SUPERB GAME

ROUGH CROWD CONTROL
THE SACRED THREE                                                  http://www.ign.com/games/sacred-3/pc-139071
However games evolve, there's still something about frantically mashing buttons in a sea of monsters that never quite gets old. And that's good, because it describes roughly 90 percent of what you do in Sacred 3. Where its predecessors were free-roaming, Diablo-style action RPGs, Sacred 3 is a mostly linear, four-player, fixed-camera hack-and-slasher in the vein of Gauntlet, focused on little more than the simple fun of smashing through waves of baddies and collecting the piles of gold that fly out of their violently ragdolling corpses. It's an approach that could easily turn dull, but Sacred 3 injects it with just enough challenge and variety to keep the action entertaining.

Taking around 10-12 hours to play through, Sacred 3 unfolds across 38 stages; 15 of these are lengthy and story-driven, while the rest are pleasantly short side missions that frequently grant support items, like extra health-potion slots or magical shields. Apart from the occasional hidden treasure chest, each stage is extremely linear – and while you can visit them in any order, jumping ahead usually means a quick death if your character hasn't hit the requisite experience level for a given stage. Conversely, a level-six stage (for example) is easy to storm through if you're at level seven or above – and here's where problems with difficulty start.