Is anyone else looking forward to the release of this on Wednesday (Halloween)? Anyone planning to get a copy and fire it up this week?
-XT
I was till I played the demo. Hugely disappointed.
If you were in the beta apparently you can play on the beta servers on launch day and then transfer your characters to the regular servers once you receive your box. I’ll be there, i enjoyed the beta and can see this going places.
The demo was really bad.
Are you planning to buy the game stand alone or get a subscription? I’m assuming the subscription allows you to play the game multi-player similarly to Guild Wars…i.e. the dungeons or whatever are instanced, while the meeting areas (towns or whatever) are where you can interact with others, form groups, etc.
I haven’t tried the demo and wasn’t in the beta. What specific issues were you having? I’ve been reading the previews in Gamespy and IGN and they seem to think this game has the potential to be the best of the year.
-XT
The demo was boring.
Best of the year? No way.
I enjoyed it…for about 15 minutes.
It not BAD as such. Just horribly disappointing.
My first “huh” came at the outset of the demo. The UI just felt…wrong. Having to click on the “next” button for every sentence the guy I was “talking” to was lame. The writing was horrible. Very, very little in the way of voice acting. I do not mind reading (I’m one of those who would sit in Oblivion and read the books) but this was poorly done.
Then I get to a station and it goes from bad to worse. This is supposed to be a dark near future where demons have wrecked the world. Well, the folks in the station are patently crazy and/or total wimps and talk to you like you are 10. I wanted to kill the lot of them. I expected some serious, no nonsense types. These were anything but and utterly destroyed the immersion.
Then there are the environments. Each stage was woefully small. And they all looked the same. Layout was a bit different but same building repeated over and over. And you are totally on rails. There is nowhere to explore. There is walk down the street which might jog right or left but may as well be straight for all that matters. Exploring buildings amounts to waling into the basement which is completely visible from the street anyway so you do not even have to go in.
The interior “dungeons” you could explore were likewise pure cookie cutter and likewise had you on rails. Run down the hall, down stairs, down hall, down stairs ad nauseum. Nothing else. And they ALL looked identical barring minor layout changes.
Monsters were pure meh. Absolutely nothing challenged me…not even close…not even the two “big” monsters I dealt with. Perhaps it gets a lot harder in the full version but this was a sleepwalk. Monster looked meh too. Little animation, herky-jerky shambling. Jumping monsters would sorta plop next to you and sit there conveniently. Assuming you didn’t kill them with a really oddly managed swing “range” (I was using swords). Bad guy could be flying way over my head and if I swing he just landed dead. If there was an NPC AI I never saw it.
Just fail all around. Twelve year olds might like it…maybe.
Its basically a new diablo, if you enjoyed the last one then you will probably enjoy this one, by your complaints i would say that the genre is just not for you. Besides, it has the BEST NPC EVER
I loved Diablo. I really do not want to contemplate how much of my life was spent on that game.
Is that dubbed? That’s too awesome to be true.
Look, Gamespy and IGN are not quite… honest. They’re advertising whores, and anyone and anything who buys spots is pretty much guarranteed a good review. Hellgate: London has been giving them interviews and promos since day 1 (heck, before the developers even knew what features were going into the game). They’re pretty much desperate for news.
Well, too be sure. The same could be said for any trade type magazine that uses advertisement. What I normally do is look at their reviews for games I liked/hated and see how in-line they are with my own tastes. I’ve found GameSpy too be fairly good. The only game I can think that they steered me wrong on was Supreme Commander, and I think that is more a matter of tasted (I didn’t like the game and they did). Other than that I can’t think of any game that they gave a decent review too that I didn’t enjoy…or any game that they panned that I actually liked.
I’m planning to pick up a copy of Hellgate: London when it ships tomorrow. Not based solely on their previews. As someone else in the thread said, I liked Diablo and Diablo II…and this seems very similar. I’ll probably simply play the single person game…if I like it a lot then I’ll consider the subscription service. I’m between MMO’s right now anyway, having canceled my WoW account (again), and WAR isn’t due out for a while. I think Tabula Rasa looks pretty lame at this point…so that pretty much does it for MMO’s atm anyway. Might as well give this a whirl.
-XT
Bear in that mind you do not need to subscribe for multiplayer.
I preordered and will be getting the Founders lifetime sub. I figure if the devs stick to their announced schedule, there will be the equivalent of a $30 expansion twice a year; three years of this and the lifetime sub will have paid for itself.
They came from Blizzard and you expect them to keep up with their schedule? 
I’m on the fence. A friend of mine was in the beta and liked it, but $10 a month seems pretty steep for a Diablo clone (or paying $50 and still getting nerfed multiplayer) when I’m paying $15 for WoW.
They came from Blizzard, yes, but mainly worked on Diablo and had little to do with WoW. Diablo, of course, didn’t have any sort of monthly revenue stream.
I probably wouldn’t be bothering with this game if the weapons weren’t so freaking cool! Particularly the pistol, the name of which escapes me, that shoots bouncing plasma balls. Watched a video of a pair of these in action and was hooked.
Not dubbed, that guy is hilarious.
So… what do people think?
Got the game yesterday but didn’t have time too do more than a few levels on single player. It’s kind of cool though I’m not sure what the games long term potential for me is. Interestingly (considering earlier comments) Gamespy did an Out of the Box article and they seemed too have the same concerns.
I started a Marksman and it seems a pretty cool class so far. I thought it was funny that they had a quest too get back Worts leg (from the Diablo games). It was a pretty easy early quests. I’m not sure I like the guns with unlimited ammo. Seems too make things a bit too easy…I just spray machine gun fire at the mobs until they drop…so far it hasn’t been even a close contest. I think I got hit once last night by some little demon thingy that threw fireballs at me.
Graphics wise the game is pretty cool. I’ve been playing the game in first person perspective…I assume there is an option for 3rd person but haven’t really even played much with the interface yet.
In short, so far my impression is the game is very easy, graphically it looks really good, and is kind of cool too play…so far. Tonight hopefully I’ll be getting into some harder stuff…and getting some really cool weapons and armor! I’m hoping for a sniper rifle or something like that…would be cool to shoot demons from long distance.
-XT
Mouse wheel.
From what I hear, it follows the same difficulty model as the Diablo games.
Here are my impressions so far:
The game has so many things that rip off Diablo that it’s unreal, and I was expecting a Diablo clone! More than just inventory, drops, and feel - think monster and NPC names (Wart/Wirt is close enough for me), monster behaviors and types, the monster rares and their various attributes, and the drop colors correspond to World of Warcraft (white=common, green=uncommon, blue=rare, orange=legendary).
That said, I’m enjoying it. Combat is fun and engaging. You can get cool items – I got a Legendary named gun for my Summoner at around level 5, which is basically like a Unique item in Diablo II – and then upgrade them with parts from other items. It’s worth picking up everything just to disassemble them and have plenty of parts. The levels do randomize too and the quests are fairly self-explanatory. The NPCs are fun and the text is actually worth reading a lot of the time. The guy who sends you to Chocolate Park is awesome.
Inventory management is a problem, I wish there was at least a bank or the ability to mail other characters. For example, engineers can duel-wield guns, or use a single sniper rifle or rocket launcher, but they’re all large inventory commitments and it leaves very little room for loot (plus you have to hang on to good mods for the guns too, because you never know when the next good gun will drop). There’s also no obvious way to switch weapons around; I’d like to be able to go from a sniper rifle to close-quarter weapons more easily.
I haven’t figured out the minigame that exists, I’ll have to look up how it’s supposed to work.
I enjoy minion classes but there’s no real way to direct them and their aggro radius is HUGE. This pretty much ruins any strategy for my Summoner. I would love for there to be at least a “stay here” command or something. I am starting an Engineer but I’m loathe to spec into combat bots for this reason. I also really, really wish you could reallocate skill points (at a high, but level-appropriate, cost) because it’s pretty much impossible to tell what’s good and what sucks until you try them.
I don’t think it would be at all worth it to pay for it at that rate. $5 a month would sound about right. I mean, it’s not an MMORPG. The most I saw at any of the hubs was about 5 people and no communication at all. As far as I could tell (up to a level 10 character) there is no mail, no auction house, no chat channels, or anything like that available to me (as a non-subscriber anyway) which are pretty basic functions.
Anyway, it’s fun, the story is fairly standard but the NPCs are a good time, and it’s a colorful little world. But, there are some really needed things for a multiplayer game that even Diablo II had that aren’t present.