Comments on: Hellgate Demo Materialises

By: Aimless

Aimless — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 00:30:28 +0000

I have to say I’m impressed: I was playing offline, and the enemies still had a tendency to lag all about the place. Now that’s dedication to the genre.

On the plus side shooting the flying rats in mid air was quite fun, and the spoken dialogue was so bad that whatever I play next is going to seem better by comparison.

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 19:00:56 +0000

I played it (Bloodlines) again a month or so ago, it really is brilliant, I just wish all the areas had as much detail and activity as Santa Monica and Downtown.

By: Chis

Chis — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 02:58:30 +0000

You’re not the only one holding a candle for VTMB, Kast. What a game! Excellent writing and characters, even though the gameplay had some issues.

By: Kast

Kast — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 18:46:50 +0000

*Holds a solitary candle for Vampire: Bloodlines*

I’d give the demo a shot if I could find a torrent anywhere (the download manager is giving me trouble) but like Nick above I’ve got little or no interesting in Hellgate anymore.

By: Nick

Nick — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 18:38:41 +0000

It’s a shame no one seems able to make a decent plot driven RPG anymore and when the do it gets destroyed by the publisher or released unfinished (Vampire.. KOTOR 2.. that sort of thing).

*fond memories of The Bearded Kobolds*

Anyway, Hellgate interested me less and less the more info I read on it, not sure I’ll even bother with the demo at this rate =(

By: Heartless_

Heartless_ — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 16:18:45 +0000

Can’t say I have a lot of interest in this game, but I will try the demo this afternoon. I will probably not play because of the subscription fee required to access new content. It truly sounds like the “good” content will require a subscription and that is a surefire way to alienate a lot of early adopters.

By: Matt Dovey

Matt Dovey — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 15:03:50 +0000

I wanted to like this so much. I’ve wasted more hours of my life on Diablo 2 than anything else, ever – including eating, sleeping and so on – so a 3D Diablo 2 set in London with zombies, well, it was like the rabid dream of a drugged up monkey prophet.

Unfortunately, it looks bland and overwhelmingly dark, it has too many unimaginative quests (even with the Romero references), the interface is slow and shows little in the way of improvement over the 6-year-old D2, the levels fast become repetitive (there only seems to be one type of house you can enter) and just, god, I don’t know. Uninspiring.

If I seem bitter it’s because the lack of ending made it feel like a complete waste of time.

By: Janek

Janek — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 10:50:17 +0000

Thelps, of course it’s a legitimate genre, and a hugely successful one at that. You just need to look at the success of, say, WoW to see that people are still interested in the grind. You’re certainly not alone.

What’s odd is that I tend to enjoy Roguelikes, but not Diablo-style loot’em’ups. I think that’s to do with the brutality and challenge of most Roguelikes, as opposed to Diablo et al where it’s always seemed to be just you cutting a swathe through countless monsters, and the inevitable increase in arbitary numbers.

So yeah, not terribly impressed, though I wasn’t expecting to be.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 10:24:16 +0000

The demo ending was rather disappointing. Usually after you finish they tell you it’s finished and then have the decency to offer to take you to the website to purchase the game. Here, nothing, nada, zippo. Everyone just stops talking. That sucks.

Not to mention the environment. I was expecting a lot more of it to be interactive and that there would be more than 3 kinds of boxes to break and one you can open. Guess having just finished Orange Box ruined me on the environment thing, but I can’t justify plonking down the cash for this unless there’s something seriously kickass in it.

The story idea’s awesome, though. I love post-apocalyptic stuff.

By: Thelps

Thelps — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 10:21:34 +0000

I still defend the grindathon as a legitimate game genre though. Its mindlessness is part of its appeal for me. Maybe that’s more a comment on me than the genre, though.

By: Alec Meer

Alec Meer — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 10:02:44 +0000

I find that when a plot-driven RPGs has, as so many recent ones do, a sucky narrative and/or dialogue, the experience is far more miserable than even the most soulless grindathon, as it goes beyond boredom and into mental torture.

By: finished_okami_a_while_ago

finished_okami_a_while_ago — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 09:58:17 +0000

Just saw one of my coworkers playing the demo (I’ve allready installed it on my pc too, but I have the decency to wait until lunchbreak to play games :P ) and wasn’t too thrilled by what i saw. It all just felt much to clean and tidy for post apocalyptic london (it’s been ten years since I’ve last been to london but if my memory serves me right real world london is a lot dirtier than this post apocalyptic version of it).

Well, I only saw a few minutes of it and I’ll keep my final verdict until I’ve put one or two hours into it. What will sell me to the game won’t be the mechanics, the skill system or the online part but whether they got the atmosphere right.