Buying Hellgate:London. Read here first!
Hellgate: London... it was supposed to be the game that held me over until Age of Conan or Warhammer Online. So since everyone is putting in their two cents, I will add mine and see if we can give people a good overall idea of the game.
TYPE OF GAME:
This game was hyped to be the next coming of Diablo. The Flagship Studios people, who were former employees of Blizzard that worked on the Diablo series, have flaunted their reputations at every turn. This really helped build the hype of the game and truthfully got me extremely excited. I mean really... they made a great game in Diablo! Some of the other people who left Blizzard that worked on Diablo went and made Guild Wars, of course this will be a great game! Again, this was a game that was supposed to make me want to pick it up 3 years from now, just like Diablo 2 did.
FIRST AND FOREMOST, THIS IS NOT AN MMORPG by any use of the term! The game is similar in style to Guild Wars as it is has a central hub (train stations) for players, being sort of a meeting place for people to gather before going out into the instances. There are typically 4-15 people in the train stations at any one time. You collect your quests and go kill. There is no real interaction with anyone in train stations. Diablo 2 would have the same set up if the chat rooms you come to prior to starting your game were actually inside of the Diablo game itself. This does not have any MMORPG elements other than people meet and... that is about it, it is not much about roleplaying.
GRAPHICS:
This game can either played in a DirectX 10 or DirectX 9 mode. I will review both.
DirectX 10 version is obviously going to be the best looking of the two versions. The weather FX, elemental FX, and weapons FX, are outstanding in DirectX 10. I went back and forth between DirectX 10 & 9 numerous times throughout beta and each and every time I switched back to the DirectX 9 version, I kept thinking how ugly it was compared to the DirectX 10 version. However, with that said, the DirectX 9 version is very stable, with the DirectX 10 version being pretty much unplayable for long periods of time due to crashing. Whether this was fixed after release, I personally do not know, but from reading forums and websites, it was not fixed. The DirectX 10 version had a memory leak on a lot of machines, which caused HG:L to use tons of system resources until it finally crashed the game and/or your computer. I am running a very high end gaming rig, just to have it brought to its knees by HG:L due to graphics problems.
The train stations have some very nice touches to them that help you really get into Hellgate’s world. They look worn and dirty in places. The character models are above average for a FPS type game. They are sub-par compared to those DX 10 games just releasing are about to be released, such has Bioshock and Crysis. The levels are a problem. The idea of random dungeons is a great idea on paper, but the idea sort of flopped in execution. First off, the random dungeons are not very random. Most of the dungeons have the same overall look and feel each time you go into it. They even have similar routes. Yes, they are different, but the differences are so subtle it is barely noticeable. Because of their random dungeon generator, the levels lack the personal touch that a programer could have given each level. They could have given each level its own look and feel instead of a similar look over and over. The levels feel... well dead.
So technically the graphics are a flop, visually there are slightly above average. The graphics don’t compare to Bioshock or Crysis, but still high quality nonetheless.
SOUND:
I personally play with a pair of surround sound head phones when I am playing action games. Just helps put me into the game a little more. The sounds in HG:L or about average for a game. Nothing impressive but nothing really lacking either. Lots of growls and snarls in the right places. Every once in a while you will get to hear something going on in the background that will increase your enjoyment. But for what it is worth, the sound and music merely gets the job done, but does not take anything to the next level of gaming.
GAMEPLAY:
Overall gameplay: The game is played from a first person or third person perspective. If you are playing on of the ranged classes you can pick either first or third, both views play great ranged. It is just a preference. I have played characters both ways and did not have any trouble either way. If you pick on of the melee classes you will be stuck in third PoV unless you equip a gun (which I don’t suggest). After, that the game plays much like a FPS. Run kill, run some more and kill. Did, I mention you, run, kill, run kill and then kill some more? Yes, the game play after 10 to 20 hours gets extremely repetitive. For the first 8 hours or so you will be like, OMG THIS IS THE BEST GAME EVERY. Shortly thereafter, you will be thinking, should I even bother play this game? AI: The AI in the game, well, there is one, but it is so mindless, it is barely worth mentioning. Most of the demons are just standing there until attacked, and then after they are they do only a couple of things, run at you and melee, stay right were they are and shoot you or do in and out runs. They do the same routine until you are dead or they are. This was fine with a game like Diablo 2, but that was years ago. Now we have game AI’s that flank you, chase you out of hiding with grenades, wait and ambush you, and run when they are hurt. HG:L goes for quantity of mobs, not quality.
Skills & Stats: The game uses a skill tree similar to the ones you find in Diablo, Diablo 2 or even World of Warcraft; however, Diablo 2 and World of Warcraft have several different trees windows (3 per character) with each tree window having multiple paths and its own unique focus, i.e. the lightning, fire and cold trees of Diablo 2's sorcerous or the shadow, healing and utility trees of WoW’s priest. In HG:L you get one skill window with about 4 overall paths. Each of these paths are supposed to give you what each of the tree windows did in the other games, each path has its own focus. However, all of us non-cookie cutter people tried several different paths during beta and found that only one or two worked per class. This will force even us non-cookie cutter people to go the cookie cutter route. This means 1,000,000 of class clones. Some of the skills are very well thought out, which will make you go “wow” that is a great skill... others are not even worth picking up for ANY REASON. There are no respecs in the game, so once you “try out” that useless skill, you are either starting over or living with your decision. Also, don’t bother with saving skill points like you did in Diablo 2, Flagship has the skills spaced out to keep you from hording skill points. It is better to upgrade the skills you already have when you can.
As for the stats, yes, you can distribute your own stat points. The problem is that the equipment you get will have stat requirements, similar to those in Diablo 2. However, unlike Diablo 2, you don’t have really any extra stat points to do what you wish with them. As a blademaster you will need tons of spirit to uses those nice shiny swords so you will find yourself dumping all of your points into that one stat. This happens with every class. Their equipment forces them to dump most if not all of the stat points into a couple stats just to keep up with the equipment levels, so again, you are left with a cookie cutter design on most character types. My friend and I started two guardians at two different times. When we were finished our stats were very close to each others. So if you play, don’t worry about what stat points you put where..... just save them up and the game will let you know where to put them and even when! You will get that new shiny weapon and go damn, I need X stat to use this. Then you will find yourself dumping all those saved stat points.
Equipment: I bumped this up above, but I did want to mention that HG:L does a great job with the equipment and their upgrades. You can spend hours just upgrading equipment and shopping! HG:L makes even junk drops worth having. Also each player in an instance gets his/her own drops so there is no fighting over quest items or equipment. It is the best loot system I have seen in a game to date. I can’t believe no one thought of it before. Kudos to Flagship for making this system and I hope to see it again in future games.
VALUE:
The games value is that of a FPS, which is about 10 to 20 hours. Some people who really like it will get more out of it, but I don’t see the game lasting for years to come. The repetitive game play is the big killer along with the fact that the non-subscribers ONLY GET THREE CHARACTER SLOTS! That is half of the number required to make one of each class. I will touch more on this in the “subscription section”. If you subscribe the game will probably hold you longer, but replayability always comes down to the player himself. Some will want to play it over and over, some will not.
COMMUNITY:
This is a single player game in multiplayer clothing. Outside of my friends online during beta, I never had any reason to speak to ANYONE. The game can easily be soloed early on. (I don’t know passed 22). The other players in the station tunnels with you might as well be NPC’s running around shopping. Actually, you will find yourself interacting with the NPC’s more than other players.
SUBSCRIPTION:
This is the only place in this review that I am going to get on my personal soap box. I hope that so far you found my review unbias and helpful. However, I am going to get personal here. The subscription service is the biggest under-handed piece of crap that the gaming industry has seen to date. If you have been living in a hole, I will explain a little bit of what this subscription is about. The game shipped with a single player and a multiplayer games. You can buy the main game and play online free. However, if you want, you can subscribe and get extra content not found in the original game for $10.00. Most of you go great, extra content; however, I personally feel that most of the content that they are planning on giving you SHOULD HAVE BEEN PART OF THE OUT OF BOX GAME! The way this works is you sign up for the premium package and you get access to all the extras, more character slots, bigger stash, extra areas, new classes, extra equipment. Flagship says that they decided on doing a monthly subscription instead of following Guild Wars and going the expansion pack direction. The problem is if you pay $10.00 a month for 4 months ($40.00 total to you, if like me you went to a public school!) and you cancel your service, YOU LOSE EVERYTHING that you received as part of that subscription. If you made a character in your 4th slot that you are currently working on, it greys out. You can’t pick and choose which characters are greyed out, so if you are going passed three characters and stop subscribing, be prepared not to play those characters or be prepared to delete your older ones. This also includes gear, upgrades and your stash! That is right, anything in the extra part of your stash when you stop subscribing, you cannot get to it! It does not get deleted, just greyed out until you pay for your subscription. With the expansion pack method, you still pay the $40.00 but you don’t lose anything if you don’t want to pay an extra $10.00, $20.00 or $50.00's in the future. You are pretty much renting the rest of the game from Flagship and not buying it. Flagship put just enough of everything in the game to make the game seem complete and to wet your whistle so you will want to subscribe and not be angry. People mentioned that there were actually nine classes that were supposed to be in the game. We got six. Funny that one of their first updates will add a character class to the game. Again, it seems that Flagship held back 1/4 of the game so you could pay them to get the other 1/4! Then they had the nerve to offer a lifetime subscription for $149.00, but only for a limited time. Strangely enough that limited time will expire only weeks after release, so people will not really know if they like the end game (because we were only allowed to play to 22 during beta) prior to dropping $149.00 on a life time subscription. This is nothing more than Flagship asking players to buy the game, and then pay a monthly fee to rent the completed version!
Further, the game has in game ads which one would think would off-set some of the costs; however, Flagship is double dipping as much as they can. (This is NOT a debate on in game ads and how big they are, how many or how they look.)
EULA
I am not going to say much here. If you are interested about the EULA debate, just do a Google search for Hellgate London and EULA and you will find about 100 websites with information. Long story short, EA’s EULA has gotten pretty broad in what information their games can take from your computer. Typically this what information they can take is very specific. Hellgate’s pretty much says any and all information.
CONCLUSION
HG:L had potential to be a great game, the next Diablo; however, it failed because it was obviously released to early and unpolished. I am sure we have EA to thank for this. The game has a great core, great theme, good visuals; however, it comes out looking like an early beta of a game where half the skills are not in the game, level design is still being worked on and the code is being optimized. I think what killed this game the most is EA and the fact that Flagship went money whoring on their first release. Their Diablo rep only took them so far and after that we got... Hellgate:London
Overall score: 7.0 out of 10.0