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Hellgate: London Review (continued)
More User Submitted Hellgate: London Reviews
Date: 2008-02-02
From an RPG junkie
1st off I tried this demo and thought it only ok, but after going forth and buying it off of faith, I have to say it REALLY grows on you fast and has more in depth once you learn all its details. Basically, I was a Diablo fanboy, along with stuff like Titans Quest, Oblivion, Bards tale, MMORPG titles galore, etc. This game takes the basics of what you liked about Diablo 2 LOD & added a nice sci-fi balance along with the option to go 1st person shooter. True, no LAN play was a let down but the free internet (with option of paying for extras) was a nice makeup for it.. Too much to say about this without going on & on so I will cut it short to say its WELL WORTH the money and you'll soon find your addicted!! With the ability to max lvl at 100, I know I'm pleased!
Date: 2008-01-24
Very repetive
Pros:
Graphics = 5/5
Gameplay = 5/5
Downsides: Buggy, had to restart more than once because my character became trapped in a wall or on a rock. The levels all start to look the same very quickly... The layout of the map may vary slighly, but the room look like the same room you have been wandering through the couple hours. The enemy look good and it is a challenging game.
Many compare this to 3D version of Diablo. I think that is fair, like Diablo all the dungeons start to look the same. The monsters only change by variance of colors at times. There is even a reference to Wart in Diablo 2, so the delevopers were obviously influenced by it.
I don't play many games... I finish even fewer, I finished this... Bugs and all... It was a painful experience at times, but it was a pretty fun game... And that is really the important part, just buggy games aggravate me... :)
Date: 2008-01-21
How strange. I am underwhelmed.
What an odd game Hellgate is. One the one hand I am terribly dissapointed. On the other hand...I can't stop playing it. I am playing as a marksman. I shall begin with the Pro's.
It has all the things which made Diablo great. A wealth of cool items and awsome stuff you can do with them. You can modify them, enchant them break them down, build them up, level your guns...the list goes on and on. And this is great fun. For a RPG freak like me, I like to be able to maniputlate my character and his gear. You can run and gun like no-bodies buisness. Wandering around an old Tube station and shooting stuff with one eye and watching tv with the other is a great way to kill a few hours. It has the undeniable "much better than doing nothing" quality and so for those of us who have to be doing something with their hands at all times, it works well. However...the cons are pounding on the door and they want in...
So this is what I didnt like.
1) Graphics. I expect better. Much better. People were being nice comparing it to HL2. Alex is much more animated that the "wa wa" speach of the dummies in this game. The monsters are fairly repetitave and once you have seem one zombie you have seen em all. I tak it back. There is female zombie, skinless zombie and fat guy zombie. Now you have seen them all. Various different kinds o demons but they are in such great numbers that the initial "hey, thats neat lookin..." quickly becomes "oh look, another one of...". The streets are a bit square lookin, rough edges are hidden by iffy art work...I might say the Graphics are comperable to Doom 3. Which was awsome in the day but does not cut it anymore. Besides, I am being nice now. I think Doom has better graphics. Which is unacceptable, especially for a game that was supposed to be of such high caliber. People will buy crap but if they are expecting to diamonds and you try to sell em crap, they are going to notice...and be displeased.
2) GET SOME VOICE ACTORS! For you main quests at least! jeeze! I feel jipped every time I have to read through a long quest description. Now for the secondary quests...meh...fine, I've played enough WOW, I can deal, I'll say ok, just text with some (fairly odd) NPC one liners. But for the main quest line, there should have been speech! It should have pulled me in, told me about the perils of hell on earth. It felt like they meant to but ran out of time or something and so slapped the script into the game and made the players read it for themselves. One the whole it takes away from my immersion in the game, the thing that you must keep.
3) Scene variety! Oh look another tunnel. yay. Now I am outside in an idendicle street. yay...with 10 identicle zombies attacking me. yay. I mean really! I know they were trying to make London, hell, as a former occupant of London myself, I was looking foward to navigating the streets, but Hell should have some variety. It dosen't. Blah.
4) Why I will never ever subscribe: In WOW when you cancel your subscribtion, your character goes on the back burner. If at some time you wish to play again, you just re-install, re-enroll and poof, your beloved level 70 is back complete with all her gear looking as ravishing as ever before. If you cancel your subscription to Hellgate, all your gear disapears. Your level 50 kung fu blade master vanishes and you have to start again at the begining. This is a criminal flaw in the buisness plan for Hellgate. You WANT US TO COME BACK!!! So Now I will never give them more of my hard earned money and consiquently, never really get involved online.
On the whole, I cannot tell a lie. The game is fun. I am still playing the single player offline version and will probably finish the game once...unless Age of Conan come out first. But it makes me sad. This game should have been more, it promised to be more! It s the spiritual sucessor to the Diablo Throne and it is a poor heir indeed. We wanted glory and got the frog prince. The game felt unfinished and poorly quality controlled. Good ideas left incomplete. It's like they sold this game to the lowest bidder. A great game made of the cheapest parts available. Makes for a cheap game. If you like killin stuff and robbing their bodies (which I do), this game has the fun. Lots of stuff to steal, lots of things to kill. If you want more, you want depth and story and voice acting and pretty varied scenes? Get Crysis or The Orange Box or Oblivion or WOW. OR Titan Quest, the REAL new Diablo.
Hellgate dropped the ball. COuld have been a masterpiece. Ended up being a time filler until Guitar Hero 3 or Conan. So Sad..
Date: 2008-01-18
Poorly put together game that loses steam fast
I really wanted to like this game. I honestly did. I like FPS games and Diablo II is my favorite game of all time. Surely any integration of the two would be gold, right? No dice...
The missions are repetitive. You think they might get better later in the game but it doesn't happen. You are once again hunting for a bunch of a certain kind of monster or one boss monster.
The scenery/tile sets are repetitive. You think they might get better later in the game but it doesn't happen. Level 2 of an area will be exactly the same as Level 1. You can be at the 6th station and enter an area and be like, "wait, haven't I been here before?".
The items don't get interesting. The item database is also rather small compared with other real RPGs.
The game is still buggy. Even with the latest patch, you can frequently generate a map where the path to where you need to go is blocked by randomly generated objects. Also, if you "get stuck" trying squeeze between things, you automatically get transported back to the beginning of the area. These were 2 major bugs that provided unnecessary frustration. I know I can't fault the game too much for bugs since they exist with every game. However, combined with all the other flaws, this game just feels like there wasn't any real effort put into making it. Even the graphics don't justify the system requirements.
The only good thing this game has going for it is the sound. The combination of action sounds, ambient sounds, and music make for an eerie atmosphere reminiscent of Diablo I.
The Single-Player experience is just too tedious to finish.
The game somewhat redeems itself with the multi-player community but this can be true for any game and doesn't really reflect on the merits of Hellgate: London. By comparison, Diablo II was an immensely popular game largely because of multi-player but the game was also great to play by yourself.
Yes, some of original Diablo developers worked on this game, but Flagship Studio's debut lacks the overall production value that Blizzard has brought to all of their titles.
Date: 2008-01-18
A bit repetitive, but fun
I bought this despite the tepid reviews because I just wanted a mindless DirectX10 game to mess around with. I have to say that it's better than the reviewers make it out to be.
While the environment and monsters are monotonous and repetitive, and the cut scenes are boring (mostly a narration over an image of an animated book, I kid you not), everything else about the game is what you would expect from the original Diablo developers. The character mechanics are interesting, and the loot system is excellent. The gameplay is well-balanced and engrossing. Normally I hate first person shooters (and have a lukewarm response to action RPGs), but somehow I still enjoy myself in this game.
I'm never going to sing the virtues of this game from the rooftops, but it's a heck of a lot better than the reviews and word of mouth make it out to be.
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