It's been just a little over a day since Blizzard performed one of the old rituals, releasing Diablo upon the world for the third time, and I've been doing my best to play all the hell out of it.

There's a lot of hell in there, though. Wired will have a full review of Blizzard's long-anticipated action role-playing game in due time, but first, here are some early thoughts about the experience I've had so far. Not all of them are positive.

I'm currently near the end of Act 1. I play as a Demon Hunter with a crazy magic bow and magical pants.

I get the feeling that Diablo III's story was developed separately from its game mechanics, because they often clash.

For instance, early on there's a mission in which the blacksmith at New Tristram, a gentleman named Haedrig Eamon, needs someone to help him kill his wife, who has been infected with some sort of zombifying disease.

I agreed to help Haedrig, and followed him down into his cellar. For some reason there were about 20 other zombies aside from Haedrig's wife in that cellar, which sort of implies that Haedrig has a habit of keeping dozens of dead folks locked up in his basement. I'm not one to judge, though, so Haedrig and I fought through the zombie army and made it to his wife, who was in the midst of the zombie transformation process.

Diablo III has no control over its own mechanics.When I say she was in a process, what I actually mean is that she vomited everywhere and turned into a hideous monster – with really high HP. Why would the blacksmith's wife have higher than normal HP? Anyway, we quickly finished her off. The moment she died, a pile of gold coins and a pair of fuzzy boots popped out, and without second thought I snatched them up. All of this is happening directly in front of Haedrig. He didn't care. He was too busy alternatively howling lamentations and thanking me for my help.

Really, Diablo III? I can kill somebody's zombie wife and steal the boots right off of her exploded corpse, and everybody is okay with that?

This game has no control over its own mechanics. When people die, funny money and enchanted doodads always come flying out. The game's rules don't bend, even when those rules ruin attempts by the developer to tell an interesting story.

That said, all of the actual game parts of Diablo III are wonderful. Blizzard added in loads of tiny refinements to the formula. You can pick up gold by simply running over it, warping to town no longer requires scrolls and the skill system is far more approachable. These make the game feel snappier than its predecessors. None of the game's depth has been removed by these streamlinings.

I suspect that some pieces of Diablo III are included simply because they're expected, though. For instance, given that I can just warp to town to sell all my goodies at any point, why do I have a limited inventory in the first place? It's a completely unnecessary inclusion, since players no longer have any motivation to only pick up important items.

My play style is to pick up absolutely everything that drops, and then return to town whenever I'm full. Why put an arbitrary limit on the amount players can carry? It's not as if the current limit is bound by any sort of reality: Right now, my Demon Hunter is hauling around a knapsack filled with three giant battle axes, four bows, two entire sets of armor and enough gold coins to embarrass Scrooge McDuck.

Conversely, I can't think of enough good things to say about the sights and sounds of Diablo III. Especially the music. I'm usually not the guy who goes out and buys videogame soundtracks, but Diablo III's score is incredible. What was Blizzard's budget for the soundtrack? It's on par with that of any high-budget film I've ever experienced. I mean, I've actually left the login screen up for extended amounts of time just so I can listen to the songs. While I'm downstairs cooking up chicken pot pie in the kitchen, the entire upper level of my house is a creepy-yet-epic orchestral concert. Please, Blizzard, sell me this soundtrack.

I've got a whole lot more Diablo III ahead of me. Expect a full review once I crawl back out of the zombie-filled cellar again.