Diablo 3: Ultimate Evil Edition Setting Fire To The Playstation 4

Selling a record-breaking 12-million sales worldwide as of early 2013, Diablo III for the PC is one of the best selling games this generation. Unfortunately, with the game being PC only, console fans looked on in jealousy as they were seemingly left out of all the fun. However, this changed when Sony unveiled the PlayStation 4 at their official unveiling conference, when Chris Metzen of Blizzard announced that Diablo would be returning to the consoles with Diablo III for both the PlayStation 3 and 4.



Story 

Despite being the third game in the series, you don't need to play the other two Diablo games to understand the story of Diablo III. Set 20 years after the events of Diablo II, the third game quickly brings players up to speed as they work to stop the resurrection of the evil Diablo by vanquishing as many demons as possible. The story is passable and, let's be honest here, you're going to be in this for the gameplay, so let's dive right into that.

Gameplay

Diablo III is an action role-playing game that keeps the action fast and frantic at all times. You'll fight groups of 20 or more enemies at once with special skills and abilities enabling you to clear whole swathes of enemies at one time. As you vanquish your foes, you'll receive loot in the form of weapons and armor, making your character more powerful in addition to unlocking new skills for your character further increasing his or her power each time you level up. If you've played games such as Borderlands, you understand the general concept here. Diablo III pushes players to kill just one more enemy or complete just one more quest to see what the next reward will be.

In addition to killing and looting, there are weapons and armor to craft, gems to socket into your items to bestow greater improvements to them, modifiers you can add to your skills to change their functions, and NPC followers to help you out in battle. To put it bluntly, Diablo III is a big game.

Keeping The Action Fast

Diablo III focuses on keeping the action fast by providing a few quality of life improvements to speed up gameplay and get you back to killing enemies quicker:

• Health orbs now drop from defeated enemies
• Gold is automatically picked up by the player
• You can quickly swap skills with the push of a button
• Mana quickly regenerates after using it

Diablo III is all about the action, cutting away a lot of the needless mundane tasks you normally see in a role-playing game. After all, would you rather spend time manually picking up every piece of gold you see or chopping the head off another demon?

Choose Your Character

Diablo III offers five character classes to choose from:

• Witch Doctor
• Barbarian
• Demon Hunter
• Monk
• Wizard

Each character class plays differently; for example, the Barbarian is a close-range fighter while the Witch Doctor relies on poisons and minions to do his dirty work. Depending on the skills you are using, two of the same character classes can play differently as well, such as one Wizard using ice-based magic while another uses fire-based magic. The fact that each character class is so different from one another means the game plays differently with each new character you create, leading to near-infinite replayability.

Replayability

In addition to choosing different classes for each new playthrough, Diablo III provides an almost limitless amount of gameplay in a variety of other methods. Harder difficulty levels are unlocked each time you finish the game on the previous difficulty level, adding more challenge to the game by increasing the health of your opponents and the skills they are using. Want the ultimate challenge? Go for Hardcore Mode, which permanently erases your character when you die.

The game also features randomly-generated levels and randomly-generated events within those levels, providing many different variations on each level. Diablo III is never the same game twice.

Not Always Online 

Unlike the PC version of the game, which required users to always be online, the PlayStation 4 version of Diablo III can be played offline. However, the game is better with friends, so to that end it does include multiplayer as well.

Multiplayer 

Diablo III has been confirmed as including both online and offline co-operative play for up to four players on the PlayStation 4. The below video illustrates what you can expect when you and three friends venture forth to banish Diablo from the world once and for all:

PlayStation 4 Advantages
   
Diablo III is being built to take full advantage of the PlayStation 4 by adapting the controls to the DualShock 4. We've seen with games like Torchlight for the Xbox 360 and Dungeon Siege III for the PlayStation 3 that action role-playing games can work on a controller, so gamers shouldn't have any reason to worry.

Buzz from E3 2013 was positive, with many journalists and gamers commenting on how natural the game felt when using a DualShock 4.

At PAX East, Blizzard has confirmed that you can use the DualShock 4's touchscreen to navigate the in-game menus.

PlayStation 4 Exclusive Features

It has been revealed that the PlayStation 4 version of the game will receive exclusive items, though it has not been revealed what those items will be at this time. We'll let you know as soon as we hear more!
  
New Social Features
  
At PAX East, Blizzard also unveiled some of the new social features that are heading to the PlayStation 4 version of Diablo 3:

• When you gain a legendary item, any friends you are playing with also have the chance of gaining a legendary item as well.
• The Nemesis System allows players who kill you to then warp to a friend's game, where that friend can receive a reward for killing it.
• The Apprentice Mode allows low-level players to play with their high-level friends by giving the lower level player a temporary stat boost.
• Players can mail items to each other

It looks like Diablo 3: Ultimate Evil Edition on the PS4 is shaping up to be the ultimate version of the game.

Expansion Pack 

Blizzard has recently announced that the first Diablo 3 expansion pack, titled Reaper of Souls, will be included with the PlayStation 4 version of the game. The expansion will bring a new story, a new act, a new character class called the Crusader and a whole host of other new features to the game.

Blizzard has revealed additional information on the expansion pack coming to the PlayStation 4, revolving around the new Artisan caravan character. The Artisan will be able to not only alter an item's statistics, potentially improving them, but change the appearance of an item altogether.

Long time Diablo 3 fans will remember that the Artisan was cut shortly before the initial launch of the game, so it's good to see her making a return with the expansion pack.

Will It Support Remote Play?
  
There has been speculation lately that Diablo 3 on the PlayStation 4 will not support the Remote Play feature due to comments made by Blizzard employees. However, the issue was recently cleared up in an official tweet on the matter which clearly shows Diablo 3 running on the Vita via Remote Play, laying to rest the issue once and for all.

Name Change

In February 2014, Blizzard officially changed the name of the PlayStation 4 release from "Diablo 3" to "Diablo 3: Ultimate Evil Edition." The name change was made to show off that the PS4 release not only included Diablo 3 but the expansion as well, all in one convenient package. The retail price of the game remains the same at $59.99, despite the addition of many hours of additional content.

Release Date 

While the PlayStation 3 version of Diablo III is due out this year, Blizzard has announced that the PlayStation 4 version will not see the light of day until 2014. While the extra wait will upset gamers who were hoping this would be a launch title, the crew at PS4 Experts is positive that the extra development time will make Diablo III for PS4 the best version of the game to get.