Game Reviews for Hellgate: London (PC)
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Boy, this must have been the biggest disappointment in my gaming career (next to Spore maybe). I have waited for this one for such a long time, counting on Bill "Career Suicide" Roper to deliver something extraordinary after the leaving the safe haven of Blizzard after making Diablo 2 in order to pursue his creative freedom. I expected a landrush, the Citizen Kane of gaming. But all i got was an unfinished, unsupported product of which i finished maybe a fourth. Horrible game design and programming, amateurish and a disgrace to the industry and I the way this game had been advertised was close to illegal.
There sank the Flagship, let us hope it stays at Davy Jones'.· Like · Go to review -
I really wanted to like this game.. and at first I did. Then I noticed how every level looked the same... they have a very limited tile set. Every outside level looks the same, every subway is the same... Just felt like I was playing the same levels over and over. Too bad too, this could have been a great game.· Like · Go to review
I am a diehard Diablo II fan, I mean really, anybody who enjoyed any RPGs over the last decade would probably have to be. So when I found out that the creators of Diablo II were putting together their next big thing I couldn't have been more excited. I followed it as closely as I could, signed up for beta acces and got into the open beta a week or two before release. I do understand why it failed, but I was still disappointed, as I did really enjoy the game.
Gameplay:
The game plays very similarly to Diablo 2. Levels/skills/stats and even items are all structured in the same way. You level up and get stat points to upgrade your base character and skill points to upgrade well, your skills. There are a few different classes to choose from, two from each discipline. Theres the meleeers, Guardian and Blademaster, tank and dps, shield and "here have another awesome sword", the rangeders, Marksman and Engineer, sniper and pets, "there goes your head" and "you can't touch me", and the magicers, Summoner and Evoker, more pets and your typical caster, "you can touch me either" and "ouch i'm dead." I played an engineer for the majority of my HGL experience but dabbled in the other classes a decent amount as well. The skills in HGL seem rather creative, alot of interesting strategies and setups can be created. The quests are your standard RPG thoroughfare, but most come with a rather large dose of rediculous humour that I really quite enjoyed. Some of the shenanigans in Chocolate Park with Techsmith 314 were quite hilarious. Its one of the few games that actually ends up being funny and I really liked it for that. There was alot of interesting stuff in the main storyline and quests and some pretty epic and crazy boss battles. The tried and true own and loot formula from Diablo II was present in this game, often finding awesome set pieces or unique pieces to use or stash away from another character. Lots of the same features from Diablo II were present in the game, a socketing system was in place where you could ugprade your guns with certain ammo/mods/relics, it all was quite reminiscent of Diablo II and all quite enjoyable to be honest. The final battle was epic and I can't pic too many faults with the gamepolay of HGL.
Graphics:
This is where things start to go a little pearshaped. The game was not incredibly pretty, it was decent but nothing crazy, the lighting alway sseemed dark and the textures looked a bit lacking in detail. The game also didn't run as nicely as it should given the graphics. It was a bit of a struggle getting the game to look nice and still run well, moreso for many who had severe bugs blocking their access to the game. One that sticks to my mind is a mate who was trying to play it on Vista, couldn't progress because the game would always leak memory to the point of crashing before he could finish a particular level. He never played it again and its exactly for reason like that, that HGL no longer has servers and is basically dead. The game was rather unfinished, while the RPG elements seemed to be fine the graphics engine was not. It had many bugs that limited play for many people, patches fixed things but by then many people had already left, the game wasn't the best looker but also had a very limited range of scenery. The randomization changed it but you always ended up looking at the same backgrounds or the same walls, there needed to be alot more variety to the style of areas in the game, otherwise you just get sick and tired of it. This where peoples expectations and Flagship Studio's rushing destroyed the game in my opinion. People were thinking of Diablo II and expecting this polished, super addictive masterpiece and Flagship Studio were probably running out of money and needed to get their long awaited product out there. But it came out full of bugs and with a bit of an amateurish feel and this drove many many people away, and destroyed Flagship Studios in the end. So overall the graphics and related entities were the downfall of this game, it didn't look the greatest, got a bit tiresome, if you could even run it at all.
Controls:
HGL handled very nicely. The mouse was nice and free with no laggy feeling to it. The keys were all rather intuitive, you had left and right mouse buttons for either left and right guns or a gun and a skill. Q,E and 1-0 were then used for skills and that was kind of it. Nothing super special, but it all worked nicely and I never had any problems steming from controls.
Audio:
The sound in HGL was quite good from memory, the music was very fitting and never got rediculously old, sounds of skills and monsters was a bit off from memory with things not really sounds forceful enough. One thing the game could never get was any sort of ambience to it, your crawling around subways and underground lairs full of demons but everything about it including the music kept screaming happy. Gave the game an amateurish feel as stated above and a large factor in this was the audio of the game.
Multiplayer:
The game was setup like an MMO, you join a server with lots of other people and you can group up to do quests together, areas scaled to the amount of people to keep the challenge but also allow the gam to be soloed. I didn't group up at all while playing, mainly soloed the whole game, there wasn't any huge incentive to group up and its always a hassle so I never ended up doing it. There were MMO copmonents to the game being made to add on with a monthly fee or something from memory but I don't think much of this occured before the game shutdown. Overall for me the game was mainly a singleplayer affair, which is good because it mens its still enjoyable even after the servers closed down.
Gameplay: 10/10 - It had a few flaws but I really enjoyed it and have only good memories about my HGL experience.
Graphics: 5/10 - Their nothing rediculously special, unfortunately they weren't that efficient either but they weren't awful.
Stability: 2/10 - Given that 95% of the reason the game died was due to stability it doesnt' deserve much here.
Controls: 8/10 - Nothing overly special, the Q and E skill spots were quite handy but everything else was pretty standard.
Audio: 6/10 - The music was decent, monsters and skills were abit light on and it was never able to create any sort of ambience.
Multiplayer: 4/10 - There never seemed any point in grouping up, if it was with friends it may have been fun but none of mine bothered with it, and grouping up with randoms isn't always a field day, so when theres no point it generally doesn't happen, meaning the game ended up predominantly singleplayer, probably part of why the servers shutdown.
My Score: 85/100 - Its heavily flawed but I just loved it, I was lucky and never had any stability problems, I really enjoyed so much of it, it was fresh, slash and loots are always good fun and the storyline was humorous and interesting, always be a favorite of mine.