skeletons, zombies and Fallen Ones keep you company. And when you have whetted your appetite and your blade, venture on to the arid deserts of Lut Gholein and then across the ocean to the densely vegetated Kurast. All in all, the towns are the usual fare, with the exception of the grossly vivid Harem underneath the Lut Gholein palace--what with dead gals tied up to bedposts no longer attached to beds. Ugh.

While there was little freedom to explore the world around Tristram in Diablo I, this reincarnation takes place just as much on the surface as below it. The wider scope of the game creates a vast world in which open environments spawn marauding hoards and make dungeons look like cozy fortresses. In these dungeons, there are a myriad of things to click on. Rats nests, maggot eggs, corpses, loose boulders, and urns all yield their loot. Trading with other NPCs is quick and easy. The interface, enhanced from Diablo I, now allows you to right click on the items that you want to buy. This small improvement cuts back on the time going back and forth between yes and no menus and allows you to see what you’re spending $7000 gold pieces on. Items are mostly uninspiring on the most part--some armour have strange iridescent sheens. Items on the ground catch your attention with a twinkle twinkle. And for those of us who are obsessive-compulsive, a touch of the ALT button will bring up all the current items available for pickup on the screen. The gear you equip determines your character's appearance. Different items look slightly different and add a sense of accomplishment to your adventures – there’s nothing quite like seeing your level 27 Paladin fully decked out in magical platemail and wielding his weapon of choice.

As if to parallel the greatest works, Diablo II is divided into monumental acts. Each act has its own personality and theme, which keeps the going interesting and the players from falling asleep in their pretence. Act I looks and feels like the first instalment of this series, and I suspect it was pieced together from strips of code left on the cutting room desktop. Act II leaves the gritty taste of sand in your mouth as you explore searing deserts and their sunken tombs. This most beautiful of the three acts has a distinctly Near East theme, fraught with temples, mummies and imitation hieroglyphs. Act III is a flavourful mix of Cajun, Voodoo and Mayan cultures and Act IV is pure Hell--no, I’m not kidding. The artists certainly didn’t spend too much time on the graphics, insisting on forcing their dated 640 by 480 by 256 colour graphics and display on our poor retinae. Pixilated, the graphics definitely do not take kindly to stretching on a larger display. Instead of dust, the chickens flapped up little white squares. And what is anti-aliasing? The gauntlet pointer was a gray blob and looked like the masterpiece of a 6-year-old. Saturation of colours was very rich on the GeForce card we used, but bland on our Voodoo 3 2000s. I howled in disbelief when I saw my character for the first time. What was wrong with my computer? I cried. Heck, how often does one wish for a smaller monitor? One observant friend remarked that my Paladin’s face looked like Mr. Potato Head.