Your efforts are rewarded with increasingly powerful weapons, armour and magical items, and an alter-ego which grows in ability as he or she gains experience. You create a puny and impoverished character, then run around a fantasy world fighting monsters.

The game's fundamental hypnotic appeal is obvious a tried-and-tested formula. You sit down for a quick play-just to find the next dungeon, you tell yourself just to get your bearings in the next section-then you regain consciousness with the alarm clock ringing from the bedroom and an arm so tensed from all-night mouse-clicking that it barely feels part of you any more. Although I will call it repetitive and unoriginal, claim that it encourages inelegant play, and curse its fetishistic immaturity, the plain, painful fact is that Diablo II is the most brutally addictive game I've played since Half-Life.

And while there are some things I want to say about Diablo II which are by no means in its favour, my criticisms ultimately count for nothing when set against that pervasive muscular ache.

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