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Great Game. No future-history lesson.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: January 10, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is a great all-around game that aims to please as many people as possible without sacrificing all the aspects of playability to the "game critic" gods like some of these reviews. At least with this game, I could imagine a sibling or other family member coming up to tell me about how they enjoyed it, rather than telling me how esoteric and therefore uninteresting it is.
I would have enjoyed a bit more complexity, but as the first version of what is sure to be an expanded game, this does well enough with simple, enjoyable quests. I did not buy this game for riddles from the Sphinx, or the Oracle at Delphi. That is what "Myst" is for.....

I recommend this game for most people. If you have better than average hardware, and some free time you want to enjoy with a game, get it. If you are a "video game snob" running out of sight hardware and no sense of reality, don't buy it. You would be much happier with Crysis. There are some glitches, like enemies traipsing through walls and such, and fighting dumb, but over all, nothing unfamiliar. Some of the enemies use tactics, albeit shallow, that provide a better challenge, and the higher I go, the harder they have fought.

BTW, I am running the game on a laptop, 1900x1440, 2.4 Ghz Core 2, nVidia 8700 GT with 4GB RAM with Vista Ultimate(64 bit). While I have to run it at DirectX 9 (due solely to the need, it seems, for more GPU memory even though I have 512mb), I set the parameters high, and it runs nearly flawless.

Great fun!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: January 07, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This game requires two-three patches/downloads to work on Vista...younger gamers might need a helping hand: You will likely need to download a Vista patch or two from Microsoft as well as a single-player update from the game company itself. It's all pretty straightforward for an adult. The game itself seems to have plenty of quests and cartoony violence.

The Working Man's MMORPG

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 12, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Every RPG fan remembers Diablo and D2 with great fondness. It had a very fresh feel and addictive gameplay, coupled with crazy loot, to make a very good RPG. That was 12 years ago, now in 2008 we are presented with the rebirth of the Diablo era. However this is no Diablo. That being said it is a working man's game. A game you don't have to spend countless hours to try and get where everyone else is. It's a game for people who have to get up early in the morning, ad don't wan to explain to their boss that they stayed up all night trying to finish all the quests in Stranglethorn Vale. It's a game that almost has a take me or leave me feel. It won't grab you with its enormity like WoW does, but it does keep
that loot fiend inside of you happy. Nothing is cooler than killing a Legendary Goblin and watching it drop lots of loot.

The gameplay and overall feel of the game is very similar to that of its grandfather game. The skill tree is new along with character classes, but for the most part Diablo fans will feel right at home. Now when talking about the gameplay let me say first and foremost, singleplayer is a waste of time. There is no point and no reason to play on singleplayer, it doesn't give you any advantage or change of pace different then that of the mutiplayer. The only thing you will feel like is completely alone almost like a private server feels on games like WoW. This will in fact take away from the positives of the game. That being said multiplayer is as good as any others. Thats right I said it, it is just as good as WoW, City of Heroes, Guild Wars, Everquest, or EVE to name a few. This game does what it set out to do and it does it well. Because what Hellgate offers is unlike anything it's competetors can offer, fast and furious questing with great party features. I have leveled faster on Hellgate than any other game. Another aspect that I really like is the great party functionality. With great features such as Party Portal, you can teleport to any member of your party at anytime, even to places that are too high for your character. You also have online features that are standard in MMO's like PvP, Trading, Selling, Guilds, and parties.

I wont talk about actual gameplay much because others have posted in depth reviews of that. But what I will say again that one of it's strongest points is that you won't waste time getting from point A-B. That to me was one of the most frustrating aspects of WoW. It makes you waste time on things unrelated to character developement. Hellgate is exactly 180 of WoW's speed. From the start to finish you will always be doing something.

Now to the negatives, and there are like any game negatives. First and foremost it is not a game, unless you are determined to meet an objective, that you can play for long periods of time. For someone like myself with a family and a demanding job this is actually a plus. In WoW I found myself over-extending myself. But for hardcore fans it will get old after an extended period of time. So you will want to put it down, but it will always call you back. Another minus is the setting in which Hellgate is located. In today's MMO's you can see some amazing settings, however Hellgate (as of now) has no truly amazing settings. A lot of your time is spent traveling through recycled level layouts and destroyed gloomy environments. This adds to the weariness of playing it for extended amounts of time. Also the NPC's in the game are generally bland and unengaging, butt there are some that will make you chuckle. And the last thing I should note is the abundance of loot. This is the staple of the game but I can't tell if it's good or bad. Sure everyone loves getting stuff all the time, but after awhile it seems almost excessive.

All in all Hellgate is truly one of the best MMO's I have played. It may never be as strong as WoW ( who can?) but it should hold its own ground. As new content has been released and new environments (Stonehenge) prove to make it more diverse, this game should be around for a long long time.

Interesting Game: A little buggy and repetitive

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: March 22, 2008
Author: Amazon User

As mentioned in my title the game can get repetitive. The game also lacks common features many games of this type have. The subscription model is ill conceived imo.

What a waste...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 01, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Avoid it as if it were the Plague. IMHO, it was a bad and rushed release, that had bad support. Such wasted potential for what could've been a great game...sad, really.
I was actually excited for this game, as the beta seemed ok, but that bubble burst when I got the final product in my hands. So-so packaging for a collector's ed. box, so-so extras. That's ok, I think.
Then I get to the game: some games stay on my hard drive for over a year (Dawn of War, Company of Heroes and Hearts of Iron 2. Call of Duty 4 will probably stay for a while. The Witcher is still on my drive after being finished once...), this one didn't even last a week.
So I set it aside, thinking that I'll give it a few months. I mean, Neverwinter Nights got better after several months. Not Hellgate: London, IMHO. After getting the latest patches, and struggling with the horrible auto-updater, I gave up. Maybe I'll give it another go in a year's time or so, as I'm sure I'll get really bored again.
Also, when the beta seemed (and probably, was) more stable than the actual, released, game, that should say something, too.
Ultimately, it was, IMHO, a waste of my money and time.
So don't buy it, please, lest you know what it means to be 'flagshipped'.
There are better CRPGs out there. Get The Witcher, or NWN2 and it's expansion, or play Baldur's Gate again...just not this one.

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