Hellgate: London demo
Here you go Andrew...
Hellgate London is a Sack of Fail
This demo is simply terrible. To be clear, I'm not even talking about the game yet, I'm talking about the demo providing the things one expects from a demo. This 1.4 gig download ultimately provides you a maximum of 5 character levels, which is not enough to even get a sense of the skill system, and even less map than it takes to reach level 5. Basically, you're playing what would be the tutorial of a released game, which is always the crappiest part of the game, but without the actual tutorial info.
To make things even worse, it's not even clear when you've run out of map that you're done. Instead of ending at a quest completion and letting you know that's it, they simply block off part of a map level. So, you run around for a while trying to figure out what you're missing, then you get sick of that and check online. There, you learn that you're not missing anything; the demo just deadends and expects you to give up in frustration or look online to realize that there's nothing more.
This is the kind of demo you release if you want people to not buy your game. No demo is better than a bad, incomplete demo.
Now, let's looks at the game itself.
Overall, the gameplay is simply uninspired, and lacking in any element of skill based play. The interface is mostly your standard first person shooter, with a somewhat shoddy RPG character/item interface slapped on top. There are two classes available, a melee sword class and a firearms class. The first person shooter style of the game lends itself far better to the ranged class than the melee, as one would expect. Let's take a look at the two classes.
Blademaster:
This is your standard sword swinging melee class. It's so standard, in fact, that all you can really do is swing your sword. The few special attacks to which I had access were simply sword attacks that looked like my normal right or left click, both of which did exactly the same thing, swing my sword. Yay! Intricate! The basic combat style is to run at an enemy, click just before getting there, and connecting with the swing just as you reach the enemy but before it takes a swing at you. The two incredibly obnoxious elements of the sword combat, beyond the repetitive nature of making the same attack a million times, are that you STOP MOVING as you take your swing, and that your swing will only connect with one enemy, no matter how many the blade passes through. That's a zero-skill combat system there. We've had better 3-d sword fighting interfaces for about a decade.
A further annoyance was the fact that I could never figure out how to equip two swords. Two guns, or a sword and a gun, sure. Sword and sword would always get spit out. I do not know if it was a problem with the particular weapons, the interface, a level restriction, or what. It didn't really matter, as wearing a shield, particularly a max stat shield for level 5, makes you nearly invincible. Honestly though, if the character selection for the class shows two swords, that's what I expect when I play.
I mentioned the character being nearly invincible. How invincible? I didn't die once. The mini-boss on the last level made me use a couple healing potions. Hello easy mode.
Marksman:
This is the ranged class. I don't have a lot to say here. Picture you standard FPS character. Now take their range down to 20 meters, and give them rubber arms so that they can only keep their aim steady for about two seconds of firing before they collapse into a 130 degree random spray of bullets. One nifty feature is that left click fires the left gun, and right click fires the right when using two weapons. In practice you just click both buttons, since there's no reloading.
You may think from the above that playing the Marksman presents some sort of challenge. You would be wrong. If the Blademaster is easy mode, this class is coma mode. How easy is the game as a Marksman? I took zero damage during the entire run through the demo. That's right, not once did I lose a single point of health. This was accomplished while the game refused to give me a single weapon upgrade, so I went through the entire demo with level 1 weapons doing about half the damage I should for my level. Playing this class is a game in the same way playing with one of those "The cow says moo" deals is game.
Now, let's look at the game environment. The zones were extremely linear, cramped and dull. The environments are not compelling, and the graphics are at most adequate. The level designers seem impressed by the color grey. There is no real sense of immersion. The monsters are your standard array of zombies and little jumping and spitting critters. The zombies range from slow to very slow, and weak to very weak. They are not detailed enough to be frightening in appearance. They mostly just look like fat or skinny men, sometimes dyed red. The leaping enemies had a tendency to land under the ground, and could be dodge with a single lazy sidestep. While the spitting creatures were not as buggy as the leapers, their attacks were equally trivial to avoid.
Let's see, what else...there's all the usual stuff you'd expect from an action RPG; quests, levels, items, some fairly dull skill trees. The NPCS had some nice voice muttering, but no voice acting for the quest dialog, which may be for the best since it was dull as hell. The player character models were tolerable, but not great. On the other hand, I'd change my character's pants and the look of their helmet would change, for example, which is pretty shoddy. Well, at least my Marksman's helm would change, my Blademaster never found a helmet. The item drop system is less than fantastic.
At present I'd put this game about about the bargain bin level. I could see buying it for ten bucks and killing a couple evenings with it.
I'd show you screenshots, but apparently this game does not take those when you hit printscreen.
If you have any questions feel free to ask.
Hellgate London is a Sack of Fail
This demo is simply terrible. To be clear, I'm not even talking about the game yet, I'm talking about the demo providing the things one expects from a demo. This 1.4 gig download ultimately provides you a maximum of 5 character levels, which is not enough to even get a sense of the skill system, and even less map than it takes to reach level 5. Basically, you're playing what would be the tutorial of a released game, which is always the crappiest part of the game, but without the actual tutorial info.
To make things even worse, it's not even clear when you've run out of map that you're done. Instead of ending at a quest completion and letting you know that's it, they simply block off part of a map level. So, you run around for a while trying to figure out what you're missing, then you get sick of that and check online. There, you learn that you're not missing anything; the demo just deadends and expects you to give up in frustration or look online to realize that there's nothing more.
This is the kind of demo you release if you want people to not buy your game. No demo is better than a bad, incomplete demo.
Now, let's looks at the game itself.
Overall, the gameplay is simply uninspired, and lacking in any element of skill based play. The interface is mostly your standard first person shooter, with a somewhat shoddy RPG character/item interface slapped on top. There are two classes available, a melee sword class and a firearms class. The first person shooter style of the game lends itself far better to the ranged class than the melee, as one would expect. Let's take a look at the two classes.
Blademaster:
This is your standard sword swinging melee class. It's so standard, in fact, that all you can really do is swing your sword. The few special attacks to which I had access were simply sword attacks that looked like my normal right or left click, both of which did exactly the same thing, swing my sword. Yay! Intricate! The basic combat style is to run at an enemy, click just before getting there, and connecting with the swing just as you reach the enemy but before it takes a swing at you. The two incredibly obnoxious elements of the sword combat, beyond the repetitive nature of making the same attack a million times, are that you STOP MOVING as you take your swing, and that your swing will only connect with one enemy, no matter how many the blade passes through. That's a zero-skill combat system there. We've had better 3-d sword fighting interfaces for about a decade.
A further annoyance was the fact that I could never figure out how to equip two swords. Two guns, or a sword and a gun, sure. Sword and sword would always get spit out. I do not know if it was a problem with the particular weapons, the interface, a level restriction, or what. It didn't really matter, as wearing a shield, particularly a max stat shield for level 5, makes you nearly invincible. Honestly though, if the character selection for the class shows two swords, that's what I expect when I play.
I mentioned the character being nearly invincible. How invincible? I didn't die once. The mini-boss on the last level made me use a couple healing potions. Hello easy mode.
Marksman:
This is the ranged class. I don't have a lot to say here. Picture you standard FPS character. Now take their range down to 20 meters, and give them rubber arms so that they can only keep their aim steady for about two seconds of firing before they collapse into a 130 degree random spray of bullets. One nifty feature is that left click fires the left gun, and right click fires the right when using two weapons. In practice you just click both buttons, since there's no reloading.
You may think from the above that playing the Marksman presents some sort of challenge. You would be wrong. If the Blademaster is easy mode, this class is coma mode. How easy is the game as a Marksman? I took zero damage during the entire run through the demo. That's right, not once did I lose a single point of health. This was accomplished while the game refused to give me a single weapon upgrade, so I went through the entire demo with level 1 weapons doing about half the damage I should for my level. Playing this class is a game in the same way playing with one of those "The cow says moo" deals is game.
Now, let's look at the game environment. The zones were extremely linear, cramped and dull. The environments are not compelling, and the graphics are at most adequate. The level designers seem impressed by the color grey. There is no real sense of immersion. The monsters are your standard array of zombies and little jumping and spitting critters. The zombies range from slow to very slow, and weak to very weak. They are not detailed enough to be frightening in appearance. They mostly just look like fat or skinny men, sometimes dyed red. The leaping enemies had a tendency to land under the ground, and could be dodge with a single lazy sidestep. While the spitting creatures were not as buggy as the leapers, their attacks were equally trivial to avoid.
Let's see, what else...there's all the usual stuff you'd expect from an action RPG; quests, levels, items, some fairly dull skill trees. The NPCS had some nice voice muttering, but no voice acting for the quest dialog, which may be for the best since it was dull as hell. The player character models were tolerable, but not great. On the other hand, I'd change my character's pants and the look of their helmet would change, for example, which is pretty shoddy. Well, at least my Marksman's helm would change, my Blademaster never found a helmet. The item drop system is less than fantastic.
At present I'd put this game about about the bargain bin level. I could see buying it for ten bucks and killing a couple evenings with it.
I'd show you screenshots, but apparently this game does not take those when you hit printscreen.
If you have any questions feel free to ask.