Big Picture Mode

Industry issues given the widescreen treatment

Nathan Brown on the anaesthetic pleasures of grind-heavy games

For the first time this week I ran down my Switch battery without leaving the house. Until now my Switch has only ever been used at home while connected to the TV, barring the occasional rainy afternoon Labo session with my eldest. It is in the dock, or in my bag. And then Diablo III came along. It’s a game I’ve only ever dabbled in, in spite of – or perhaps because of – the fact that its core loop, of hitting things to get new toys that make you hit things harder, is essentially my catnip. I tried it on PC, and bounced off it. I played it on PS4, and enjoyed the ten or so hours I spent with it, but drifted off after getting distracted by something else. Probably Destiny. It’s normally Destiny.

Switch feels perfect for it, however, and this surprises me. I’ve struggled with many of the console’s ports of ageing thirdparty games, which unlike most of the Switch library feel like games made solely for handheld mode, since I already own betterlooking versions on other platforms. The UI is almost unreadable on the dinky screen, and the Joy-Cons, which already feel too small in my hands, seem even less fit for purpose than usual, my index fingers forever mixing up the shoulder and trigger buttons, my thumbs pining for larger sticks with a little more travel.

Diablo contradicts all that – which is appropriate, really, because Diablo is a game of contradictions. It’s a game that, to the layperson looking on, should be really difficult, as hordes of enormous enemies with huge health bars surge at you constantly. But it’s a doddle, because the power curve is so ludicrously tilted in your favour (early in the game, at least: I’ve no doubt it goes the other way in the endgame, and can’t wait to find out). It appears, on the surface, to be a very serious game, a tale of something-or-other overrunning… okay, I haven’t been paying attention. Yet it resolutely refuses to take itself seriously, understanding that a game which finds new ways of telling you, ‘Okay, now your legs set on fire when you press ZR’ has no business being all grimdark, whatever the aesthetic suggests. I have a pair of legendary boots whose flavour text reads ‘You gots to watch those feets’, for heaven’s (okay, hell’s) sake.

Above all, it’s a tremendously chaotic game – a constant melee of good and bad guys engulfed in fancy alpha effects with loot and gold spilling out all over the shop – yet it’s also the most relaxing thing I’ve played in an age. And this is why, for two nights running, I’ve drained the Switch battery to empty, tooling around in Nephalem Rifts on the sofa while half-watching whatever’s on telly in the background. It’s active enough for me to feel like I’m actually playing it, but quiet enough that it doesn’t bother my wife (I adore that you can hold the primary attack button down, rather than having to mash it). And it’s braindead enough that I can still pay attention to whatever’s on the TV. And they say men can’t multitask! It turns out we just need the right kind of lightning damage on our boots, and ideally something synergistic on a belt or chestpiece. Obvious in hindsight.

The Switch sofa battery drainage may be new, but Diablo is, as I always knew it would be, the kind of game I am drawn to. When you play videogames for a living, your attitude to playing games in your spare time changes somewhat. When you’re being paid to play, just as if you’ve paid for a new game you’re not sure about yet, you push on through it out of a sense of duty. When I’m off the clock that simply doesn’t apply, and I’m struck by how drawn I am to games like these: things that are complex and difficult, yet oddly soothing. If I hadn’t been playing

Diablo the last few nights I’d have been playing Puzzle & Dragons, one of the most fiendishly difficult games I’ve ever played but which now, after five years and thousands of hours, is like putty in my hands. There’s

Destiny too, of course, a game originally (and successfully) built on the mantra “shooting aliens is fucking relaxing”.

I wonder whether other games are similarly built with this philosophy in mind: understanding that there are meditative qualities to be found in things that appear to offer nothing of the sort. It’s something I intend to mull over further in the days and weeks to come, as I wear out battery after battery, sort-of-playing a game and sort-ofwatching First Dates. Perhaps I’ll plan out a column or two while we’re at it. Let’s find out just how far we can push this whole multitasking thing.

Diablo is a tremendously chaotic game, yet it’s also the most relaxing thing I’ve played in an age