14 DAY TRIAL // Andrei Dumitrescu: This week might have seen the launch of two of the biggest titles of the year, Blizzard’s Diablo III and Rockstar’s Max Payne 3, but my gaming time has been captured for the long term by Warlock – Master of the Arcane, the turn-based strategy game from Paradox Interactive.
I have always been a huge fan of turn-based strategy and have spent more time than I care to count with the various Civilization titles (even the in-retrospective bad Call to Power), and I am more than happy to find a fantasy-based experience that has some core gameplay similarities and also delivers quite a bit of innovation.
Warlock is smart to focus on magic and unit upgrades rather than increasing complexity when it comes to cities or to technology (which is not even included) and the game also has replay value because the Artificial Intelligence that powers it is kind of smart, especially when it comes to defensive wars.
Andrei Dobra: After an excruciatingly long waiting period, I look forward to spending as much time as possible with Diablo 3 this weekend.
I already finished the game on the basic Normal difficulty, so I’m looking forward to going through it once again, probably with my friends, on the Nightmare one, and then, if we’re up for it, on Inferno.
While I’m still very much in love with the Demon Hunter class, I might be tempted to try out a Monk character, especially since my girlfriend’s been dominating with her Female Monk character. I might also give the Barbarian and the Witch Doctor a chance but, unfortunately, the Wizard has pretty much disappointed me up until now.
I just hope that my internet connection remains as stable as possible throughout my Diablo 3 adventures and that Blizzard’s Battle.net servers will handle the millions of players that will no doubt follow my lead and spend their weekend with the new RPG.