IRVINE, Calif. — Writing about a game that hasn’t been released to the public can be risky. It might end up as vaporware or simply not live up to the awesome impression that publishers can gin up in a short, canned demonstration. But when it comes to a new game from Blizzard Entertainment, perhaps the world’s most accomplished and prestigious developer, an exception seems merited.

And if there is one game in the pipeline I can’t wait to play on my own time, it’s Blizzard’s Diablo III.

So on Monday I found myself within Blizzard’s gated, guarded headquarters complex here, navigating my witch doctor and his canine minions through the Torture Chambers of the Mad King. (I didn’t actually fly across the country to preview this game; I was visiting Orange County for a family function and stopped in at Blizzard.) For about an hour I explored the dungeon, hurling lightning bolts, summoning zombies and unleashing swarms of locusts to decimate the waves of bloodthirsty foes standing between me and the next treasure chest.

I don’t think an hour has ever passed so quickly.

And that, of course, is what Diablo is all about: drawing you in so pleasurably, almost hypnotically, that time becomes an abstraction. At that, it appears Diablo III may end up without peer (at least in the electronic realm).