To Hellgate and Back Again...

by Jarred Walton on 12/10/2007 3:00 AM EST
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  • perpetualdark - Monday, December 17, 2007 - link

    I have been playing Hellgate since shortly before its release. I played Diablo 2 for about 2 years straight, averaging 4 hours per day.. so I played well over 2000 hours. When I first heard about Hellgate, which was only a couple weeks before release, I was intrigued since the developers were made up of a lot of the old Blizzard North team. I played the demo, and was thoroughly unimpressed. I then purchased the pre-order and played the beta. I was only able to play through about 10-12 levels per character before being wiped, but I was starting to see a lot of what I liked in Diablo 2 in this game.

    I have read a bunch of reviews, which are mostly from people who obviously played only a small portion of the game, and a lot of information in those reviews stemmed from info that came from other than playing the game.

    Let me say now that as an OLD MMO player (since the MUDs, pre-graphics), paying a monthly fee for premium services is nothing new to me, and I do not see it as out of line in the least. I look at it this way: These guys are providing servers to play this game in a controlled environment free of charge to any player that purchases the game. You do not have to subscribe, and aside from a few perks and benefits, not having a subscription does not cripple the game. You can play this game all the way to level 50 and have just as good of gear (at this point) as any other player, subscribed or not. If you find it offensive to pay to use a service, then don't pay. However, if you want to pay, then you are entitled to benefits of being a subscriber. There is not an MMO out there that you do not pay for the use of the game.. unless you want to play Maple Story. And no, Guild Wars is not free, you have to buy tons of updates if you want all the access. Eventually, subscribers will have access to gear that is superior to what non-subscribers will get, but why not?? If I could have had access to better gear in D2 that was not available to normal players, I would gladly have paid.

    Advertisement in game? PLEASE!! Let it rest already! There are posters on the walls in the "common areas" or stations. Right now, these are all "advertising" the best players and guilds in the game. When the game first released there were Nvidia and Intel ads on them. Within a couple weeks there were nothing but Kudos to the good players. Why was this ever an issue? Tell you what, next time you spend millions of dollars making a game, please feel free to charge as little as possible, and then spend millions more on huge internet pipes to provide free services. I am sure that even if the game is not everything you ever wanted, people will buy the game just because you are not advertising in the game and not charging for your services (whatever).

    DirectX10 performance is much better now than it was when the game released, but it is not perfect.. then again, on my 8800gtx c2d system with 4 gigs dominator ram, BioShock in dx10 performed worse. And static shots in dx10 compared to dx9 are not going to show anything.. the difference is in the motion blur and the depth of field, which in my opinion really added a lot to the somewhat boring cityscapes. It is boring when there are 5 demons around you like in the earlier levels or even before nightmare mode, but get into a late game battle with 50 or 60 demons, beasts, necros, zombies, and spectrals flying all around you, and the game graphics really heat up.. add the weather effects to all this and it is pretty decent. Not Crysis mind you, but then again, I personally thought Crysis was one of the worst games I ever played.. great graphics, absolute rock bottom game value.. How it ever got a good review in any magazine is beyond me.. The graphics engine is revolutionary, but thats all it is: an engine with no substance..

    Regarding Diablo 2.. The reason I played it for as long as I did is quite simple. Take a game that has multiple character classes, a huge pool of loot with near infinte combinations of attributes, somewhat random levels, and a high level cap, and add a multiplayer environment that is somewhat secure and a hardcore game mode, and you have a combination that works on almost all levels. Some people play a game just to see the eye candy, some play just to be first to a high level, and some just want some good entertainment. Personally, I want a game that I can play for 5 minutes or 5 hours, has near infinite replayability, and all my accomplishments are plain as day to anyone that looks at my character. Diablo 2 would have been a mediocre game without Battlenet. By having a closed system to play on where (for the most part), cheats and hacks cannot exist, you generate an even playing field for competition. I was proud to have 3 hardcore characters still alive in the upper 90's in D2 (pre 1.10 when you could do that in a week), and over a dozen above 70. I enjoyed having 8 mule accounts all in hardcore nightmare for all my runes, gems, rares, and other loot. Anyone that looked at my characters knew I didnt use a hack or a trainer to get what I had.. Yes, there were hacks that screwed everything up.. dupes for gold, unique items, and a million SOJ's, but it still felt really good the first time a Stone of Jordan dropped, and I was a purist.. I played on BNet but not in public parties, so I did not participate in the duping, and never used something I did not find myself..

    Hellgate has the makings of everything great about D2.. a closed multiplayer system where hacks and trainers will hopefully never exist, hardcore, nightmare, and elite modes which add a near unbeatable level of difficulty to the game.. (who will be the first to get an elite hardcore evoker to level 50?? is it even possible?), an incredible amount of loot to be had, random levels that kill a little of the monotony of playing the same content over and over.. and on top of this they add a guild system, soon to add a group finding interface, achievement point system, hopefully sets soon (3 level 30+, all in NM, one elite, and no set items seen here), and you have a good foundation for the game. Now they are adding a horodric cube type device, more recipes for crafting, and hopefully soon a cross-character inventory. I put Diablo 2 down after 3 weeks when it came out, but a year later I revisited it in hardcore mode and didnt stop for 2 straight years.. Your first impression of the game might be that there are better graphics engines out there, better shooters, better RPGs, better action games, and better story games, but if you realize that this game has all those genres mixed in, you might look past the average graphics and fairly low monthly fee and realize this game has potential.

    BTW, the only big mistake they made was billing this as an MMO.. it is a multiplayer game with graphical chat rooms, not an MMO.. And a ladder would be nice too.. This review was one of the better ones I have read, but how can someone who has never paid a subscription for a game see a subscription from a neutral standpoint? If all you liked about D2 was playing through in single player mode, then chances are you will not like this game. If you played D2 because you liked spending hours looking for that one good drop, or liked achieving the fairly difficult goal of maxing a hardcore character, then this game might be for you.
  • AnnonymousCoward - Saturday, December 15, 2007 - link

    People have talked about "outgrowing the genre", but I don't think that's it. I still find Diablo1/2 to be fun, after >1000 hr. But I got bored with the Hellgate beta, and bored with the Titan's Quest demo. Diablo is way more polished and has a special formula.
  • davidallenlewis - Wednesday, December 12, 2007 - link

    I have to say as a big diablo fan i am terribly disappointed with this game. I played in beta and it is still very buggy and unbalanced. I am about to finish the game with a marksman (currently 23), and i feel like ive done the same instance 50 times over, with an occasional "unique" boss thrown in. I gave FSS the benefit of the doubt and bought it, still hoping that it will get better. Not really looking forward to doing the same thing in nightmare and in hell. I think ill probably get halfway through Nightmare and just drop the game.
    Loot is extremely hard to advance and the static equipment you get from quests is junk.
  • legoman666 - Monday, December 10, 2007 - link

    I bought the game shortly after release with about 7 of my friends at school. We played it a lot at the start. Me and one of my other friends partied up alot to go through the ame quicker.

    Fun thing about partying in versions 1.0-1.5, you couldn't see your party members after you zoned. The only way I knew where he was is because he was a summoner and I could see his minions. He had absolutely no idea where I was. Very annoying but not exactly game breaking.

    Also, in versions 1.0-1.4, most Uniques didn't have stats. When one finally dropped for me, I got all excited until I actually tried to analyze it; it was already "identified" and didn't have any stats besides it's base damage. Then I found 4 more on my way to kill the final boss (easy fight too). None of them had any stats either. Finally when 1.5 came out, they fixed this bug, but those with statless-uniques were stuck with them.

    On my main machine, I have WinXP x64. This game absolutely sucks in WinXP x64. I'm pretty sure there is a memory leak because the performance is fine for the first 15-20 mintues of play, but after that it just gets worse and worse. If I watched the page file usage while I was just sitting still in a station, it would slowly increase. I ended up playing the game on my laptop (that has integrated graphics) that had WinXP 32bit installed. I had to run the game on the lowest settings, but it ran well and didn't get more sluggish the longer I played.

    Level "design" is very repetative. There are about 5 different tile sets that zones are generated from. Once you've seen it once, you've seen it a million times. With such a limited variety of zones, why the HELL does the game require so much hard drive space? I am at a loss as to what those 7gb are actually doing. Not to mention that nothing in the game even looks like london except the underground. There are no distinguishable landmarks, not even the boss fights are memorable.

    Also, the UI is about the worst I have ever seen in a game. And that includes some fairly disgusting console -> PC ports. I mean, did the dev's even play the game after they wrote it? I commented to my buddy after playing for about 5 minutes that the chat UI is retarded. The 1.4 or 1.5 patch did help a little, but it's still saddeningly bad. You cannot resize the chat window, you cannot merge the different chat tabs, you cannot move the chat window, you cannot set the chat window transperency. I don't know what they were smoking when they released the game, but whatever it was, I want some.

    I decided that when I bought it, I would pay the $10/mo based on how much I liked the game. Well, I held off for 2 weeks; during which time I got 2 characters to nightmare mode (which is just a boring grind). One of the character was a marksman with friend in normal mode (way too easy) and the other was a guardian by myself in elite mode (also too easy). With a guardian in elite mode, I soloed 3 of the 5 final bosses all at once and never died. It wasn't even fun. Well, after getting each charater to nightmare mode, I never played either of them again. And as such, I haven't played the game since then either, and so they'll never get $10/mo from me for such a poorly designed game. Regardless of whether you hate WoW or not, WoW's design is 10x better than Hellgate: London's.

    The reason I bought Hellgate London was to play with my friends and to play another RPG. (they claim this is an MMORPG, but I simply don't see it. It is not massively multiplayer and the online play is exactly the same as the single plaer). As an RPG it is merely OK. If dull colored graphics and repetative gameplay are your thing, then by all means pick up Hellgate. If you want to actually have some fun with your friends while playing an online game, there are countless better choices out there.
  • GlassHouse69 - Monday, December 10, 2007 - link

    yeah. sux.

    basically this is what half of me thinks as well.

    its like some raging faggot who is about to commit suicide had a hand in designing the game. It is like watching the new Superman or Episode one of new Star wars series.

  • PresidentThomasJefferson - Tuesday, December 11, 2007 - link

    The new 0.7 patch & later really improves the game, the chat interface, & the much-needed 'Looking for group' interface (it lists everyone looking for a group or u can just create one for others to find in a list box) & they fixed most of the memory leak issues, installing respec skills option, etc

    Graphics look better than Halo3/Fear on 'very high' settings, (disable aa), enable trilinear & anisopteric filtering, enable or disable dynamic lights depending on your cpu power, set shadows to low
  • GlassHouse69 - Monday, December 10, 2007 - link

    if he played more, he would at least hear about Sets.

    there are sets.

    Also, you are a fool to think that a singleplayer version of this game is the way it is meant to be played. It's meant for guilds and friends. you cant even transfer your gear between classes. Beta was really crappy and the graphics werent even as good (less stuff).

    Its main problem are the multitude of not so fascinating side quests. the main one is pretty good. the mini games and end level things show massive promise. (like the RTS parts, the mounted gun parts, the poison level where only banishing guns work....) these show how it is a Shell of a good game so long as they get writers...

    WRITERS DAMNIT.

    i agree that it should not be paid for monthly at this point.

  • JarredWalton - Monday, December 10, 2007 - link

    Where are the sets!? I beat the single-player game, I've played multi-player up to level 7 with a new character. My understanding is that Flagship has sets for subscribers, but maybe that's incorrect. Are they something you encounter on Nightmare, or maybe Nightmare with online play? (I played Nightmare for about two hours after beating the game to see if anything changed; nothing that I could see other than monsters being tougher and dropping slightly better loot - just like Diablo.)
  • JarredWalton - Monday, December 10, 2007 - link

    To clarify, there's no way I'm paying extra for guild membership and sets - they should have been a part of the original game.
  • Houdani - Monday, December 10, 2007 - link

    First off: I like the review hidden in the blog. An interesting new addition to Anandtech. It pleases me that you played the game because you wanted to, not because you were assigned a task and blew through the campaign as fast as possible, thereby missing the nuances and actual joy of playing for fun.

    Your assessment of diminishing satisfaction sums up my experience with the game. I was in the later stages of the beta and after the novelty wore off, I found that the equipment upgrades (the veritable carrot on a stick) just didn't compel me to keep coming back -- largely due to the repetitiveness of all the quests and similarity of the levels.

    Unfortunately, I finished off the beta with a rather apathetic attitude toward the game and ultimately passed on the retail version. I wanted to like it, and tried to like it, but ultimately walked away with no regrets. I think my fond memories of Diablo 1/2 have obscured the reality that maybe I'm not into the genre anymore, perhaps evidenced by me becoming quickly tired of Sacred and not even attempting Titan's Quest. Phooey -- I must be getting old.
  • ghoti - Monday, December 10, 2007 - link

    THIS 'Older Curmudgeon' (who remembers walking uphill to school in the snow) agrees with your assessment of Diablo 2. Thanks for helping me decide to save my money by NOT going for this game.

    At least I feel I got my money's worth with Oblivion before getting bored with it. Maybe in another year or so, I'll be ready to pull it out again.

    Though it's they're much different genres from Oblivion, Diablo, etc., I have really enjoyed (and still do) games like MOO2, Alpha Centauri, and even the OLD original Sid Meier's RR Tycoon.

    Keep 'em coming Jarred; thanks for the review!
  • drebo - Monday, December 10, 2007 - link

    Honestly, after playing through this game, I'm as underwhelmed as you are. It was enjoyable, sure, but I can't see myself playing it again...not the way I did with Diablo 2. It just lacks that certain uhmph that Diablo 2 had, and the multiplayer is not nearly as fun or exciting as I thought it would be.

    Seriously, if you're expecting multiplayer to be like a traditional MMO, or even like Diablo 2 was, you're going to be disappointed. The only non-instanced places are the stations. That may sound a lot like Guildwars, but it's not. Guildwars had a lot of substance in not only their quests, but also their landscapes. In HGL, it's "go through this zone to get to that zone and kill 5 whatchamacallits".

    Oh well. Could have been better IMO.
  • crimson40 - Monday, December 10, 2007 - link

    I know each game is not for everyone, and the reviews have been mixed. But, I have been truly enjoying this game. Each patch has been helping the game quite a bit, but unfortunately you never get a second chance to make a first impression. So, I fear that the release performance and bugs will certainly hamper what could have been a much better received game.

    The thing I like about this is that all the content in multiplayer today CAN be solo'd and most quests can be completed in under 30 minutes. This makes the game very casual-gamer friendly, but still the ability to play with friends.

    The benefits of being a subscriber right now are very limited, and this does need to be further developed. I do think this complex subscription model has also worked against this game.
  • crimson40 - Monday, December 10, 2007 - link

    Ack, sorry for the double-post. Also should mentioned that the DX10 benefits are not really in image quality but in motion blur and distance-based blurring. Other reviews have done a bit more justice on what DX10 does for you in HGL.
  • crimson40 - Monday, December 10, 2007 - link

    I know each game is not for everyone, and the reviews have been mixed. But, I have been truly enjoying this game. Each patch has been helping the game quite a bit, but unfortunately you never get a second chance to make a first impression. So, I fear that the release performance and bugs will certainly hamper what could have been a much better received game.

    The thing I like about this is that all the content in multiplayer today CAN be solo'd and most quests can be completed in under 30 minutes. This makes the game very casual-gamer friendly, but still the ability to play with friends.

    The benefits of being a subscriber right now are very limited, and this does need to be further developed. I do think this complex subscription model has also worked against this game.
  • nickveeee - Monday, December 10, 2007 - link

    I liked your review very much. I have to say I play the game and I enjoy it alot. I played WoW and the time constraints due to the travel there make this game to me more viable. You can get in do a few things and get out. Which fits my gaming style as compared to the raiding lifestyle. The feel of a large MMO is not there but again this is getting addressed.

    I persoanlly think the game got rushed out to meet the Oct 31st deadline. The recent patches and upcoming patch in Dec makes the suscriber option more viable in my honest opinion.

    They just recently had a IRC with the developers on Dec 7 just go to the hellgate homepage to read what was said.

    The balance issues in some of the modes are being addressed now. I think the developers are doing a good job making this game better as time goes along. Again I think it was rushed to get it out by Oct 31.

    Sure it was in development for awhile but it seems no matter what game it is there are issues in this genre.

    I think what helped me storyline wise was reading the book that was put out by Mel Odom it really gave me insight to the story line. I mean should you have to read a book to get the storyline, no but it helped me.

    Again overall great review but I would like you to review it again in 4 months and then tell me what you think.

  • gaakf - Monday, December 10, 2007 - link

    I must say that was a very good review Jarred. I think your readers would enjoy more game reviews in the future. I know I would.

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