So a fun combo is to send this pile of corpses into a horde of monsters with one button, and then blow them all up with another, which will leave more corpses on the ground that I can then blow up again, ad infinitum, until there are no more monsters to slay. I'm a Necromancer, so I've got this skill where I can blow up corpses with the touch of a button, and a flesh golem that will leap into a crowd and explode into a pile of corpses. As you play, your character gains experience and learns new skills, which come in various permutations for you to mix and match in fun ways.

Barbarians dive into the thick of things, Wizards wreck shit from afar, and Witch Doctors conquer hordes with mild racism. Here's how it works: You pick a character from one of seven classes that each have a loose style of play-most classes do what you'd think. It's the video game version of what I imagine taking up smoking to be like.

When I'm a bit overwhelmed but can't justify stepping away from things for more than ten minutes, I can play Diablo 3. But there's also a sensible middle ground, a decent reason for playing Diablo 3-it's the most chill, low-stakes game in the world, a great way to de-stress solo or with some pals, to do nothing of consequence while also feeling like you're making progress. Those are the two extremes, and not only are they both true, but they can both be true at the same time. This is the problem that arises when talking about Diablo 3: It's impossibly hard to do without sounding either like you have a serious problem or have taken up the most boring habit in the world. And now that Diablo 3 is out on Nintendo Switch, there is nothing to stop me from doing it all the time. What am I even doing? The answer was: nothing.

This is dumb, I thought, when I first played Diablo 3-it first came out in 2012. Diablo 3 is so free of bullshit that you might bounce right off of it, accustomed to the theatrics of modern video games as you are. Its story campaign, in which you embark on a journey to seal away the lords of hell, is merely an introduction to a list of things that the game expects you to repeat, with even less context, essentially forever: killing hordes of monsters, picking up loot, and figuring out which of set of pants will help you blow up corpses faster. It doesn't posture about how meaningful your actions are, how epic its story is, or how rich its many worlds are. Diablo 3 might be the least pretentious video game ever made.

Diablo 3 gameplay switch