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dull and monotonous

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 16 / 55
Date: November 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is not even close to Diablo 2. By the time you get to level 10, you have seen all there is to see in terms of graphic tiles (gray or beige), mob models (forgettable), weapon effects (see mob models), and level design (linear city ruins, linear tunnel ruins).

I have completed 4 Acts in the game, and they all look and play the same, with the same mobs.

As on online game, it is an utter failure. There's no feel of community, in the least. By default the chat window is hidden, so if another players im's you, you won't even see it. The chat window (the entire UI, actually) is huge. The towns are empty; players drop by for a few seconds to vendor drops and take off again.

This would be OK as a standalone game, and I'd give it 3 stars in that mode, but only one as a MMORPG. Frankly, I just do not see how they can justify charging $10 a month for this game, which has a fraction of the complexity and content of real MMO's.

Full of bugs. Huge disappointment.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 8 / 22
Date: November 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is the buggiest piece of software I've ever dealt with. When it runs, the game is some fun, and the graphics are OK--not bad, but certainly nothing special, even with DX10 and all graphics options maxed. In terms of concept and gameplay, it is precisely Diablo 3. But it is virtually unplayable due to all the bugs. It crashes to desktop, randomly locks up, and many quests are bugged, making them impossible to complete. Before buying this, have a look at the official game support forums for an idea of the problems people are having.

Beautiful graphics, compelling story, addictive gameplay

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: November 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

As soon as I popped the disk for Hellgate: London into my PC I almost forgot that I was playing a video game. The opening video sequence left me thinking, "Wow, now I can't wait to see the movie!" But the great part is YOU get to live your own movie, with six very different ways to play the game depending on the character class selected, and infinitely different levels and monsters thanks to randomly generated levels.

A few of the more whiny reviews I've read are complaining about bugs. Does anybody remember how buggy Warcraft was when it first came out? Calm down-- it's a normal part of any new online game. I've been getting numerous patches as I play, which means that the bugs (which are mostly minor anyway) are being fixed. The addictive game play, fun weapons (check out the spike gun that lets you nab monsters in mid-air!), and sleek design have already put Hellgate at the top of my list for games this year.

This is really the next step in game design, and a lot of love has gone into it. Anybody who's lived in or been to London will be thrilled with the attention to detail. Famous buildings and even specific rooms in the British Museum are recognizable. The game is intense and dramatic, and ably accomplishes the difficult task of saving a post apocalyptic world interesting again. However, there's still a great sense of humor in the game, from fun pets like the MantaWraith (which you get for buying the collector's edition), CokoMoko (From December's PC Gamer), and ZomBot (aww . . . isn't he cute?) There's subtle nods to modern London pop culture, like when you can do your own version of Shaun of the Dead, killing zombies with-- that's right-- a cricket bat.

You can see Flagship's Blizzard roots in some of the interface designs and skill progressions, but the camera angles, gameplay, and battle scenarios also evoke the best of Quake, Half Life, and Halo. This is clearly a game designed by gamers for gamers.

If you plan to spend more than an hour or two a week playing, I recommend subscribing. (It's only $10 a month-- come on!) They've already released special goodies for Halloween and Guy Fawkes day, and every few weeks new content, including new areas to battle in, will be added. I can't wait to see what comes next. Will we get to fight on the shores of Loch Ness? Is there a Hellgate in New York?

Thanks, Flagship! Hellgate: London was well worth the wait.

Disappointing ..

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: November 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game is fun, but doesn't live up to the hype and its multiplayer features are lacking (at best). Their subscription model doesn't seem worth it, but the free play isn't bad. Definitely wait and see on this game.

A visually pretty epic failure.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: February 06, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Looking at the "Key Features" list for the game, the following is claimed:

"The RPG Authority - Flagship Studios was founded by the core creators of Diablo, one of the biggest PC gaming franchises in history with over 13 million units sold worldwide - they are the first, last and only voice in the world of action RPGs."

They'll be the first to tell you they made Diablo, and they'll be more than happy to rest on their laurels instead of trying to improve upon something they already made. This game plays exactly like Diablo with a few parts of World of Warcraft thrown in (the worst parts).

"Beyond RPG - Experience new layers to the traditional hack-and-slash forumla by experiencing the action RPG from the first-person perspective and through nontraditional character classes and playstyles."

Changing the viewpoint from which you play a game is not cruise control for innovative. The character classes are also not nontraditional, and neither are the playstyles. You have three choices which basically boil down to Warrior, Ranged Attacker, and Caster.

Every skill in the game can be found in an earlier game in some almost-identical form, and if that fails, pick up an AD&D manual and browse through it. This is not innovation.

"Have it your way - Three unique factions with their own visual and gameplay style, offering something for every type of gamer, whether they prefer the longer-range blasts of the Hunter or want to get up close and personal with the Templar."

3 fairly distinct classes with 2 subclasses each, with several overlapping talents. Subclasses share gear for the most part, although other classes can't equip any of your class' gear.

"Infinite Replayability - Dynamically generated levels, chance events and massive quantities of randomly created items makes for infinite replayability -- no two experiences will ever be the same and every game will be it's own unique event."

Infinitely replaying this game would indeed be hell. There's roughly 5 types of stages with a special one thrown in every now and then. You'll see subways, sewers, ambiguous city streets, underground facility, and ambiguous museum/building. The "dynamic generation" of levels is exceedingly pathetic, as once you get used to the game, you can generally navigate in a shorter amount of time than the level will take to load (did I mention the absurd loading times between every stage?).

The quests themselves are incredibly unimaginitive and monotonous, and you'll find yourself killing x number of demons or collecting x number of demon tonails (that hardly ever drop).

"Mad Skills - Each faction has three character classes that contain a wide variety of skills and spells that are fully customizable."

Mad boring skills. They lack the synergy bonuses that made you feel like you weren't wasting points in Diablo 2, and are summarily unimpressive. There are also fewer per class than the classes in Diablo 2 had.

"London Calling - Explore post-apocalyptic London, even darker and gloomier than usual. From shattered cathedrals and landmarks to the ancient ruins buried beneath the shell of a once-great city, players will need to scour all of London in search of the unknown."

So dark and gloomy that you have no idea what you're looking at--good thing they name the levels.

"Misery Loves Company - Don't be a glory hog - fight online. Gather with friends or recruit strangers in Underground stations and venture out into mean streets of London together to erase the Demonic threat."

And you'll be plenty miserable playing this game. They have a whopping total of two realms, one for North America, and one for Europe, and unless you subscribe, good luck finding anyone to party with.

Also, the chat interface is incredibly clunky, and you'll be unable to figure out how to do anything more than whisper someone without asking someone--the manual doesn't cover how to use the various channels, and the tutoral doesn't either.

"Hell Never Looked Better - HellGate: London features all of the latest next-generation technology to deliver a true, DX10 experience, while being fully scalable for optimal performance on older PCs."

In terms of graphics, I would consider the game to be cutting edge. I played it in DX10 mode and thought it looked great, but there's still some major bugs in the programming, as the game often froze up, and rain caused a massive drop in frames per second despite my system's beefy specs.

The actual user interface is lacking, and there's often a slight delay with the mouse and UI buttons. Abilites don't seem to combo well together, and the tutorial is an absolute joke in terms of explaining things that should've been explained.

In closing, aside from stating that I wish I had my money and hours of my life back, this game brings to mind a saying of one of my old teachers, which I find very relevant to a product such as this:

"You can polish a turd until it sparkles, but it's still a turd."

Good game - needs update

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Game is fun to play - very Diablo like. My version has some issues with character getting stuck in some areas forcing restart, and occasionally just aborting with no warning. A second release or update might fix these.
Interesting mix of modern (automatic weapons) and ancient (swords and spells).

Game has "issues" but good game overall

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Hellgate: London has more than it's share of "issues" but if you have the patience to figure them out it is a lot of fun. Several notable "issues" that I personally experienced - the "patch(es)" for the game are only available for the multiplayer game - which is FREE BTW, unless you want to "subscribe" for $9.99//mo and get additional content. Even though there is a single player version of the game, the developers intended that you play online and so the online, multiplayer game is what is supported and patched. The patching process is automatic when you log into the multiplayer mode. The registration process during setup is really frustrating I will admit, and the patching "mystery" took me quite a while to figure out - I had "assumed" that the online multiplayer game was what you were paying the $9.99//mo for so I refused to log into it for some time until I was informed via the forums that the multiplayer game was free with optional subscription content. Although I never played Diablo 1 or 2 I must admit that most of the gameplay is challenging, there are some novel NPCs and NPC attacks and I am actually considering purchasing a second copy so that I can hand off gear between my own toons. The classes I recommend trying are - the Engineer,the Summoner and the Guardian. The other classes are underpowered in my opinion. I would recommend this game overall.

Fun but very buggy

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 31, 2007
Author: Amazon User

When the game works, it's at its best fun and exciting and at it's worst entertaining. The key phrase is when the game works.

This game is littered with bugs. The development team is trying to fix them, but it seems that when they fix one, something else breaks. It's painfully apparent this game was released too early, so if you're considering it my suggestion would be to wait at least until March and check the game's forums to see if there are still major problems.

Addictive Treasure Fest

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I enjoy this game immensely. I prefer thin outline backstories because I prefer to role play and fill in the details for myself. This one provided enough of an interesting outline for our guild to have a good role-playing experience. My family and friends play this together and have tremendous fun.

With the shader model turned to the highest settings, it runs fine on our newer machines. It does need dumptrucks full of RAM (2-3 GB) and a decent graphics card (nVidia 8600 or better) to get high framerates with all the settings set high.

This is for Beginners

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 09, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I am a huge fan of Diablo so I jumped on this with both feet. The graphics are good but they seem really similar on every level. It is definitely user friendly & easy to master. My problem was how easy it was to get to the final level. I worked with several Avatars & yes it is more difficult with some however if you use the BIG guns fahgetaboutit.

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