Hellgate Initial Impressions
I’ve gotten a Guardian to level 20, and an Engineer to level 12 (I got him to level 10, then rerolled when I found out how bad the construct drone was), and an Evoker to level 6. I think HG:L will eventually be quite good, but like so many of these MMO games, HG:L shipped with a number of issues.
The Good:
- Quests: The story so far is pretty good, and some of the characters are very funny. Also, I have yet to grind, as the quests take you everywhere you need to go, and net you all the experience you need.
- Party Portal: It’s such a simple idea, but the ability to open a party portal at almost any time (except in Hell, interestingly) and instantly beam over to your party is amazing. This eliminates all the waiting for party members to assemble, and prevents people from getting lost.
- Fun: When things are working smoothly, HG:L is fast-paced and enjoyable. I think HG:L has a very strong foundation. There are a number of really cool moments like the pitch-black level where you wear headpiece flashlights, and the Gundown battle where you have to shoot down the squid ship. A few of the innovative parts are less impressive (like the lame RTS event), but props to Flagship for trying.
- Light Death Penalty: When you die, you can pay a small fee to pop right back up (BATTLE REZ!!!). If you are that cheap, you can also respawn at the last base, or return as a ghost at the beginning of the zone. The last two options are free.
The Bad:
- Chat UI: It doesn’t affect me as much since Velius, Ender, and I use TeamSpeak, but the Chat UI is bad, and has many users complaining. The overall UI is good, but there are some annoying issues that will probably get fixed in the initial patches (like party portraits not showing up sometimes).
- Inventory Management: There is no auto-sort feature, so your inventory frequently gets clogged up. Even worse, the special holiday/event items will continue to drop even when you have already completed the quest. In some ways, being a subscriber could actually be more annoying!
- Subscriber Perks: Unless you must have PVP, I see almost zero reason to subscribe. Compare what you get in WOW with what you get in HG:L when you subscribe, and it’s clear the value just isn’t there.
The Ugly:
- The Memory Leak: This is a bad bad bug, and no matter how epic your computer is, the program will crash at least once every 1-2 hours. The bug is rumored to be related to HG:L taking all the textures in and never really removing them, but even with all settings set to low you will still crash. In some cases, your computer will completely freeze up. With the light death penalty and the shrewd use of party portals, this won’t mess up your progress too much, but it is really annoying to constantly have to exit HG:L and restart your computer. The memory leak should have been resolved before, and it seems that Flagship has not figured out what causes it.
- Quest Bugs: I have not gotten this far, but apparently there are some bugs with a later story-critical quest that will prevent you from progressing. This is a bad bug as well, but it will probably be fixed pretty quickly.
By Velius, 11/5/2007 @ 1:19 pm
Supposedly, today’s patch fixed the memory issues. They also made some changes to the UI as well. Things that probably should never have made it into GoLive, but at least they were quick to fix it.
I totally agree about the party portal concept. It’s so simple and makes such a big difference in keeping the game pace up. I would love to see more levels where you have to use that headpiece. It looks really cool, and you get that whole ‘Aliens in the darkness’ feel.
By Velius, 11/6/2007 @ 11:29 am
Supposedly, there is a /stuck function just like WoW if you get caught in a Car or building or something.
By Kabitzin, 11/6/2007 @ 7:35 pm
/jawsoflife