You are a knight, or an archer, or a wizard or a barbarian. You walk around and click on monsters, thereby swinging your weapon at them. They die by the hundreds, leaving bits of treasure in their wake. That's IT. The story, such as it is, is so unimportant that you don't actually have to talk to the other characters in the game — you can just click through what they're saying, and the map will guide you to the next thick concentration of bad guys that needs eradication.

It's about as anti-intellectual as a sprawling, "we've built you a world" type game can be. In fact, it's almost like a simulated trip to the mall: Acquiring new and improved types of weapons and armor is absolutely key to the game's framework. It's the computer equivalent of playing with Barbie dolls.

This isn't to say that there's something wrong with playing with Barbie dolls, particularly if you happen to be 6, and a girl. But Diablo II makes it cool. You can dress up your little fighter guy with a spikey shield. Or a big stabby pike spear. Or a cool helmet with horns!

And this is fun. Really. Finding a new, better type of armor on the ground and being able to upgrade from your dull, old chain mail is inexplicably pleasing. And that's probably the most subtle pleasure the thing can offer.

Arguably, the fact that you can kill swarms of hellish gnats by swinging a sword at them is pretty fun, too. More amusing still is that the gnats will sometimes be carrying around items as heavy as a full suit of plate mail armor.

Gnats cannot carry a full suit of armor. Not even magic gnats. Even computer gnats should not be able to do this. And even if they were capable of it, why bother? To swap heavy pieces of armor with other swarms of gnats?

Despite the occasional boneheaded detail, the game also has some stylish flourishes. For example, Diablo II's "hell" is inhabited by trapped souls. These dull reddish forms lie chained to infernal stalagmites, writhing in torment. Their bodies bring a sinister motion to hell's sprawling vistas, as they struggle for release from their imprisonment.

You can also kick them. For treasure.

That's right. You can send a mailed boot right into the asses of the damned, knocking them out and producing random goodies ranging from magical potions to enchanted armor. But look out! They can also be booby-trapped.

That's right. Someone, somewhere, is presumed to have picked out particular eternally damned souls, and rigged them up with booby traps. Presumably, your avatar is not the first to have tramped through the lower ranges of God's penitentiary, stomping on the sinners.

"Heavens!" one can imagine Diablo II's sinister arch-villain exclaiming. "What a mess! But next time they'll regret it... when they trigger my clever poison gas trap!"

So what's the secret? Beyond Diablo II's smooth animation and clean, useful sound effects, it offers you the pleasure of making progress. The real world is famously blurry, muddled and full of ambiguous success and straight-forward failure. But in Diablo II, there are a host of ways to "make progress." You can gain a level. You can find a better, more attractive shield. You can kill a huge opponent, or find a waypoint in the midst of a level, thereby saving your progress.

Creating art is fraught with failure and embarassment. Socializing can be tedious — it can even feel like work. But Diablo II? As long as you keep your finger hovering over the healing potions and keep clicking on the bad guys, the loot will keep coming.

In a nuanced world where nothing is ever what it seems, that's pretty satisfying.

God help me.

— James Norton (jrnorton@flakmag.com)