Am I the only one disappointed in Hellgate: London?

I started a new thread because I don't want to rain on the "Hellgate London Players Unite" thread's parade.

This game was pretty heavily anticipated, but I can't be the only one really disappointed with it. Combat is basically like Serious Sam without the intensity, levels are extraordinarily repetitive looking, and it just doesn't feel like anything gels. Couple that with how horribly buggy it's been since release and graphics on par with and even a bit below the original Half-Life 2...

I don't know. What am I missing? I've played the game for a few hours and it just hasn't been compelling at all. It feels like the very worst kind of grind and actually makes me yearn for Diablo II and worse, Doom 3. That's right: I re-installed Doom 3 after playing this and had substantially more fun. Doom 3 is NOT a good game.

So what am I missing here?

 

Nothing really, just bought Hellgate London and Tabula Rasa today and played both of them for a couple of hours.
Graphics are mediocre, single player is just a boring grindfest, multi-player has its potential though. But there are far better MMO's around. Tabula Rasa looks promising IMO.

 

No your not the only one.

http://metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/hellgatelondon

7.3 from reviewers and 6.9 from users.

 

You definitely aren't alone--a lot of people on the HGL forums feel the same. I enjoy it BECAUSE it's so relaxed. I can log on after work for a few hours and blow off steam killing zombies, but I don't feel like I'm in a rush to compete with other people or to finish it quickly, or like I have to pay close attention or I'll miss some important detail or quest line.

 

See, to me, it doesn't feel relaxed so much as just sloppy.

Playing as a marksman or engineer - really using any gun - is frustrating because the guns have no kickback, but the range they shoot in just magically widens as you fire. I've seen that sort of thing done before and done a LOT better in actual shooters; here it just reeks of artificial limitation, like it exists solely for the Accuracy stat to exist. There's no logic to it.

And then all of the alleged depth they tried to put into it - customizing weapons/armor, etc. - really just winds up making it needlessly complex and confusing. More than that, it just feels like all of these features were designed independently of each other. "Oh, we can do that!" "Oh, we should do this!" There's no rhyme or reason. To me, sandboxing something that much winds up just making it daunting and unappealing.

I don't know. It feels like the core gameplay is really lacking. If it's going to try and compete in all these different arenas, why couldn't it have culled from them intelligently instead of just half-assing everything? Doom 1 was a fantastic game...a decade ago. Why would you baseline that and THEN cripple it?

 

The demo didn't impress me much. I wonder if the game got too much overhyped before its release.

 

*assuming i might start a flame war* Halo was too overhyped, and still is.

 

Yea, the demo didn't blow me away, and I decided not to buy it.

Part of the problem of the demo was that it only allowed 2 classes that every other game in existence lets you play - i.e. a marksman (FPS wannabe) and a blademaster. Yet, it clearly isn't unique and doesn't excel in either of those implementations if you just want to get a FPS fix.

On the other hand, the more unique classes (the summoners, evokers, etc.) weren't playable in the demo at all--which raises the question, what exactly were they trying to let us demo?

 

I really like the game but the multiplayer/party system is just pure pain....

 

The game is a buggy mess, I can't even get it to load!

 

I am... I wanted to find an MMO that could be more fun that World Of Warcraft but Tabula Rasa and Hellgate London both failed...

 

WoW's pretty fun
There are a ton of problems in it that can make it not as fun, but those are more often than not caused by people and not the game itself.

I also heard that the storyline and campaign of Hellgate London is pretty weak--which is a shame. Diablo didn't just get by because good loot dropped and it was fun--the story was pretty good too!

 

HGL is very very limited and buggy right now, but it's still in the early stages.

WoW in the beginning, WOW was it ever buggy and crappy. But as time went by, it was upgraded so many times, so many things fixed, improved and added. Considering the monthly payments, Blizzard could AFFORD to do such a thing, hopefully HGL will as well.

 

No you are not the only one to be disappointed...7 giga for four ingame-textures

-Underground
-Damaged House
-Entire House
-Flaming House

Password was OPTIMIZATION! maybe they want run this game on a psp...

 

yea, I agree, but this is about HGL, and it seems like you wanted to start a 93408394893849th halo flame war.

 

Yes, I've had multiple bug/crash issues, even more in release than I did in beta. I'm definitely counting on these being fixed, or at least improved.

I do customer support for a series of online simulation games and we just launched a new site, so I may be especially tolerant of things being released that still need lots of tweaking.

 

I enjoy the game. I have been playing it with 2 of my friends at their house. We LAN Neverwinters nights and other games and this is another one to add to the mix. It has its downfalls but for a fun factor Its really fun especially when playing with other people that enjoy action RPGs.

 

I am dissapointed in the game as well.

-Gameplay is very repetetive, and just kind of boring, even for an MMO (biggest factor here)

-Getting a decent PuG together is difficult at best, and teamwork is unnecessary/nonexistant

-Horribly optimized, for already sub-par graphics

-Riddled with bugs (ex: my drone pet destroyed my super special awesome rare weapon) and slowdown issues