Comments on: Hellgate: Plunder

By: ianwest

ianwest — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 10:42:27 +0000

er, will the forthcoming patches do something about how very boring this games is? I’m not even at the end of Act 2 and I’ve already stopped playing it. Hardly any variety in enemies or tile sets for locations, really linear, small levels – Christ, it’s tedious!
To think that some of the developers of D2 spent 7 years on Hellgate. They shouldn’t have bothered.

Really, really piss poor…

By: Thiefsie

Thiefsie — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 10:57:12 +0000

Nothing like a character wipe to change your soft praises into vehement spewing of hatred for a game?

By: Caiman

Caiman — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 16:14:51 +0000

Although not the worst game of 2007, it’s certainly the biggest disappointment for me given that I expected so much more from this team of developers. I want to believe they’ll fix the problems, however, but I’ll probably only pick this up in 6 months or so when it’s in the bargain bin.

By: Thelps

Thelps — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 12:26:19 +0000

I too have serious issues with the game’s skill system. To clarify, you can put up to 10 points into a skill (receiving 1 point to spend per level). However, all the skills do when they receive a point is increase the effectiveness of their secondary effect (i.e. greater chance to stun/phase/ignite etc.) which has no impact on the skill at all BECAUSE the monsters become proportionately more resistant to these secondary effects. Basically, you just spend points on a skill to allow it to remain useful. It’s like swimming just to stay still, nothing like WoW’s frankly beautiful Talent Trees that genuinely had a real influence on how you played and equipped your character, and a damn sight worse than Diablo 2′s skill system, broken as it was.

Apart from this, the game seems very fun, if rather repetitive. Sadly, because of the skill issue it gets old really, really fast since every time you level, the futility of your grinding is shoved in your face.

By: malkav11

malkav11 — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 08:03:19 +0000

Saying that Hellgate is in the same (sub)genre as The Witcher simply because they both involve clicky combat is…well, wrong. There’s a huge difference between the sort of hack-through-hordes-of-monsters for shiny and ever increasing loot Monty Haul gameplay of Diablo and other games that have followed in its footsteps (Hellgate among them) and The Witcher’s focus on plot and meaningful moral choices.

And despite their monthly fee aspirations, Hellgate isn’t an MMO and isn’t meant to compete with WoW, either. It *is* competing with the likes of Titan Quest and Depths of Peril, though. And it kinda comes up short, unfortunately. Though it’s still fun.

By: Pesh

Pesh — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 23:18:36 +0000

Definitely not a finished product. Loads of bugs (primarily MP bugs) and lots of crashes. Skills aren’t nearly as important as they were in Diablo 2, and the classes aren’t very unique when put up against one another.

The melee classes feel uncomfortable to play, but all the others are simply fantastic. The levels are boring, ugly, and repeated. It isn’t a very simple game, the interface is unfinished, playing multiplayer seems like everyone is having a grand ol time while you’re stuck without a group (thankfully I have 2 friends to play with), and there isn’t a whole lot you can do if you mess up your skills the first time around.

But that doesn’t really matter, because skills hardly do anything to improve your damage. I could, if I really wanted, go through till level 15 (where I am now) without spending a single talent and do just about as much ass kicking as I do with them. It’s heavily item dependent, and everyone online seems to be an asshole.

Even my friends seem to be assholes when I’m playing with them. There’s no real explanation, everyone just seems so separated from everyone else. This is reinforced with the idea that Guardian auras should only affect the Guardian, and no one else on the team.

If you’re thinking of buying this, consider what you could do in the 50 hours you’ll be spending regretting the class you chose to level up.

For no reason other than a sheer lack of point and click RPGs, though, I’ve played it a lot. It makes me want to play Diablo 2 again. Really badly.

By: AbyssUK

AbyssUK — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:20:30 +0000

I was on the beta test too, this game was no way ready for release. I hope they get screwed over for not listening to people, I bet there QA manager is laughing in there faces right now. Stupid suits always ruin games.. when will they learn!!

By: GeorgeR

GeorgeR — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:03:11 +0000

I was in the beta, and bought the game at launch.

Yes, there are a few problems (my friends and I haven’t been able to see each other in some instances but we can still beat up the same thing.) but its a nice game.

That’s the emphasis. It is fun. I’ve been playing a guardian and an engineer and its an enjoyable experience. Quests don’t take long, instancing is nice, and while I haven’t had the problem of losing items, I replace my stuff far faster than the rate at which such an issue would hurt me for long.

I’ll agree though, this was rushed. They wanted to get it out before the blitz of releases. They wanted to have it out before Retail Holiday season, and so it got shipped out before it was completely done.

That said, they’re being incredibly supporting and the game itself is fun, so *shrug* I don’t have much to complain about. But I wasn’t expecting it to be a WOW killer, Diablo 3, or the second coming of Jesus. So there weren’t many expectations to be shattered when it turned out to “just” be good.

By: Garth

Garth — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:42:41 +0000

I still can’t get over how fantastically ugly the demo for Hellgate was. I mean, I don’t particularly care about graphics, but jesus it was ugly. Like, PS2 ugly.

By: KingMob

KingMob — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:41:54 +0000

I was in the beta for this one.. but the memory exhausted crashes, inventory lockups, and problems with Engineer drones hit me hard. Chalk me up as somebody waiting for them to fix the problems before I’ll actually pay for it…

It’s unacceptable that crashes and lockups should be happening in a game where you can actually lose an hour of work from a crash… this is the reverse of the Blizzard emphasis on polish. Obviously they were so in love with the Halloween release date that they couldn’t put the game off for a month or two to fix the serious bugs.

It’s a really fun game, so when they fix things I’ll buy it for the single player experience. But these kind of issues at launch usually cripple a game’s long-term prospects, so I won’t subscribe or count on many other people being in the game with me.

Good to hear the CM is being straight with their public about their ongoing problems. That’s pretty much the only thing that’s going to win them back their mindshare going forward.

By: Piratepete

Piratepete — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:12:51 +0000

i didn’t think Planetside was still going tbh

By: Flibster

Flibster — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:01:33 +0000

I’m sure this has put off quite a fair few people from paying the subscription and obtaining the extra content, not that the “ViP content” was a load of bollocks in the first place, not worth paying anything for. Could the situation get any worse?

I fear the MMO genre has lost it’s way a bit, what with the “Action Oriented MMO with shooter elements” Tabula Rasa (which ended up being yet another grind fest with little to no skill involved) and now rumors that Warhammer online will be just another WoW clone like LOTRO was.

Atm, until someone can finally produce this genre breaking mmo, i’ll stick to WoW and Planetside ;)