Testing Diablo III On a Macbook Air

Edit: I’ve gotten several requests for my macbook air spex so they are. Please note that i turned off all the graphic options because it is too laggy if they were left on:

Processor 1.8 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB
Software Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 (11C74)

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As all of you might have known, Diablo III released an open beta version of the game for this weekend only (until Monday, April 23 at 10:00 a.m. PDT – US time), which means peeps in Asia have until Tuesday to meddle with the game.

Diablo III open beta testing

Before we start, here’s where you can download the Diablo III client!

You’d also need to create a battlenet account and a battle tag at Battlenet

diablo 3 login screen

So let’s talk about the game! I first played it on the boy’s iMac, in all it’s wonderful graphics glory, and then we decided that my Macbook Air should be given a chance to shine too. At first, with all the graphics options on, the game was lagged quite a bit. So we turned off all the graphics options, and had quite a decent gameplay.

diablo 3 characters

I chose to play a female wizard as I normally do when I play RPG games. It makes everything more whimsical in my opinion (now I’m missing my World of Warcraft warlock!)

So you start the game at Overlook Road..

Overlook road diablo 3

And if you walk further down, you’d come to New Tristram, where you discover that zombies are rising from the dead and have to be killed!

zombie attack diablo 3

Well I’m not going to do a walkthrough for the entire game because I’d hate spoilers (also because I’m still at level 8), but here are some screengrabs from the game:

Skills

I love that the wizard race seems so strong. For many creatures, it’s mostly a “one-hit-one-kill” attack. I love feeling all so powerful hahaha. My favourite skill for now is the arcane orb.

diablo 3 wizard screengrab

Though Shock Pulse is pretty good too.

diablo 3 shock pulse skill

Places in the game

I’m a scaredy cat by nature, and seriously the places that the character needs to walk through are creepy. I’d navigate slowly in fear something might jump out at me. Silly, silly Sha.

places in diablo 3

Don’t forget to collect “way points” (equivalent of flight points for you WoW players)!

diablo 3 way point

Creatures

From a girl’s point of view, some of the creatures in D3 are just disgusting, such as Grotesque who looks like the Fat Bastard in Austin Powers. When he explodes, worms come out of him. YUCK. No screengrab of him but here are some of other creatures I managed to capture in combat. Don’t ask me their names, I have no idea.

diablo 3 combat

diablo 3 monsters

diablo 3 creature

Dying and Resurrecting

Of course in every game, you die. In D3, it was actually difficult to die. But because I was chasing screengrabs, I died because my character was caught offguard. But resurrecting is easy. Note that once you’re level 10 and above, your items and equipment will suffer damages when you die.

diablo 3 die

Quests

I’m actually really enjoying all the quests! They are interesting with a great story line. No complains so far.

diablo 3 quests

Technical Difficulties

1) It is almost expected that there will be some connectivity issues at this beta stage. But even though I have some difficulty trying to login sometimes, the game is smooth sailing once I get inside.

diablo 3 connection

2) When trying to install the game client, we had some difficulties as we faced errors. We found a quick fix for this:

- search for “agent.db” in your folder
- delete it delete it
- restart the launcher

It should fix it.

I hope you guys enjoyed this post. I’m just happy that I’m able to play it on my dainty Macbook Air!

Back to the world of The Sims

I’m currently re-installing The Sims 2 Double Deluxe (which is basically a combination of The Sims 2 and the Nightlife Expansion pack).

I chose to reinstall this because:
1) I can’t find my The Sims 3 CD
2) I miss playing The Sims 2
3) Nightlife is my favourite expansion pack of the lot (Yes i’ve played them all)

I’ve had a pretty hard day today full of irritating and unappreciative people, so I thought why not go back to playing The Sims – which is easily my favourite PC game. I can build pretty houses from scratch, create beautiful Sims and make them have a very good life.

And unlike me, they will go all the way in their career and getting pay raises every few days. Even Sims are being appreciated at work. My life is so sad, haha.

Anyways, I’ll probably play the game like I always do -> the Legacy Challenge way. Start from scratch with a single Sim and bare essentials and work the family up to 10 generations.

I could blog about them just like how I did one of my many Legacy families years back: http://www.shaslegacychallenge.blogspot.com/ –> OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAD SO MUCH TROUBLE FINDING THIS FORGOTTEN BLOG.

In this blog you’ll discover what a legacy challenge is and follow the life of Mark Fullerton.

All the wonderful screenshots are no longer showing on this old blog page – farkin’ flickr but you can still read the life story if you like. I didn’t manage to play until 10 generations but you get the drift!

YES I AM SUCH A NERD.

Wii Sports & Sports Resort – Great Excuse for a Workout

As some of you might have already known, FP and I have very recently gotten ourselves a Black Nintendo Wii. I am really pleased with this decision because I’ve been wanting a Wii for the longest time, and he always laughs at me in the past every time I brought it up. It probably had to do with my logic that getting a Wii means exercising and therefore getting fit.

Oh well, my logic is half screwed half the time anyway. Also, another reason why I wanted a Nintendo Wii was because I suck at PS3 games, and he wouldn’t want to play anything with me on PS3 because of that. Plus I’ve always been good with Nintendo DS games, so i figured – why not?

Back to topic.

nintendo-wii-black-wii-sport

The set we got included Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort, as well as a set of 3-in-1 Sports kit at a really good price. So we’ve been playing the Wii and experimented with different games. Some we loved, others not really. So here are some of my pics and my comments on them.

Wii Sports Resort

  • Archery
  • My favourite game within Wii Sports Resort has got to be Archery. I didn’t think I’d like it, but I did! Now just to sharpen my skills so i can throw darts accurately in real life. I kid, I kid.

    sports-resort-archery

    The levels get increasingly difficult. As competitive as both FP and I are, we could only handle up till the Intermediate stages. The Advance stages can wait till we get better. Nice graphics and scenery though for Archery.

    It felt really good when your aim lands on a great spot on the target tho.

  • Table Tennis
  • Another favourite of mine from Sports Resort would be table tennis – mainly because I am just so damn good at it (totally kicked his ass ;) ) Doesn’t help that I’ve never played table tennis before, but have always wanted to take up tennis. Make sense?

    wii_sports_resort_screenshot_2

  • Golf
  • This is really a nice game to play. The last time I played a golf-related game was Pangya! which was ages ago. So playing Golf in Wii Sports Resort brings back the excitement. I’m a little rusty tho, but all in good time!

    Love the graphics in this game :)

    Just a small comment tho: the Golf game in Sports Resorts is much, much better than in Wii Sports. Well obviously, since they did an upgrade of the console prior to Sports Resort. But it was just to alert those of you who has both games like we do.

    wii-sports-resort-golf-screenshot

    Moving on to Wii Sports.

    The first thing we did when started meddling with Wii Sports was find out our Wii Fitness Age by taking a fitness test which comprises a bit of bowling, a bit of baseball and a bit of tennis. FP’s fitness age is 67 while mine is 62. Oh it will get better!

    wiiboxing

    There is only one game that I really, really enjoyed on Wii Sports and that is Boxing. Yes Boxing! who knew it would be incredibly therapeutic to punch the daylights out of people? After many rounds of playing Boxing on the Wii, I felt as if I had done one hell of a workout – something that I haven’t done in a long time and boy did it feel good.

    *****
    Afterthought

    To be honest, the Wii really makes you move and use muscles that you haven’t used for ages. Seriously, the motions needed to punch someone in the face, or to swing a golf club – it really requires you to do them exactly the way you would do it in real life.

    Add a sprinkle of the “feeling of excitement and novelty of a new console” plus hours of game play because of that and you’ll get 2 very unfit individuals who are aching all over as if they’ve just finished a major marathon.

    I’m still aching from playing the Wii but on the other hand, it feels great as I haven’t been active in a long time. It’s a fantastic game to play with a bunch of people, and footage of actual gameplay (of the players) can practically be blackmail material because it looks really funny from a spectator point of view.

    Okay now let’s rest these poor muscles of mine.