So Hellgate London was released a week ago now, and I have had time to reflect. First let me address the 97.5% of the people reading this (numerically, I think we probably have 2 total readers, and since one is me, I am talking directly to that other person!) that don’t know what Hellgate London is.
Hellgate London is in fact the worst marketed game of all time. I consider myself to be pretty up to date on the Video Game Industry. I know about the anticipated games coming soon (Mass Effect, Rock Band, Warhammer Online, Assassin’s Creed - etc) but I didn’t know what Hellgate London was. Not until I was offered a beta account.
A little research gave me the following information. Hellgate London is made by Flagship Studios, a new company founded from original Diablo developers like Bill Roper. This game is basically Diablo 3 - with a twist. It is now FPS/MMO Diablo. 6 classes, skill trees, MMO setup similar to Guild Wars with community towns and instanced maps. Great potential. It seems anyone else I speak to also has no idea whatsoever what this game is.
Moving on… this game is a total mess. It feels like I’m playing a game somewhere in between Alpha and Beta phases. It is littered with bugs and errors that are beyond unacceptable. Up until yesterday, one class had a bug where if you equipped a rare powerful gun on your pet, heaven forbid you should ever want to log out - because your item ACTUALLY DISAPPEARS. That’s OK, maybe you are hardcore and you don’t sleep or eat (and you likely won’t have a job either) and you can just play forever. Thats outta the question too because it will just randomly vanish on you without warning. Well fine, maybe you are lucky and you haven’t had it randomly disappear on you, and you are still that hardcore jobless guy (or girl, we don’t discriminate at Peppercorn Nation!), well I have you have around 900 terabytes of video memory, because this game doesn’t release the textures from your card. Your game will slow down and crash about once every other hour - or more often if you still using this bad boy:
That being said… why am I insanely addicted to this game? I can’t explain it. I hate to use the cliché that it’s like a bad car accident, you just can’t look away - so I will make up my own. It’s like watching Wayne Brady on Don’t Forget The Lyrics (or any other crap he is on) - you know it is horrendously crappy, yet you are watching it, and you cannot explain why. Before you know it, six hours have passed, you are hungry, and you need to shave again, yet you have an odd sense of satisfaction. Actually it’s nothing like watching Wayne Brady, because the sense of satisfaction from Hellgate London is replaced by a sense of disgust (and thoughts of suicide) from Wayne Brady.
Bottom line, I’m enjoying this game - despite its massive list of flaws. Adjust Your Gameplay (Peppercorn Nation’s gathering of online hooligans) is playing there with about 10 people, and will probably be there for at least a month maybe two. Drop me at line on Peppercorn if you feel like it.
5 Comments Received
November 7th, 2007 @4:34 pm
I don’t get how games like Hellgate: London and Fury get the MMO title applied to them. What’s massive about dungeon crawling in a group or doing 10-15 person arena fights?
I haven’t bought the game yet, but I know I’ll get peer pressured into it at some point, despite the fact that I couldn’t stand playing Diablo 2 for more than a week or two. The thing I’ve always liked about MMOs and strategy games is that there’s an element of competition to them. Hack n’ Slashers never seemed to have much of that.
If it weren’t for this damned 9 month Warhammer delay I wouldn’t be considering dropping cash for Hellgate. ><
November 7th, 2007 @4:35 pm
In response to your previous IM to me, I won’t be hopping on the HG:L ship for two reasons. One, my video card is complete shit and needs a replacement. And two, I suspect the game will lose its novelty really, really quick.
Glad to hear you’re enjoying it, though. I give you guys another month, tops
November 7th, 2007 @5:11 pm
/quote Butter
haven’t bought the game yet, but I know I’ll get peer pressured into it at some point
/unquote Butter
haha I feel the same way. I’m short on cash
But talk to Pepper about the game, and it will DEFINITELY make you want to play it.
November 7th, 2007 @5:18 pm
Well… if you think about it, MMO stands for Massively Multiplayer Online right? Technically they are MMO as there are thousands of people on one server. Also, despite the zones being instanced, the towns aren’t.
I know most old school MMORPG players are like me where MMO is just short for MMORPG. I’ve had enough arguments with people about if Diablo is an MMO or not… but that is another topic.
November 8th, 2007 @10:46 am
Hellgate has its good and its bad, the multiplayer seems to always update 5 minutes worth of files every time I reboot my computer and sometimes there will be a complete crash (granted it is a fast crash). Its a fun game but I doubt I’ll see myself playing more than a few months (I hope at least until a good MMO comes out). I also have the orenge box to keep me busy while I’m not doing school work - TF2 and portal are bound to keep me happy.
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