High expectations, total letdown
Here's what's good with the game:
- reminds of Diablo 2
- just what you need to loosen yourself if you're tense
- graphics are... OK
- level design is very realistic (on the outside)
And here's what bad:
- video quality if the intro movie has poor quality, worst than the trailers
- the sound from the intro movie gets doubled/tripled randomly
- overall sound volume is too low
- there is a loading screen to the character creation/selection screen
- levels are too small
- voice acting is terrible, sometimes it's even played at a higher speed
- lots of reading involved, characters just say a welcoming text
- gameplay is way too easy, played until I was about lvl 7 and not one single monster was even remotely close at dropping my life bar below 80%
- stupid quests like "kill 10 of those monsters"
- dull and repetitive gameplay - go out, kill a few monsters and come back
- no multiplayer LAN available
- the game is expensive and requires a monthly fee to play online (Diablo 2 did NOT have a monthly fee) - just to make it barely mediocre.
- the game freezes or crashes every few minutes, the longest I got to play in one go without having to reboot the pc was 10 minutes. They mostly occur when in the inventory/skills screen. FEAR, Condemned, Prey, etc - no freeze/crash issues. But Hellgate has plenty of those.
- the insane EA EULA tops the list, it alone being a good enough reason to avoid this game.
Yes, I played only until I was lvl 7. But it took almost 2 dozen freezes/crashes to accomplish that feat.
I would have given it a 5 if not for all those crashes and freezes. But -4 points for that. I care for my hardware.
Waiting for Diablo 3.
PS: In the player reviews pie chart a total of 24.7% voted "Other". Wonder why gamespot removed "Abysmal", "Bad" and "Terrible" from the chart - could it be they all voted that? Too many negative reviews visible in the chart? :)