diablo

The original Diablo is back, baby!

I don’t mean the male version of the demon (as seen in Diablo 2 and Heroes of the Storm) but rather, the original game.

Diablo (released more than 20 years ago in 1996) is now available on GOG. Since it’s on GOG, the game’s DRM free, meaning you don’t require an Internet connection to play it.

I personally remember the day I bought the game in 1996 from a store in Century Square. I rushed home, installed it and played it 10 hours straight. Played it longer the next day, and the next. I played it so much that I destroyed my mouse buttons with all the clicking.

The version on GOG can be played in two ways; faithful to the old 1996 version or enhanced. The enhanced version’s a collaboration between GOG and Blizzard’s developers and comes with a host modern updates which includes out-of-the-box Windows 10 compatibility, a host of bug fixes and high-resolution support via aspect ratio-correct upscaling .

Sadly, the GOG version doesn’t come with the Hellfire expansion, which added in more quests, areas and playable classes. Neither Blizzard nor GOG have commented if the expansion pack (we didn’t call add-ons DLC back then) will be coming in the future. Knowing Blizzard though, it’s a sure bet, just a matter of when, not if.

Even without the expansion, Diablo is still a masterclass in dungeon crawling. It might show its age visually, but the underlying gameplay mechanics are still as fun today as it was back then in 1996.

If you’ve never played it before, then you owe it to yourself to check out the great grand daddy of the genre. Besides, GOG’s asking price of USD$9.90 isn’t that much at all. That’s like the price of a meal nowadays.

Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.