Darkstone

PRELIMINARY RAMBLINGS
I believe there are a few types of games that come onto the market:

Firstly the guaranteed money earners - big name sequels. They've already done the hard yards and have the budget to improve on their original success - Warcraft 3, Age of Mythology. Then there are new games which are truly innovative, such as The Sims - an idea nobody had thought of before. Then there are the B-class ripoffs of big name games. Since the big boys like Command & Conquer, Diablo and Doom made their mark all those years ago, The majority of games have fallen into this category to some extent.

Then there are games like Darkstone, which don't pretend to be the next big thing in gaming. They don't try to dazzle the gamer by adding elaborate features, confusing interfaces or wacky storylines. They don't take pride in the fact that they are so complex and unwieldy that you need to devote your whole life to learning to play them. They don't spend half the budget on a...

The first thing you will notice when playing Darkstone will be its similarity with Blizzard's classic Diablo. Although very similar in concept it has much better graphics, by using a 3D card of course. You can move the camera freely which may confuse you at first, but it's a very nice detail. However, it is not as addictive as Diablo and after all, it's just another hack n' slash Action/RPG mix.