Challah

From Wikipedia:
This game is not Diablo 3, but it is quite possibly the next best thing. I actually think that it has the potential to be more fun than whatever Blizzard (what's left of them, anyway) has planned for Diablo 3.

Homepage: Great fansite: Anyway, what do you think of it? Are any of you planning on playing it?

Frowning Budah

I have been looking forward to this games release for well over a year and 1/2. I have to wonder if the game will ever get done.

Challah

It will be released when it's finished. Something this promising should not be rushed. We will have it by fall.

MexicanOnABike

if the action portion of this game is good enough, i will definitely get it. I'm always interested in checking out new action and if the graphics or storyline or gameplay is unique enough, I'm sure it will be a hit!

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Estevez

I don't mind the delay. It gives me a chance to enjoy the real world because when it comes out, I am waving goodbye to having an actual life or friends.

With the level of customization and the emphasis on multiplayer, I am going to go blind before I am done playing.

777

I've been waiting for this game since E3 2005 when I played the demo. You know what, let them take as long as they'd like, if it'll make the game that much better for everyone.

And to go back to my roots, I've been playing Diablo 2

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"I don't know that I ever wanted greatness, on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something - or wanting to be a writer, rather than wanting to write. It should be a by-product, not a thing in itself. Otherwise, it's just an ego trip."

Roger Zelazny

Challah

The action portion looks pretty darn good, though I haven't had a chance to try a demo. E3 is in LA and I just so happen to be on the other side of the continent...

I'm sure the storyline will stop mattering after the first few times through, but the graphics look good (not awe-inspiring, but good) and the atmosphere, perfect. That said, the loot system and level of randomisation are what will make this game great.

I, too, am going to be kissing my life away when HGL comes out. It'll probably hit store shelves right when university studies begin again. Hopefully a good balance will be found and maintained.

777 - Did you enjoy the demo? I know you played an older build of the game but you really should share your experience anyway. General thoughts? Concerns?

The first Diablo is also worth playing through again. I played D2 a bit last year but after going through the first again this summer, I have to say that I prefer it over the sequel.

Finally, and please don't let this turn into a debate on the subject of subscriptions, do you guys plan on subscribing for 10 bucks a month or not?

777

well, I don't remember much from the demo. just that I had fun playing I do remember that only the templar was available, and I was mostly using melee weapons. There were guns to use, I just prefered flaming swords. And regarding the weapons, the can be upgraded, with improved fuel cells and ammo for more damage, adding fire to attacks, and such.

Here's some more info for you guys, the people at 1up are doing a lot of coverage on the game, with interviews from the creators as well.

http://www.1up.com/do/minisite?cId=3158832

Regarding the subscription, I may wait on that for a few months, when there's a expansion's worth of matirial available.

Also, Here's my awesome T-Shirt. I'm gonna wear it when I pick up the game :-D

__________________
"I don't know that I ever wanted greatness, on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something - or wanting to be a writer, rather than wanting to write. It should be a by-product, not a thing in itself. Otherwise, it's just an ego trip."

Roger Zelazny

Challah

That shirt is frickin' sweet!

I know most of the basic info about the game but the 1up coverage has some tasty tidbits that were new to me. Thanks for the link.

Waiting a few months for the subscription is probably the best way of approaching it, but I don't think I'll be able to. I want my Hellgate: London experience to be as complete as possible from the first day onward.

Did you try the Guardian, the Blademaster or both?

777

The Templar didn't have any varients at the time. I belive it'll work similiar to Diablo 2's skill system, where you have 3 different types of skills to work on with each character. Like the difference between making a Fire, Cold, and Lightening Sorceress. I think the only skill I was able to put points in at that level was some kind of aura, but it was an early build of the game.

We'll see what happens this fall

__________________
"I don't know that I ever wanted greatness, on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something - or wanting to be a writer, rather than wanting to write. It should be a by-product, not a thing in itself. Otherwise, it's just an ego trip."

Roger Zelazny

Lasereth

Just played the new demo.

Ok I want my hour back. This is one of the worst demos I've ever played. This demo plays like a pre-alpha test of a game. If this is any clue to how the real game will be...good god, what have they been doing for all these years of development?

1. The character animations are really bad. Strafing has no animation. WoW looks better than this game.

2. The graphics are fucking terrible. It looks like a game from 2002. No joke. The character models are decent. Maybe decent is going too far. How about "ok."

3. The level design is at least 5 years dated. Really bad.

4. I like the premise. Hacking and slashing and shooting is funner than clicking once to do everything. But when the graphics suck dick, the animations suck dick, and the controls suck dick, it's simply not fun. Why is there a camera view change when you jump. Why is jumping clunky and unresponsive. Why can you not attack and jump at the same time. WHY IS THERE NO STRAFE ANIMATION

5. Shit like this just can't be released in 2007. Sorry but it can't. People say graphics don't matter, just gameplay. Bullshit. This game looks like it's from 2002, plays like it's from 1999, and has a plot that is non-existant. The menus are dated and grungy.

6. If someone released this game as freeware I would say it was interesting, but only barely interesting. Instead this is a real game and I can't believe they're charging for it. Again, what have they been doing for the past few years.

7. OK, so the graphics suck. BUT WHY DOES IT RUN LIKE ASS ON MY PC?? It's one thing to look like ass, but it's another to look like ass AND run like ass for no reason. Slowdown in indoor areas?? Are you kidding??

This game sucks.

Lokus

Yeah, I was very underwhelmed by the demo. It ran great for me but looked pretty bad on medium settings. Playing as the ranged class after playing say, Half Life 2 or Halo 3 was quite boring. Perhaps it was because I wasn't able to get more than a handful of skills but combat wasn't very fun. The sounds and gun models are subpar as are the animations, there's just no "oomph" when I attack something. The grenade physics are very odd as well, more like a superball then a grenade.

Also I'm not the biggest fan of pay to play, except in an MMO which Hellgate is not especially if there's ingame advertising. You're making money from us playing your game, how about passing on some savings? If I were inclined to get this game, I'd wait for a few content patches to come out then buy the subscription upgrade so you get all the goodies without paying 10$ a month the whole time.

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Destrox

Now that the NDA is lifted I feel free! I've been testing this game for nearly a month solid now. A LOT of play time.

This is a team that shows high amounts of quality, care, and a lot of effort being put forward. They listen to what the community says, and actually talk to them as well.

I'm not going to touch base on everything ya'll may complain about because this is a game that is made for a select group of people.

Wow fanatics are not one of them.

This game should never even be compared to wow, it has little similarities.

The graphics are good for the games setting, and I cant even start to describe how happy I am that it isnt all cartooned up like WoW is.

The demo sucks for the most part, its that simple. Nothing at all like the beta client is, its just something they put out and probably forced to by EA. (They are the devil you know.)

This is a highly addicting game, and has some great qualities, and you can see in a lot of spots where it has similiarities to its roots of Diablo 2 (Same team'ish group of people.) Note: this is not diablo 3, nor am I saying it could be considered that.

It is simply a fun and exciting game. If you enjoy level grinding, skill sets, item grinding, item trading.

This game is better called an Online-Action RPG, not a MMO. it has very few MMO qualities to it. At least for what a MMO has turned into these days.

As for the in-game ads, they are as harmless as it gets. They are more eyecandy and aesthetics than anything. I personally would rather them get some money out of it, thus increasing the chances of higher quality. The FSS team has allready stated on the forums (beta) that they get very little money for the ads. Definitly not enough to make a difference. There is a very large debate on the forums about this whole thing, I personally have no problem with it as long as its non-intrusive. And they are that for certain.

Any questions feel free to ask if its more specific oriented.

And Lasereth, I hope you dont take this wrong, but the overall vibe I get off your post is that graphics > gameplay. Seeing as how many times you went back to that.

You need to realize the largest fan base of this game are Diablo 2 fans, and genre lovers.

Sure its a console world, and in that world eyecandy is more important. But every once in a while gameplay does pull through. Its a world where hell has taken over earth, earth is in ruins. The graphics match it perfectly. They made it so this game runs great on all types of computers.

I dont really know what graphical issues you're having that makes it run like ass. Works great on my old shit box Amd Barton, and works flawlessly on my E6600.

I know a big issue with this game was that it almost required the latest Nvidia drivers. (they had big improvements for HGL)

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Halx

I'm mostly worried about the clause in their license agreement that states that they can gleen information about your system at will.

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Lasereth

That makes me feel better. If the actual game is better than the demo then there's some hope. But man this is a bad bad bad bad bad demo.

I enjoy level grinding, skill sets, item grinding, and item trading, but this game sucked. I hope it's the demo but even with all of that it was still really bad simply because the controls, level design, and graphics suck.

I agree with you. In-game ads are WAAAAAAAY overreacted upon in the online gaming community. I remember when BF2142 came out and people boycotted it because it had ads and "spyware." The ads made the game more realistic and were actually entertaining (seeing Tom's Hardware plastered on the wall in a doomsday environment with scratches and burn marks all over the ad was actually cool). The spyware wasn't spyware, it simply took your IP and determined which county you were from so the ads in the game were in the correct language (I played BF2142 for months before I saw a single ad, and then when I saw one it was actually entertaining like I said above). The ads in Hellgate do not take away from the game at all.

Did you miss the part where I said the character animations suck, the level design is horrible, the controls are clunky, the menus are dated and grungy, and jumping switches camera views so the game stutters randomly? The graphics do indeed suck, but so do WoWs, they made up for it with a great artistic feel to the game. Hellgate has no "feel" to it besides a demo made by a group of college students in their spare time between classes. It's one thing to have bad graphics, it's another to have bad graphics and nothing to make up for it. Again you said the demo sucks so maybe the real game is better. So far this game is embarassing though. I keep comparing it to WoW because it controls similarly, it's an RPG, you do quests identical to WoW, you make a character and level up with skill points and buy and sell armor and gain levels, etc. I don't really need to keep going. The game IS like WoW in many aspects so it deserves a direct comparison. WoW's graphics sucked when it came out in 2004, and Hellgate has worse graphics than WoW. Why? WoW came out in 2004 and Hellgate has worse controls. Why? WoW came out in 2004 and the menus, interface, jumping, strafing, and character animations are all years ahead of Hellgate. Why?

It stays at 60 FPS on my PC during most of it but it drops down to like 20-30 FPS on many occasions (even indoors). Oblivion and Bioshock run better on my PC than this game (they don't slow down like that, ever) and those two games have insanely good graphics.

CyCo PL

The demo must be different than the beta, because the beta is really nice looking. The controls felt fine, the level design seemed pretty linear, but from what I've read, a lot of the levels are randomly generated so they're not going to be perfect.

Challah

I've played both the beta and the demo.

The demo is garbage and it seems as though the community generally agrees on that. Anyone who remembers the Diablo 2 demo knows that demos can sometimes completely fail to represent the full, final product.

The beta is buggy but I don't think any of the bugs are bad enough to ruin the experience. Then again, I like STALKER more than the Halo series so maybe I'm the sort of person who isn't bothered by bugs.

General thoughts:
-The graphics aren't great but I wasn't expecting them to be. I think graphics matter less for this sort of game than they do for Bioshock, Oblivion, etc.
-The animations are poor but I'll get over it.
-The levels are not perfect but considering they're highly randomized, not bad. I wasn't expecting meticulously crafted environments.
-The most important part of the game, the l00t system, is great. I miss the D2 colours but other than that, no complaints here.

Overall, I'm still very excited about the final product. The demo is terrible but who cares, a lot of demos are. The beta is flawed but IT'S A BETA. No one should go into a beta expecting a perfectly polished experience. The game won't be WoW and it won't be D2, but it's going to be a hell of a lot of fun.

Destrox

Another note is that Flagship Studios just said the other day that the beta that we've been playing is 2-4 weeks behind the actual build.

There are a few things that I really hope they work on:

Fix the damn engineer bugs.
Change the damage display info on items, and on screen.

and the mother of all that needs to not happen once it hits retail:

Stop doing server maintenance on WEEKENDS... gah. I'll never understand that one.

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777

Is the release date still on Halloween, or was it pushed back?

__________________
"I don't know that I ever wanted greatness, on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something - or wanting to be a writer, rather than wanting to write. It should be a by-product, not a thing in itself. Otherwise, it's just an ego trip."

Roger Zelazny

Redjake

This demo was horrible

Horrible animations, mediocre graphics

I can't believe this is all they have after that long

I guess I have been surrounded by too many incredible games recently - my standards have been permanently raised (Bioshock, Gears of War, Resistance, Halo 3, Resident Evil 4, etc.)

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drego

Yep, still halloween (as of today). Just got into a beta, so as soon as i'm done downloading the freaking 4.5 gigs of beta, i'll see if I'm gonna be buying Assassins Creed or this.....

~Drego

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Hack the Planet!!!!

Challah

Wait, what? I can understand Resident Evil 4, but Halo 3? Bioshock? What? Halo 3 is too similar to 1 and 2, while Bioshock is too easy to be taken seriously. This is another conversation to another thread, but how can you kick at Hellgate: London and then claim that your standards have been raised by Halo 3?

After eating a shit sandwich, I simply can't go back to chicken.

Redjake

I will admit Halo 3 wasn't perfect, but it, and especially Bioshock, are light-years ahead of what I played last night. This demo sucked hard. Halo 3 and Hellgate, while being in different genres, are totally separate in levels of quality - Halo 3 being far superior

This game just unimpressed the hell out of me - I was expecting so much more after all the hype/screens/etc.

Perhaps it's because I don't have a strong Diablo background, but either way, the graphics, gameplay, animations, and overall presentation was just weak as hell.

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Lasereth

The way I see it, if they're gonna make a game where all you do is hack and slash through randomly generated dungeons, at least make the hack and slash animations worth a crap. Instead they look horrible. I don't get it. WoW's animations are better, and in WoW all you do is click a button to attack instead of actually controlling the swings.

Challah

I won't deny that in terms of visual polish, they are ahead of a 2-4-week-old build of a game that has yet to be released. It baffles me that those two games set your gaming standard, but then, these things are a matter of taste and since we're already quite off topic (my fault), let's save this for another time.

You're absolutely correct; the animations are a letdown. Is this the sort of thing that might be fixed by release or in a patch down the road, or will these animations probably remain the same forever?

I don't think it's entirely fair to compare the (combat) animations of WoW and HGL, because in WoW you're either "attacking something" or "not attacking something," while in HGL there are slightly more complicated things to consider (attacking on the move, stringing together multiple melee attacks, etc.) That's not to say that the HGL animations aren't terrible, they are, it's just that comparing HGL to WoW is a little misleading as they don't have a lot in common.

Lasereth

I still can't justify saying that they don't have a lot in common. They're both RPGs. They're both quest-based, EXP based, and dungeon based. You make your own character and then fight monsters as a class of your choice. You run up to monsters and click them to attack. They're very similar. I just hate how in WoW there's 3 or 4 different attack animations depending on how you attack. In Hellgate there's different animations too but they all suck. WoW shouldn't have better animations since it's not a hack n slash game. If anything, Hellgate should blow WoW's animations out of the water since you control the fighting.

Lokus

Bioshock was a great game and if it was too easy, there's always the difficulty slider. That aside, it was polished, looked great and had an amazing narrative and atmosphere. Hellgate just didn't have a very compelling atmosphere. Even if the demo is 2-4 weeks behind, I have no guarantee that the final product is any better than the demo nor do I have any guarantee they'll fix the issues I have with animation. If I buy a game, I want it to work and be fun now, not later with a patch. I really dislike the habit of gaming companies releasing now and patching later, it's even infecting console games now that they can patched over the multiplayer service.

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Challah

This is all true, but there are fundamental differences. The biggest one is the way you engage enemies. HGL handles like an action game, while WoW has a much simpler combat system where to attack something, all you need to do is click on it to "lock in."

While this does make the job of animation more difficult for the HGL team, I won't dig into this because, frankly, there's no defending the HGL animations. They are awful.

That being said, I maintain that poor animations are NOT enough to ruin the game. I've been playing on both the Beta server and the Test server and, apart from a few lag issues that are entirely my fault, Hellgate is coming together nicely.

Also, the fundamental goals of Hellgate are very different from those of WoW, which is defined by endless grind and massive raids. Hellgate (like Diablo 2) is about going solo or teaming up with a small group and is almost entirely driven by the eternal quest for phat loot.

Lokus, I guess it comes down to what you want in a game. Hellgate: London is not a winner in the atmosphere department, but I don't know many people who expected it to be.

Hellgate: London is more similar to Diablo 2 than it is to Bioshock, Halo 3 or WoW. If you expect it to do what these games do best, you'll almost certainly be let down.

Lasereth

I will admit that if the animations were better and if some minor control issues were adjusted I would be very interested in this game. I like how it's single player so you can control when you play.

Redjake

I'll say the same. Fix the animations and controls and I'll let the graphics slide. The game definitely has potential.

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YaWhateva

Man, I have such high hopes for this game, I really hope it is good. I am also pissed because I found out that I got into the beta the day I was moving and now i have no internet.

I really hope all the problems you guys are talking about get cleared up in the retail version though.

A question I had was, do you think it would be best to not subscribe to the game until later? If I do that, would I be able to transfer my character from the single player game into the online game? I am guessing no but it would be worth asking. I am just asking this because I don't know if it would be that great to subscribe to a game in its infancy(WoW was terrible at launch) when I don't need to. Also, is it going to be $15 a month? That seems rather large to me when other games that aren't MMO's, which this isn't either, have free online capabilities.

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Nikilidstrom

According to PC Gamer, its going to be 9.95/month, but you wont need to pay to play multiplayer. At launch, the only advantage of paying is that you will get 12 character slots instead of 3. Later however, they are planning small monthly updates like equipment and skills, and large quarterly updates such as new areas and classes. You will be able to play all original content without paying, and even coop with other paying players. This is so hopefully you will get jealous of the goodies the payers are getting and decide to subscribe yourself.

YaWhateva

Oh awesome, that sounds like a good idea because I would like to try the game out online and see if I would like to update to a subscription. Also, I would like to wait to see how they are about releasing content for subscribers. They are doing a lot of things right, imo, I just hope they can fix the bugs soon.

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“If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again.” - Bill O'Reilly

"This is my United States of Whateva!"

777

From I heard, it'll be sililair to Diablo 2, where as your single player charaters are seperate from the online ones. You will not be able to transfer single to online, and vice versa. You can play online without a subscription, the only down fall to doing so, is that you'll miss out on the goodies that they have planned for the such accounts. Check out the wiki entry on Hellgate, and look under Pricing for more details on subscription accounts.

Also, for those who played the demo, does it look better or worse than this video of co-op play from GameVideos:

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"I don't know that I ever wanted greatness, on its own. It seems rather like wanting to be an engineer, rather than wanting to design something - or wanting to be a writer, rather than wanting to write. It should be a by-product, not a thing in itself. Otherwise, it's just an ego trip."

Roger Zelazny

YaWhateva

So, I got it, and only got the chance to play it a little bit It's awesome as hell(lol). The gameday patch made a huge difference.

__________________
“If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again.” - Bill O'Reilly

"This is my United States of Whateva!"

Challah

So I preordered the game, picked it up on release day, and now it won't work. I've spent at least an hour each day since release trying to fix it. No dice. I'm not a happy camper.

YaWhateva

how is it not working? It gave me some error saying I needed to patch vista, and I went to the link it gave me and updated and it worked perfectly after that.

That sucks though

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“If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again.” - Bill O'Reilly

"This is my United States of Whateva!"

Destrox

Yeah details, theres a few bugs for the game and it'd be easier to narrow it down a bit.

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Ustwo

Game got pretty trashed on gaming sites.

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YaWhateva

It got trashed on gaming sites because it plays just like diablo 2 and the reviewers I have seen have all been saying that they hate that playstyle. It's like a movie critic who loves romantic comedies reviewing Grindhouse. You have to take it with a grain of salt.

Also other people are complaining that it's not WoW. People seem to forget that when WoW came out, there was about 6 months of horrible, horrible server problems. I have not seen any server problems in the game so far at all. Those people gave WoW all the time in the world to get over its growing pains but freaked out the first day because the chat system in HG:L is annoying and the classes aren't completely balanced. It's taken WoW how many years and it's still not balanced and there are still huge problems? On top of all this, the game isn't even an MMO!

People just need to allow the game to mature a bit. IGN is not reviewing the game until some of the problems get patched, and they understand this.

__________________
“If the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again.” - Bill O'Reilly

"This is my United States of Whateva!"