You're still playing item Tetris in a tiny inventory grid. But this is the limit of what the developers have permitted themselves for fear of altering its character too much. You get a few minor but significant quality-of-life changes, including a shared stash for your characters to exchange loot in, automatic gold pick-up, and - since the game now has console versions - well-implemented gamepad support. The important thing to know about Diablo 2: Resurrected is that it has done almost nothing to change this, for better or worse (spoilers: it's both). As influential as it has been, it's a singular, bloody-minded, almost awkward piece of work, and a defiantly unmodern one. Diablo 2 is a beast of a game that, 21 years on, still casts a long shadow - over the tortured development of its successor (a fate Diablo 4 doesn't seem to have escaped, either), and over the action-RPG genre it defined. That's not to say I don't have complicated feelings about Diablo 2: Resurrected for different reasons. But I've let it have no bearing on the rest of my review. Personally, as someone who loves the studio's games, I am conflicted and still undecided. It feels important to lay all this out, but it's not my place as a critic to tell you how to feel about playing Blizzard games in 2021. But Diablo helped set the Blizzard tone, too, with its none-more-metal aesthetic, kitchen-sink lore, cutting-edge online multiplayer and endgame of abyssal depth and complication. Diablo 2 is an adopted child of the Blizzard culture at best. (Indeed, its former studio head Jen Oneal was recently named co-leader of Blizzard, a new broom presumably intended to lead reform there.) What's more, the original 2000 game was made by Blizzard North, an autonomous studio quite distinct from the SoCal mothership. Much of the work on it was done by Vicarious Visions, a blameless outfit only integrated with Blizzard earlier this year. In some respects, this beautifully produced remaster of Diablo 2 is unlucky to be Blizzard's first release since the state of California filed suit against the studio. Availability: Out now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS4, PS5 and Switch.Platform: Played on PC and Xbox Series S.Developer & publisher: Blizzard Entertainment.In the wake of the appalling recent revelations about the studio's "frat boy" culture, this is now a question we have to ask ourselves about Blizzard games, too. Where do you stand on separating the art from the artist? Maybe you've mulled this over when considering whether to watch a Roman Polanski film or listen to a Michael Jackson album - and Lord knows, the history of art would be impoverished indeed if we stripped it of all its monsters. You can't fault the craft of this painstaking remaster, and the game itself still has an ornery magnetism - but Diablo 2 is showing its age.
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