Well I just spent 3 hours killing a wide variety of some of the coolest monsters hell could throw at me. That's right, I played Diablo 3. Isn't that special?

Well yes, kind of. I forgot how much fun hack and slash could really be. I am very tired right now, but my subconscious is telling me "c'mon dude - ONE MORE LEVEL ".

I chose to create a Demon Hunter. I made her female and I call her Krisella (I don't know what it means, it came from a character name generator. I plan to put more thought into my next character's name, but for now I just wanted to play.) The Demon Hunter is pretty cool, it uses ranged weapons and has a lot of powers/spells that utilize his/her "Hatred" for the denizens of hell. Hatred comprises 1/2 of the character's mana meter (I haven't figured out what skills I need to use in order to actually use mana - anyone have suggestions?), but what's cool about hatred is it regenerates fairly quickly, eliminating the need for mana potions (I haven't even seen any potions drop other than health ones, so maybe Blizzard eliminated them?)

So far the game is a lot of fun. Quests get assigned fairly quickly, the interface and map helps you stay on track, and there are monsters and skeletons and exploding fatass zombies coming at you around every turn - sweet!

Multiplayer also seems to be working fairly well, considering the severe beating all those millions of gamers must be putting on the servers. I unfortunately did get booted like 5 or 6 times, but I honestly expected that after the years of hype for this game. Once I joined a private game I got booted twice more, but after that my connection seemed pretty stable.

I liked that there is a channel called "Looking for Group", which allowed me to find and join that like-minded gamer who wanted to stop and smell the corpses. The first party I got randomly joined with weren't chatting, they were just plowing through the early quests and barely seemed to stop and see what loot was dropping. I know a lot of people are going to play that way, but I didn't expect that on the first night. That's why I was glad to see someone else out there who wanted to take their time, at least in the beginning.

My partner in demon killing was a Monk. I was actually kind of jealous, because the Monk's melee attacks are seriously badass. Maybe not hardcore barbarian badass, but those skeletons were still pretty damn dead after his "Chuck Norris!!" kicks. There's something to be said about pure, joyful tanking in a Diablo game, isn't there? So yes, I definitely see a Monk in my future.

I am also intrigued by the Witch Doctor, because I enjoyed summoning skeletons and golems with my necromancer in D2. It remains to be seen which class I'll go with next, but I am looking forward to it, whichever way I go.

Oh, I also played with a sorceress, and he/she said it was VERY similar to the D2 sorceress class, which may or may not be a good thing.

All in all, I'm glad I bit the bullet and bought this game day 1. I feel like a dope for not pre-ordering the Collector's edition, but I *did* get a poster and a soundtrack CD at Walmart. Oh, and I didn't have to wait in line for my copy either. Take THAT, Gamestop lemmings!

Ok now I want to play some more... Or should I go to sleep? Decisions decisions.