How Chaosbane streamlines Warhammer and Diablo for a modern audience

Diablo wasn’t the first action-RPG. The genre stretches back into the early ‘80s, after all, and it’s clearly a very different beast from the MMO shooters that parade themselves under the same banner today. But Blizzard’s iconic 1996 release did help galvanise the template for a very particular kind of action-orientated roleplaying game. Putting some hands-on time into the first closed beta for Warhammer: Chaosbane, it’s clear the developers behind it cast their latest creation from the same mould that Blizzard helped shape. Chaosbane manages to bring some distinguishing features, but with every enemy hacked and barrel slashed, it feels a little more like a visit to PC gaming in the ‘90s. Chaosbane, then, is a class-based hack-and-slash dungeon crawler of the traditional kind. Offering optional drop-in co-op gameplay – available either locally or online – it feels designed to be ‘cooperative first’, and a solitary experience second. For this inaugural closed beta only two character classes are available; an Imperial Soldier and a High-Elf mage. That leaves the ranged specialist Wood Elf a relative mystery for now, but we’ve already taken the aggressive Dwarf Slayer out for a spin.

from PCGamesN https://ift.tt/2HcMzLk