Diablo III Console Hands-On Preview from Edge Online

Edge Online has posted a review of their time spent with the console version (PS3, PS4 is also planned) of Diablo III. To see the full article, check out the Diablo III PS3 hands-on article over at Edge Online. Here is a quote from the article:

"A 15-minute demo isn’t the best way to experience Diablo III, admittedly. The long game lies in the gear management, in kitting out your chosen character with absurdly powerful weapons and armour in order to cut an effortless swathe through the demonic hordes and pick up even more powerful loot. What is clear from the demo is that Blizzard’s made a considerable effort to retool skill and item management for a controller and a big TV screen.

The pause screen is home to radial menus for speedy selection of gear and attacks, but tweaks to the game design are focused on having players spend as little time in such menus as possible. There will be fewer but better loot drops than were found in last year’s PC version of the game, for instance. Stand over an item and you’ll be able to see immediately whether it’s worth your time, and you can either equip, collect or discard it with a quick press of a face button.

The decision to minimise time spent in menus chimes well with a game that, thanks to free left-stick movement and that right-stick dodge, feels a little pacier than the original.

…It’s far from a complete picture, then, but it does feel like Diablo III has been cut down a little for consoles. It certainly feels more like an action game than before – a genre for which PS3 players are hardly starved. And we can only imagine that the subset of PC players who want to play a lighter, pacier version of a game they’ve already played is rather small, even if they can do it from their sofa."

There is currently no exact release date for the PlayStation 3 version of Diablo III (we know it will be released sometime this year though) but there is information that the console version will have tweaked drop rates and no auction house.