One of my gaming goals for this month is to finish the campaign in Diablo 3.

This morning I was playing and… I died! It has been SO LONG since I died in Diablo 3 that I didn’t really understand what was happening for a few seconds.

Then I felt a moment of euphoria… was Diablo 3 going to turn into an actual game instead of the mind-numbing busy-work it has been? You hold down a button and move around and collect loot until you have to go back and sell or smash it, then return for more. Seriously it has been incredibly tedious so far. I should have pushed the difficulty up I guess. I’m playing on Hard, I can’t imagine how mindless Normal must be.

Unfortunately the euphoria was short-lived as I realized that death really has no consequences. You can revive right where you died and aside from having to spend a handful of coins to repair your gear, there’s no harm done.

I’m not really hardcore enough for hardcore but I wish there were some setting in between. Something that give death some sting but not the pain of having to start fresh. I really miss the old Diablo games where you’d drop your gear and have to try to get it back. You’d have to have backup gear to help you recover from a death…it was really interesting.

Later I died a second time, but then res’d on the spot and kept going. What’s weird is that right now I seem to have two states: Full health and dead. In both cases it seemed like I was 1-shotted by a powerful enemy or something. It happened so fast I never really saw my health dropping.

But meh, push a button and stand up and keep grinding through mobs… YAWN.

I know the conventional wisdom here is to play MP and I’m sure that makes the game much different. For for solo players, Diablo 3 is a real snooze-fest so far. I’m hoping once I unlock Adventure Mode it’ll get more interesting.