Developer: Blizzard
Publisher: Sierra

Diablo II is already one of the fastest selling games in history. Within two weeks it sold a million copies, a figure Unreal Tournament sales are only likely to reach by this Christmas. Before we could even give it a solid play through and review it seems that most of you made your mind up and bought it anyway. For those few who are still pondering a purchase with this one, here's what we think of one of the most anticipated game sequels of all time.

Good news – Diablo himself isn't dead. Why is this news good when it surely portends further carnage? Because most of that carnage is going to be at your hands. When the hero of the original plunged the soul crystal of the defeated Diablo into his (or indeed her) forehead it turned out to be a grave mistake. Now Diablo is slowly taking control of the once mighty hero in preparation for another attempt at corrupting the whole world. But there's always another hero, and this time you in fact get your choice of five. In a slight variation on our traditional run down on the weapons in first person games, here's a look at the five different characters you can play in Diablo II.

Subtlety isn't a word the Barbarian knows. He's all about running into the thick of combat, armed with a massive axe, two swords at the same time (an ability unique to him) or a similarly dangerous armament. The Barbarian is able to learn a skill where he can pull health and mana potions from enemy corpses, and they're certainly needed. While he can take a lot of damage, running into the thick of combat on slow feet means he'll also be taking a lot, so a big stash of healing potions comes in handy. He can also learn to leap out of combat or simply bellow a warcry to send enemies running away in fear. Add to this the obligatory combat skills such as Bash (which does extra damage at the cost of some mana) and it becomes obvious that the Barbarian is best at little more than hacking into enemies one after another. Not that we're complaining at all.