Hellgate London - Further Review Coverage @ Gamebanshee

magerette

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In further Hellgate:London coverage at Gamebanshee, Brother None writes in to point out some of the following less than overwhelming responses the game is garnering.
Here's an excerpt from the one at Shacknews :
As it stands, Hellgate is merely an average effort. It's one of those games that will undoubtedly receive a handful of half-hearted 8s, like when your first girlfriend in 9th grade asked you for an honest appraisal, but you just didn't have the scones to tell her the truth. Though it may be unfair to judge a game based on expectations, clearly this project had plenty of talent behind it, and the potential to be the stand-out product we all had hoped for. And in truth, the foundation of Hellgate is a strong one. It's just missing a coat of paint or two. And a second floor.
There are also links to some of the reviews already covered at Eurogamer and CVG UK Zone, as well as one at GamePro giving it the lowest score of all at 6/10.
Thanks, BN!


More information.
 
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This is interesting ... when I got my Witcher PR sheets saying it was shaping up to be the big RPG hit of the Fall, I was skeptical because I assumed Hellgate would dominate ... but perhaps the well deserving Witcher will get the recognition it deserves!
 
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The game got 84% in my pelit mag (8-somthing would be my rating too). Its more or less a fun mmo shooter but nothing special like witcher. Good waste of time if youre into such games.

EDIT: the gamepro link leads to a missing page and when i searched the site there was no review abt hellgate. Did they pull it?
 
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danish review: http://www.gamereactor.dk/anmeldelse...ate:+London/

5/10

Good:
-Hack'n slash
-Big arsenal of weapons
-potentially a long lifespan


Bad:
-full of bugs
-no variations in the enviorments
-badly optimized graphics engine
-boring bosses

The game is riddled with bugs (many reviews have mentioned this). Unless wanting a CE, the best option is most likely to delay the purchace until they manage to fix the game.

Other reviews:
A heads up on a non-gamer review in a free paper called the metro (distributed in London with big readership)

They gave it 4 out of 5 said it was great fun, good long term, praised its randomised elements highly

Heres a nice summary of problems & pros:
Crashgate: Lagdon by FFS

I want Hellgate to succeed. I think it *will* succeed. Just a couple months down the track. After having lost half of it's potential player base. Till then. my short list of why HGL was rushed and shouldn't be purchased.

#1 Client Stability: Doesn't exist. BSOD's, lockups and crashes make for a painful playing experience. Add to this two other problems.
- A: If any of these things happen to you while your turning in a quest (god forbid the main arc) you will be stuck. Unable to hand it in or abandon.
- B: As an Engineer every crash or level up can lead to your drone recreating. Losing all the stat's allocated and any equipment it was carrying. Making an Engineers main tool fairly hassle intensive.

#2 Sub Zeero sais FREEZE!: Some players get a near constant amount of freezing. Along the lines of a 1-2m lockup every 2-3m of play time. As you can imagine this is pretty crippling.

#3 Load times: For anything other than entering a level they are incredibly long. Logging in, choosing a character, taking a portal, going to an Underground Station can all take ages and lead into further crashes.

#4 Lack of variety: Sewers, Tunnels, City, Indoors, Hell. Five main tile sets with the occasional something extra. British museum, Tower of London etc. Compared with the variety offered by other games it just doesn't cut it.

#5 Missing functionality: Some of these are worse then others and I don't doubt I've missed more then a few.

No

- A: Mailbox.
- B: Auction House.
- C: Way to split items.
- D: Method of easy grouping.
- E: Fleshed out PvP.
- F: Singleplayer.
- G: Effective chat window.
- H: Key rebindings.
- I: UI mixing.


My final statement would be that Hellgate is mainly missing what World of Warcraft has. What HGL has that WoW doesn't though is an exciting and genuinely fun game. If only they had taken the time to polish things instead of shipping a beta and trying to convince us it was a retail.

Fix the stability and it might be a $20 game. Fix the rest and it's a $50.

Eurogamer gave HGL a 7/10 saying.

Hellgate: London is filled with gorgeous artwork and dripping with atmosphere; it's got a delicious sense of humour and finely tuned combat systems that will be keeping action RPG nuts happy for a long time. Despite this, we've got vast reservations about key aspects of the game; the randomly generated levels feel increasingly hollow, pointless and gimmicky as you progress, the user interface is clunky in some important areas, and there are clearly some hefty bugs here that need patching.

I don't know about you but I think a game should be judged on how good it is at the time not how good it can become. No one disputes that potentially Hellgate could be amazing.

http://www.hellgateguru.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8502
 
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I've been playing with my beta account (they've left them open for some reason) the last couple of nights, and my original impression stands: it's D2 in a 3D, post-apoc setting. That's really it. I think Flagship has a bit of a problem on there hands. If they really expect people to pay a subscription fee for this, they should have had more to offer than exclusive equipment dye packs and more "content" in the form of loot and randomized levels that won't look all that much different from the free levels. Don't get me wrong, it's still addictive fun in the way D2 was. But that's also it's biggest flaw. I think we were all expecting something significantly more or different, and HG:L just doesn't seem to deliver in that regard. Too bad.
 
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Playing it for the first day now, and having a blast with it. A lot of fun so far, and yes, it's D2 in 3D and post apocalyptic - but that isn't a bad thing, is it *g*?

I don't use multiplayer, so can't tell about that, but here on my E6600 with 2GB and a 8800GTX it is fast (some framerate issues in one or two areas so far).

Subscription? Nah, don't think so, unless their offer is tempting. So far, it isn't.
 
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The link in zakhal's post isn't working so here is a working link:

http://www.gamereactor.dk/anmeldelser/67233/Hellgate:+London/

It's in Danish, but basically it just says what zakhal has translated. The reviewer didn't like the game very much. I think he mentions that he was looking forward to playing Diablo III. But as I see it Hellgate:London isn't Diablo III. It's a game in its own right.
 
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Great. More time left for other games. Kinda worrying though, almost every game I looked forward to this year have received less than 9/10 average except that crappy Oblivion expansion, and im not buying an XBox 360 for one game Bioware, forget it.
 
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I was beta testing this and after a rough start because of needing to turn on compatibility mode in Vista it played really well without lag or crashes. The only problem I would have had if I actaully decided to keep upgrading and using my drone (and not going with a different build for my engineer) would have been the stat and equipment loss which many people complained about in the beta but they never fixed.

PS. I don't remember people saying it would reset when you leveled though.
 
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