Sitting amongst the 15,000 Blizzcon attendees at the gargantuan Anahiem Convention Centre, California, there’s no underestimating the power Blizzard Entertainment holds over the PC gaming community. With three massive IPs; all playable under the same roof for the first time in Blizzcon history, the anticipation is palpable.

Those who’ve travelled from over 25 different countries to attend are rewarded in many ways, including a playable dungeon and the latest character announcement; the wizard.

Taking time out from the Blizzcon madness of tournaments and panels, we headed over to the huge, dimly lit gameplay area for some hands-on time with the upcoming game.

After an eight-year gap since Diablo II, developer focus is all about offering the gamer more. More action, more excitement: as Kanye West may well have put it, this game is ‘harder, better, stronger, faster’.

The basics are this – you can pick a hero from five distinct gamplay-styled classes, dependent on whether you’re a fan of melee or ‘blaster’ class combat. Characters announced so far are the barbarian, witch doctor and wizard. The focus is on multiplayer, co-op action, however players can solo if they wish, and although kept quite quiet, there will also be PvP play.

Its simplistic all-out action from the word go, with plentiful drops to keep you happy, and the ability (when not being attacked by hordes of undead) to upgrade your skills and gear quickly and painlessly. Use picked up runes to boost your attack; for example socket a multistrike rune to your Skull of Flame skill and watch that baby bounce all over the screen burning anything that gets in its way. These are also no longer locked in, meaning you can experiment with your attacks and runes until you have a combination that suits your gameplay, or the situation.

The cornerstone of the franchise, randomly generated monster spawns and maps are key to the gameplay and you never know if you’ll turn a corner and face one skeleton or fifty zombies, which really adds to the excitement. Having played through the Skeleton King’s Dungeon level multiple times, we were treated to a variety of rooms and different scripted events with each outing. These random adventures take things to the next level, offering a wide variety of new experiences each time you run a dungeon, from anything like complex enemy encounters through to interaction with NPCs leading to new, additional quests.

“Blizzard philosophy is one third old, one third improved, one third new. A lot of our ‘new’ is still cooking, so we haven’t really talked too much about it. But our old and improved is really focused on the core tenets of Diablo and making a game that lives up to those and of course, replayability,” Jay Wilson, lead designer tells us.

“We put in random bosses with cool abilities and items are generated randomly. We added in a lot of adventures too, we cut chunks out of the terrain and plop down a self-contained scripted event, and they can appear all over the place,” he highlights.

Destruction of the environments is another new feature which adds to the game, but they’re not just pointlessly there. Time your attack right and take down chunks of the bad guys’ health as a bookcase shatters down onto them. Nice.

Clearly with the move to a 3D top-down camera perspective the game’s graphics are much improved, but it’s the visceral gameplay that adds to its look. Although some may disagree (both Jay Wilson and Rob Prado wore bespoke Diablo III T-shirts complete with rainbows, fluffy clouds and smiley unicorns designed specifically in response to those who complained the new game looked too ‘colourful’), the game still has its dark, foreboding feel. However characters’ attacks bring bursts of colour, with the Wizard’s light show of Disintegrate and Electrocute, and the Witch Doctor’s Burst of Acid and exploding fiery hellhounds really upping the ante. In addition, Blizzard were eager to highlight the ‘special, crazy’ death animations they’ve brought into play simply citing that ‘explosions are cool’.

When it comes to game controls, Diablo III is definitely an ‘anyone can play’ experience. Its simplistic interface of mouse control and basic key commands return. If anything some of the old complexity has been removed, but the combat still has depth. The interface is now made up of six buttons, with an on-screen indicator; something that was clearly lacking before. Now players can switch-in items and skills in a way that suits them, and after trying it out it’s a very user-friendly experience that allows you to focus on the game.

All in all, Diablo III looks set to be the onion of action RPGs, with layers galore. Both new and improved features let gamers get sucked into the world of Sanctuary, and the developers’ enthusiasm is contagious. Highly immersive from the get-go, its ease of use, action and replayability make the title hugely addictive, even when you just have one dungeon to play through. With improvements across the board Blizzard is giving this it’s all, and look set to wow us yet again. Blizzcon attendees all second that, simply by being willing to queue for hours to try the demo out time and time again. We can only imagine how many hours we’ll lose to the fantasyland when the entire game is in our hands…