Hellgate: London Comments by Rob Fahey

PC Gamer also gave this around the 75% mark.

What a huge disappointment for those looking forward to it but glad the review reflects the game rather than be swirled by the hype.

Fair review, judging by the beta. The Diablo magic really just works for me in this though, so I am pretty sure I'll end up with a higher score for me.

I'd disagree with the point that it doesn't play much differently, compared to Diablo, though - the classes you can play from the FP perspective felt completely different to me, and in the end Hellgate delivers more on the promise of Tabula Rasa than TR itself in that regard.

Random levels are a bit problematic: I remember Titan Quest (a favourite of mine) got slaughtered in a few reviews for not having random levels.

ouch, this was supossed one of the big PC ones, next to Crysis and such.

Shame (still ok though), I really liked the concept and setting.

On a sidenote, I seem to have a subscription to loving 7- and 8 rated games recently, while the 9s and 10s leave me relatively cold. Hm. :)

Loved the demo of this, the PSO like gameplay with more action like control and customise option persuaded me to get ordering my first PC game in ages.

I'd disagree with the point that it doesn't play much differently, compared to Diablo, though - the classes you can play from the FP perspective felt completely different to me

The classes are definitely very different to Diablo's fare, yeah, and I acknowledged that in the review - my point was purely that you could have implemented those classes in Diablo's engine, if you wanted. Target-and-click isn't a radically different game mechanic to point-and-click, although I think it's a bit more accessible and immediate (and a worthwhile progression, as such).

Random levels are a bit problematic: I remember Titan Quest (a favourite of mine) got slaughtered in a few reviews for not having random levels.

Wow. Just... Wow. I didn't read any of those reviews, as evidenced by the fact that I haven't had to pop my eyes back into my head in recent memory. How anyone could mark a game down for having properly scripted, flowing, human-designed levels rather than random maps is absolutely beyond me.

It's massively addictive, while you can tell it could be so much better.

Wow. Just... Wow. I didn't read any of those reviews, as evidenced by the fact that I haven't had to pop my eyes back into my head in recent memory. How anyone could mark a game down for having properly scripted, flowing, human-designed levels rather than random maps is absolutely beyond me.

I fully agree - but it allegedly "ruins multiplayer" - well, it probably does for people who play these games for years.

Those were often the same reviews that criticised TQ for allowing that you take your single-player characters into multiplayer games, so you can blame some of your colleagues for 2 of your criticisms of HG:L. ;)

'we doubt its Californian developers could pick Boris Johnson out of a line-up of orang-utans'

And who can blame them, though its a rather rude comparison for orang-utans though, who are endangered and very very cool looking.

Unlike tories which we hoped were endangered, though we have recently been proved sadly wrong.

I've been having a pop at this with a group of friends all on the beta, and this is definately one of those games that benefits from playing in a group. I'm not sure how 7/10 or 75% can be construed as 'a huge disappointment' though. Sure, its not a perfect game, but it is damn fun, so I'd say the scores are justified and the game is well worth a play.

Even if they did remove all of George's crazy bacon and pants related babbling.

No mention of the large number of bugs that plague the game?

There are numerous forum posts about multiple CTDs and memory leaks, not to mention issues over the DX10 graphics.

And techsmith 101 is no longer a big girls blouse.

Gurgeh,

What was this paragraph referring to then, if not bugs ?

'The other glaring problem revealed by the online modes - but present in single-player as well - is that Hellgate isn't the most stable piece of software in the world. Although we only saw a couple of actual crashes in our play sessions (at least one of which can probably be blamed on a suspect ATI driver), we did experience gigantic problems with slow-down, which got progressively worse as we played the game for longer before eventually necessitating a restart.'

Gurgeh - actually, I mentioned the bugs, memory leaks etc on the last page of the review. Fingers crossed for a patch, but at the moment it's definitely an unfinished-feeling game.

The memory leak seems to be only an issue if you put texture detail on very high, same problem Dark messiah had. I put mine on high for HGL and it works quite smoothly, wish they'd sort it out though.

Nope, I've had the problem on High as well - my first instinct was that it was a texture problem, but dropping the detail didn't help much.

Really? That's strange, since reducing that it's been very smooth, though loading times are still annoying.

"We know what you're thinking - and the answer is yes, this is a description of what's going to happen if the Tories get their clown-shoed demon in buffoon's clothing into City Hall in the next election."

I guess we could just leave Labour in - the result will pretty much be the same. Only with more demons. :P

I liked the demo, and would be eager to try out the MP side of this, but there's just far too much to play at the moment! And this month isn't going to get any better, what with Mass Effect and AC to play!

I guess we could just leave Labour in - the result will pretty much be the same. Only with more demons. :P

At the risk of turning this thread into a car-crash political discussion - I think it's fair to say that Ken Livingstone is Labour only in name, and only then because they asked nicely. It's hard to think of a key politician in the UK who is *less* in line with Nu-Labour's policies than he is, for better or worse...

Anyway, they'd probably be vaguely cute, albeit disturbing, newt demons.

And this month isn't going to get any better, what with Mass Effect and AC to play!

Yeah - I can't escape the feeling that a few months more polishing, and a release in the cold, barren months of January or February, would have done Hellgate a lot of good.

Just pre ordered the game. Seems like a good game to play with a friend who agreed to start this with me.

One question remains: What does a subscription actually provide? The fee seems pretty hefty for content patches every 3 months or so. It would have made more sense to have a fee on the lines of Dungeon Runners (very cheap with some perks to paying customers) or give the opportunity for players to buy content packs like Battlefield does.

Anyone got any IP addresses for the intrusive Massive and EA servers so that I can update my hosts file before I play?

They should have made it isometric. \0/

@JMM

Like Shinji says, the memory leaks are a real pain, even at lower settings. I think I only ever closed the game using the actual menu options once during the beta, the rest of the time I had the game dictate when I should play.

Having said that, I played the retail version for an hour or so last night, and it seemed to be a little bit more stable, since it only lagged a little in tube stations instead of crashing out. There are still some audio bugs too, which is annoying.

The retail version has all the "Network Error" problems, the memory leaks, and the crashes to desktop sadly.

It's rather telling that if any other game did this I'd throw it in the bin and move on, but for this bloody game I just come back for more.

It sure is addictive, and as I managed to pick it up for £22 and played the beta for 15+hrs I'd say it has already paid for itself anyway. ;)

It almost sounds as if this might be worth a 7.5 or an 8 after then inevitable patches come out for it.

Maybe a good January sale purchase?

I would like them to fix the fucking stupid update system. When it's downloading new updates you get no progress bar to see how long it will take, often can't alt+tab to the desktop while it's working and there's no 'cancel' button - the only way to stop it is to force the application to close. Why not run it in a small window before the game launches, eh?

The demo for this didn't hook me at all. Horrible repeated voice samples for the NPCs that spout nonsense in bad accents, quests that were right out of an MMO in their genericness - kill X amount of zombies, collect Y amount of items from killing enemies - and areas that were getting repetitive even within the demo.

I'll be getting this anyway because my brother really enjoyed it, but can I assume that the demo was just a really bad taster of what the game has to offer?

it's much better online, apparently - which i assume is how you will be playing with your brother anyway?

I think might be forced into a similar deal with my own sibling…

I imported the Collectors Edition from the US, I know, I'm a muppet...

The multiplayer version downloads a patch the first time you login and the problems pretty much started from there.

I havent managed to go three rooms in a row without a lockup yet, it doesnt matter if I use the DX9 or 10 engine, the 10 engine looks prettier but crashes slightly more often. Im on nvidia using the latest drivers and have followed all the bits Flagship were putting on their tech suport forum but they were overwhelmed with people shouting it doesnt work.

It's a real shame, theres a really decent time killing game buried in here from the 15 minutes here, 10 minutes there I do manage before it locks up yet again. Another couple of months polishing it and it would have been a sure fire winner, as it stands at the moment - I would approach with huge caution!

It's not just me, on another forum I'm on out of 20 odd people that bought the game, 15 plus are having stability issues with it.

Single player works after a fashion, well, it doesnt lock up as often. The npc voices are mad though, perhaps they were meant to be placeholders which they forgot to switch :)

I really enjoyed the beta, yes it's not the deepest game in the world but it was a hell of a lot of fun and if you enjoyed Diablo you will love this.

Playing the european version on vista with an 8800 and latest drivers and the stability is beyond a joke.

I cannot logon to the forums with my eu account at the moment which is a nice touch.

How the cretins in quality control at flagship could let a potential landmark title ship in as a steaming pile of buggy pooh is frankly beyond me.

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME until you get some confirmation that it actually runs

ARGHHHHHHHHH!!!

brutal! i was really looking forward to this, but wasn't aware of this randomly generated levels...that concept really doesn't appeal to me. shame.

I was really looking forward to this title back when it was under development, but then it turned into what it is now. It's sad that you have to pay a monthly subscription fee to play the really hardcore modes. Absolutely not buying it until clause 3 of the EULA is reformulated into a form which clearly reflects Flagship's EULA explanation. Then again, in-game advertising isn't my thing either, so I probably wouldn't buy it, even after the reformulation.

The handcrafted maps in TQ were definitely a disadvantage since it was just a decently worked out 3D D2-clone with a better interface and another setting, D2 offered the right mix between handcrafted (boss-)levels and varied randomised levels.

Of course, doing randomised levels for an isometric game is a completely different thing than doing it for a third person/first peron game, something which Hellgate: London seems to prove.

Such a shame this, the taint of EA's publishing(/pushing?) work or is it just that Flagship lost the old Blizzard-way of polishing things?

I just want to wade into the man-made vs random dungeons thing.

Whilst I, for one, like good design, the problem many MMORPG's have these days is you run through aa dungeon more than once. Sadly, in some cases for loot you could run it a dozen or more times. They eventually get old, and samey, and predictable, the magic gets a bit lost.

Randomly generated is also problematic as, has been said, you're using well-known places but generating random maps. Random maps aren't going to be nearly as polished up as maps designed lovingly, so they can feel samey especially when using a generic map-set (As HGL does). But at least, on the flipside, you can run a place more than once and be surprised.

Basically, neither format really hold up under scrutiny. Which leaves the argument as a bit of a moot point, because either you generate random maps and dumb down on quality, or make solid maps of quality that people will inevitably get bored of. This happens a lot on WoW, it happened to me - I ended up hating a lot of the instances, they were too big, too predictable. People who came with me knew the formulas already, they knew how to work the tricks of every map, knew shortcuts, knew patrols.

I must be very lucky as I never played Diablo much so this whole style feels very fresh and alive to me. Of course, I know the randomly-generated places aren't the be-all. However, from experience, I can't really recommend the solid formula as well unless they find some way to mix it up a bit (randomise stuff, which invariably leads back in a nasty little circle!). Damned if you do, damned if you don't, can't please everyone so just get in line and see if it floats your proverbial boat.

It certainly does mine... not because of quality, but because I find the dark humour laden in Hellgate London utterly bewitching. I never got past one quest in beta and it was easily the funniest thing I've seen in a game for a long time, so I want to at the very least get to its inevitable (and hopefully brilliantly funny) conclusion.

"I'll be getting this anyway because my brother really enjoyed it, but can I assume that the demo was just a really bad taster of what the game has to offer?"

Yeah, it's no good at all. They should've included the second hub area aswell. Level cap of 10 or something. The second and third hubs is where the game starts to come into its own and you start running into more interesting items and upgrades.

I've been enjoying the retail version, but the randomness really doesn't quite work. Also, I would appreciate a little more variation, and the enemies are kind of blah - the samey school of demon design we've known for ages. And yeah, the huge drops in framerate are unacceptable. But the basic formula holds up and the premise draws you in - it's not a bad game, but not quite the quality I was looking for.

You gave this junk the same score as the Witcher? You should be ashamed.

Have given up on the multiplayer

Single player on vista, using dx9 and turning down the options seams pretty stable so far. Also a lot smoother.

Garrggh though. I hate to see hard work wasted like this.

Diablo II as I remember was seen as a standard in the industry cos they delayed release over Xmas to get it right. Which of course hurt sales in the long run ;)

Hypacharry, can you "say" a few words about the imported CE version?
Is it in paperbox with embossed parts or just in a DVD box?

I suspect ultimately we're going to end up with increasing amounts of random level generation in games as the cost of creating content goes up...

Of course, I happen to have written an Angband variant with a 10,000+ LOC level generator, so maybe I'm a little biased.

and yet halo 3 got a 10?

oooook, this reminds me why I play games myself before buying it rather than trusting reviews ;-) Yes I agree it's been rushed out the door and that's a pitfall of them working with EA but it deserves more than 7.

After a weekend of frustrating crashes I still like the damm game (single player anyway)

My brief dip into multiplayer was not as fun. I am really not sure how the servers can handle characters with large numbers of pets and the huge numbers of mobs. But it crashed so quickly that it was not possible to take any long term views. It is also REALLY hard to see how they can do raid content unless it is just a few big bosses in the level. (By raid I mean 10+ players per instance. Maybe they have something different in mind)

Also I supect that the environments might be "dumbed down" for multiplayer. There seem to be larger more complex environments in single player. (maybe just luck of the draw).

The game also gets genuinely very funny as you get in to it. The amazingly annoying quest text delivery actually is put to good use.

If you like old style shooters and your pc can run it for a reasonable length of time then it is great fun. It can be played just like an fps with nuts on.

I suspect I will not bother with multiplayer until they have the problems solved. And I am really doubtfull I will subscribe. I just hope they have the resources to fix the horrible reliability and bugs.

This game doesn't deserve a 7.

The fact that it doesn't even have LAN support is sign enough that they dedicated more time thinking how to win money via subscriptions than on the game itself.

A pity. I expected way more from Roper and the ex-Blizzs.

"Anyone got any IP addresses for the intrusive Massive and EA servers so that I can update my hosts file before I play?"

I was somewhat disappointed that the review didn't mention this.

Oh, yeah, why the fuck does the review also not mention the lack of LAN MP? "It's EA, you should know it has none" and "well, it's been known before release" are no valid excuses. Seriously.

I recommend everyone to give it a try. I almost left it out after I read all the weak reviews. I loved Diablo and I love this one as well. It may not be perfect, but I am perfectly happy with it.

I've just bought this game and it won't even install. From an internet search it looks like a lot of people are having problems with the DVD not playing on their drive.

Also, I've created an account but it won't let me log in. And you can't access their support if you aren't logged in - nice touch.

I'm taking this back and getting a refund. Piece of crap.

From the perspective of a Diablo II aficionado (well, maniac :D):

It's GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Can't reccomend it enough if you loved D2...

i just finished playing the game. got it few weeks ago. theres obviously work to be done but overall very enjoyable

Just picked this up to slake my recently re-kindled Diablo craving (having just blitzed through D2 for the umpteenth time).

This game is a dog.

The environments and combat are repetitive beyond belief and seem to have been tacked on as an afterthought to the RPG elements. Also, the lack of bob on the first person view feels like you're gliding about and it feels awful. Terrible pitty.