Hellgate London - An Average Title

Indelible — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 18:08:08 GMT

I’ve been playing it now for 4 or 5 days and so far, I have found nothing massively wrong with the game itself and more the expectations of gamers. Previous to release, Flagship made a lot of Diablo 2 comments in regards to Hellgate and whilst I do feel that the two titles have a lot in common, both are vastly different as well. Hellgate is a typical hack ‘n’ slash game that doesn’t try to glorify itself with pointless lore and an overly diverse storyline and whilst this may hinder the single player aspect of the game, it certainly doesn’t have any great bearing on the multi-player aspect unless you are a role-player.

Don’t get me wrong… I am not saying that Hellgate: London is the best thing since sliced bread. It is however, an almost worthy Diablo-esque title for D2 fans that are fed up of backwards graphics and a tired game. It has a lot of promise and the pre-maturity of gamers these days may compromise that. Hellgate seems like a building block to me that Flagship can tweak over the next year or so but Flagship have to use this time wisely, or they will end up with a nostalgic title that gamers play for no more than a few weeks, just to remember, "that feeling." Remember Neverwinter Nights and Diablo 2 weren’t the massive titles they were until their expansions had been released and Hellgate seems like a title along the same line of thought.

1 Ship now, patch later
2 Atmosphere
3 Single Player?!?!
4 Multiplayer
5 Character Development
6 Graphics
7 Gimmick…

Ship now, patch later

That’s a phrase we’ve all heard so much about, especially where EA are concerned but there has been a lot of hearsay and rumours surrounding EA over the past month concerning their approach to gaming. More recently, EA allowed Mythic to delay shipping Warhammer Online so that there could be more refinement, which is an odd move for EA who aren’t well known for quality and more quantity. So why has Hellgate been labelled a ship now, patch later game? Well, that would most probably have something to do with the abundant bugs, shallow storyline and lack of compelling content.

A few of them are game breaking. So far, I have encountered 2 that pose a massive problem for gamers but it looks like they are going to be promptly fixed via patches and hotfixes. Whilst these game breaking bugs are few and far between, they do frustrate gamers who want to progress and not hang round for a fix to a quest that shouldn’t be broken in the first place. Other problems include graphical bugs here and there such as incomplete textures and screen tearing that isn’t caused by your system but by the clumsy placing of tiles and objects. These will most probably get fixed and again, are few and far between.

There is however one big issue that has finally made itself apparent to me... crashes. I have only experienced 2 crashes since I started playing but both have been at intense moments and both are definatly memory related. In the true style of fate, one has been just before finishing an act and the later, just before going through the portal to a new station (which means I now have to grind through those areas again). There has been a massive outcry about crashes during gaming and Flagship have said they have fixed it but I got countless messages coming up in chat-43 saying, "I keep crashing," and, "wth?! crashes all the time," which suggest to me that the issue hasn't been resolved. At least, not entirely.

I must compliment Flagship however. Most devs would remain silent about these issues and say, “we are aware of the issue and are fixing it,” in a copy and paste type of action but Flagship have been all over the player base like a parent caring for a small child. They have asked the questions that matter and made sure that they know all the facts. Once they know how to fix it, they tell us instead of sitting behind a shroud of mistery and so far, it is this attitude that is most likely the thing saving them from an all out attack by the young player base. If they manage to fix the bugs before Christmas and get rid of the horrid rag-doll physics then we may see a massive influx of holiday gamers. If not, Flagship lose.

Atmosphere

Hellgate, for the most part, doesn't try to be a spooky game. There are occassions where it tries and fails to make you jump out of your seat and it only really scared me when I wasn't paying attention to it and something random happened on screen. It isn't F.E.A.R. which was one hell of a scarey game but then, I don't think it tries to be.

For the most part, you can see that Hell has attacked London and desimated the city. You can see that there are Zombies and it is pretty mood altering but not in a way that scares you. Whilst I was playing it, I appreciated the vision that was being laid out before me but it was so implausible in places that I just couldn't feel the fear of such an occurence. As I said, it doesn't look like it wants to scare you.

There is one mission however that does try to scare you and that is a mission that involves you going into a pitch black underground complex and finding a fresh spore. Graphical discrepencies aside, it almost made me jump in places but I knew I was being attacked before anything got close to me because of my precious elementals.

Maybe I've just watched too many horror films and have become numb to fear. That said, I'm the guy who jumped out of my skin whilst watch Big Trouble in Little China so this game should scare me at least a little and I guess it does but it is hardly noticeable. What it lacks in fear it makes up for in vision. There is a really nice vision of what it could be like and you feel something whilst playing so there is some atmosphere there. Not much though.

Single Player?!?!

Single player is boring, generic and generally tests my patience hence why I played it for an hour and never went back. The questing system and storyline is NOT compelling enough to maintain a single player game worth talking about and it is mostly here where the game seems to lose marks.

Firstly, the quests are generic. The progressive storyline is simply, “go here, do this, watch this cut-scene, rinse and repeat,” and quite quickly, you lose the plot and you can’t work out how one section of the story leads on to the next. It seems to be missing those all important links and the neat progression and depth that I liked about Diablo 2 single player, even though D2 was guilty of some similar things. The random area generation is a gimmick and holds your appeal for all of two minutes. Eventually, you find that the place you went to before to complete a quest looks nothing like it did. I want to know how they can justify using such a method in a real world city like London? My own personal preference would have been to have randomly generated mobs and NPC placement but there should have been some faithfulness along the line, to the history of London. That said, the architecture that is used for buildings does look very much like London and the designs on cars and ambulances are as near to correct as is possible.

Its saving grace for me is that I have no interest in a single player game when there is a persistent multiplayer, “MMO,” aspect to the game. It also gets let off because I’m not here to worry about the story… It’s a hack ‘n’ slash after all – I just want to kill things. I would say that if you are looking for a compelling single player experience with a rich storyline and interesting and diverse character development both on your part and on the part of familiar NPC characters, Hellgate is not the game for you. Period.

Multiplayer

This, for me, is the bread and butter of a title like Hellgate and everything rides on the development of this aspect of the game. Here, the storyline and current quests aren’t really that important at the lower levels. What I want is longevity and I don’t want to suddenly find that I’ve hit the end game level and now have nothing to do with my time because all of the quests are done.

There are a few things that Flagship need to consider before moving forward. Are they creating an MMO or are they creating a multiplayer? So far, it feels like Diablo 2 with in game hubs instead of BattleNet, much like Guild Wars. Personally, I’d see more longevity in the MMO path and Flagship have said that there are going to be MMO-ish content ideas cropping up, such as raiding, player auction houses and in game mail. So it seem Flagship are off on the MMO tangent with multiplayer and this could be a good thing, if they keep to their timetable and they start adding some compellign content and lose the nostalgia. What I mean by that is if they can release patches on the day, if not close to the day, they say they are going to release them then they shall be praised. If they can continue to develop the story line and add depth and class to the lore then they will be praised. If they can come up with more innovative quests like the RTS-style quest in Act 2 then they will be praised. If they just add gimmicks and more generic content and stick to the nostalgia in a weak attempt to garner some D2-fan loving, then they will be laughed at and slandered for their apparent lack of talent and then their, “we’re the old Diablo team,” line will mean nothing.

So far, the multiplayer experience has captivated me enough to keep me playing a respectable amount. I liked Guild Wars but wasn’t a big fan of the combat system or attribute system in the game. Hellgate is far more refined, despite the lack of variety, and the game has some nice touches that make multiplayer fairly interesting. Partying with other players is a fun experience and allows you to build friendships with new people. The randomly generated areas here, work a little more convincingly than they do in single player but I’m still hung up over the total lack of respect for the city of London. The in game events that we are currently seeing, such as the Guy Fawkes event and the recently ended Hallowe’en event are nice touches as well and give it yet another progressive MMO feel.

Despite this, there are countless issues and problems not only in the gameplay mechanics but in the quest setup that make multiplayer almost as painful as single player in certain ways. The environments are clostraphobic and there are issues caused when trying to zone into an area when partied. What they DON'T tell you is that not every player opperates in teh same hub so if you party with someone all sorts of problems crop up, such as failiures to zone everyone into the same instance or player hub.

All in all, the multiplayer aspect of the game needs some more refining and some new and interesting things need to be thrown in if they are going to keep it going. It's not compelling enough to hold my interest for more than a few weeks on normal and I end up findign myself getting bored very quickly but the community that is forming seems to be a fairly social one and when partying does work, it is an enjoyable experience.

Character Development

There are few games I have come across where the character development is really quite bad but sadly, Hellgate is one of those games. Whilst it does seem to make an attempt to provide you with a wide array of options as to where you can take your character, you really just end up occupying one of three viable talent builds. On top of that, there is no character development where the storyline is concerned and what I mean by that is the player isn't made to feel unique. In any RPG, players are made to feel like they are playing an integral part in a storyline and whilst, at times, you feel like you could thin kthis of yourself, the game quickly reminds you that you are not there to feel unique but to kill monsters and not really comprehend what your role is in all of this. Whilst there is slightly more realism involved in this sort of approach, I don't think they intended this to occur as there are quite clear attempts at defining a storyline and a unique feeling for your character.

Talents and attributes are limited in a peculiar way. Whilst they look like they should give more freedom than games like World of Warcraft, once you get into it, they don't and on top of that, you can't change your spec if you mess up. Now I'm not one who usually complains about this mechanic but Hellgate doesn't have a massive replayability factor and infact, it does start to generate daunting thoughts after a while and so, if you mess up, you tend to cring at the thought of replaying the same content over just to fix one tiny little mistake. If the game had replayability then this wouldn't be a problem but it doesn't so it is. On top of that, the talents are very limiting and not very difficult to understand. So far, I've discovered 3 viable builds in the summoner tree that could work ad am struggling to find any more. For a game that has a talent system that allows for any spec you can conieve, why are there only 3 viable options? There aren't enough talents either and unless they crack on with adding more and giving me 100+ talents I can chose from, the games is going to get old very uickly.

That said, it's nice to feel nurtured when you play a game. At least it isn't your mum asking you to do the washing up.

Graphics

Many reviewers have slandered Hellgate for not having, "WOAH!" graphics and just having, "hmmm... not bad," graphics. I'm not going to do that because I think Flagship have been wise to not go for a set up that wants to break your PC at the first sign of an FPS drop.

The graphics under DX9 aren't by any stretch of the imagination, amazingly awe inspiring, and instead communicate an abstract beauty that titles such as World of Warcraft have gone for as well. Flagship have invested time in creating a Video Settings system that allows for massive amounts of variance. From running it on DX9 with everything on low right up to DX10 with everything on very high. The problem with that is that people don't quite know where their graphics should be set and as such, players have reported that the DX10 solution, for example, under Vista isn't too convincing. This really isn't Flagships fault and is something we should be beating Microsoft for but at the end of the day, the game runs without lag under DX10... if you are willing to spend some dolla'.

The DX9 and DX10 formats do look the same in many ways but DX10 has a few tweaks and bonuses that the DX9 version does not. IGN have featured some looks at the DX10 effects and commenters have promptly whined about the lack of graphical depth but is that really where we want to be looking?

World of Warcraft, for example, didn't have majorly good graphics when it was released. In fact, they were fairly dire but they did what they needed to do. Hellgate London does the same in such a way that once you get into things, you really don't care about the lack of graphical detail because there is still an abstract beauty in the graphics that you can appreciate without having to put your computer in the freezer while you play it.

More important is that the game engines lack of technical graphics and favor for abstract and simple graphics means one all important thing - it will run on most PC solutions. Well what does that mean? The same thing it meant for WoW and a range of other games. My old PC, for example, would not have ran Bioshock or Crysis but it would have run Hellgate so which one am I more likely to play first and thus get engrossed with first?

There is beauty in the graphics that you have to appreciate in the game. The concepts and visions that the designers and artists have tried to communicate have been done well. The desperation of humanity is apparent thanks to imagery that really does make it feel that way. There could be slightly more detail on the high end DX10 side of things and that's about the only place the graphics lose marks in my books.

Gimmick…

At the moment, I find the Hellgate is full of gimmick content and not a lot of serious content for the hardcore players. Flagship really need to start adding compelling content if they want this game to succeed. Diablo 3 is probably on the horizon and so Hellgate is going to have to find its niche before Blizzard storm the hack ‘n’ slash arm of the RPG genre with the next Diablo title, which will most probably be an MMO. Along with that, the bugs need to be fixed and the storyline needs some alteration and depth. The quests need to be less linear and more diverse and there absolutely needs to be a way of changing your spec if this game is going to go MMO-ish. Alogn with that, Flagship need to lsoe the nostalgia and quickly. It is all well and good creating a game for a predefined market but the gamers that this game is aimed at aren't appreciating most, if not all, of the content at the moment and so something needs to happen and fast.

It’s a good game with a lot of promise. There are little bits and bobs that really do need a rethink and there are things that really need to be decided. Is Hellgate an MMO or is it not? That question, to me, seems a little hard to answer at the moment. It all depends what Flagship do with the game over the coming months.

Flagship have around 12 months to refine Hellgate. If they add compelling content, fix the persistent bugs and offer something innovative instead of something they copied and pasted (badly) and then tried to jazz up, Hellgate may go from being passable to being something worth playing for a while.

Pros

- Innovative Itemisation
- Graphically apt (DX9)
- Typical Hack 'n' Slash action
- Varied Multiplayer Experience
- Some Innovative ideas
- Potential to Grow

Cons

- Rag-doll Physics
- Graphical Glitches (DX10)
- Uncompelling Storyline
- Generic and Linear Quests
- Bad Single Player Title
- Server Instability
- Persistent Bugs

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