Hellgate London Beta

StormCrow · Post by **StormCrow** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 3:09 am

yeah i got in (because i preordered it)

Diablo 3, this is not.

it's not a bad game, it is fairly fun, but when i play it just doesn't have the wow factor diablo2 did.

its all 3d, and theres an "fps" mode for when you use a firearm

the classes are not very well balanced, and the skills seem lackluster.

I like the stat-equip thing they have going on where you have a "willpower feed" which is total to your willpower stat, and your items take up part of the feed.

Say you have a 100 willpower, and you use 2 weapons with 25 willpower feed, then you only have 50 willpower left to use for your armor and mods and such, its pretty cool, there doesn't seem to be a huge stat requirement for items (other than level) so it is something different.

Item Modding/upgrading is incredibly cool though.

any item you find can be salvaged into parts, which you can use at the nano forge to upgrade any item.

basically it increases the damage and itemlevel of the item and can make the shittiest nonmagic item better than any legendary item you can find.

(but if you had upgraded a legendary it'd be even better obviously)

The gameplay is fun to me, but the game doesn't seem meant for single player imo. atleast the nonmelee classes.

I've played 4/6 of the classes through the current beta storyline (which is only playable to act 3, theres supposed to be 5 acts)

the marksman and caster classes solo like shit imo, mainly because theres a lot of melee mobs which can stun/knockback and deal hefty damage.

whereas i played both a blademaster (melee dps) and guardian (tank) and they made the solo experience almost easy.

Mob difficulty does scale with the number of players in your party.

A couple things about the beta though.

theres no cinematics, I'm pretty sure retail will have cinematic transitions between acts and such.

Theres a lot of crashing problems, and the beta version is supposed to be several weeks behind the actual Current Dev Build is hellgate.

so far I think i will probably buy the game, it is fun, but it just doesn't feel epic like Diablo did. (might have something to do with no cinematics and such)

A lot of the skills seem boring. The evoker for instance doesn't have any huge explody kill spells (that i could get, the level in beta is basically capped at 23 and theres a lot of spells at 25 and 30)

wtb meteor and fireball

also spell accuracy is terrible.

the first spell you get arcane bolt is affected by gravity and it splits into multiple bolts, so you shoot it straight and it veers down to the ground and splits into 5+ bolts and you cant even hit the mobs straight ahead, which is really frustrating.

The marksman skills suck. none of them are even remotely useful imo. theres a bunch of weak grenade skills and the marksman has all the lame "stances" that you have to stand still to use (btw standing still is bad)

when i played through on my marksman i basically just sprayed and backpeddled the whole time, the class just doesnt feel finished.

blademaster/guardian seem well done so far.

the casters are fun, but they are not your typical diabloesque spellcaster
their spell damage is dependent on their focus items (weapons) and you cant cast spells without a focus equipped (you can equip 2 as a evoker).

Considering Bill Roper and most of the Diablo2 team is working on Hellgate london and flagship studios is like 60% blizzard north. you'd think it'd feel more diabloish, but it doesn't.

Fun game though i'd say its a 6/10 so far in beta, and hopefully retail makes it better.

shiram · Post by **shiram** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 7:37 am

well they probably wanted to step a bit away from the diablo type
i guess its hard to be satisfied, when you have such high standards to reach

flint · Post by **flint** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 10:37 am

it sounds like theres a lot of potential there though

Bane · Post by **Bane** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 5:03 pm

The funnt thing is, I haven't even heard of this game before. Still, wouldn't mind testing it, wouldn't mind haveing a diablo-like game again, even if it's just for a few hours of fun.

StormCrow · Post by **StormCrow** » Wed Oct 03, 2007 8:03 pm

it does seem like it has tons of potential, but it comes out oct31st so hopefully the Dev build has a lot of cool stuff in it...

shiram · Post by **shiram** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 8:23 am

demo's out, i'll be trying it this week-end

StormCrow · Post by **StormCrow** » Fri Oct 19, 2007 4:29 pm

i hear the demo kinda sucks, but then again the early game kinda sucks.

this game isn't quite finished even though it comes out halloween.

i'd say if you enjoy it wait a month or so after launch to buy, it'll probably be worth it then.

although i have 2 preorders i plan on redeeming the 31st but i have a higher tolerance for BS crashing than most.

Bane · Post by **Bane** » Thu Oct 25, 2007 1:49 pm

Watched a couple of in-game movies and well.. it doesn't look all that amazing unfortunely :-/

I'd rather be spending my time playing UT3, dang, that's one helluva entertaining game! Played the demo all night last saturday. It's pretty much the same game as before, only alot prettier, heh.. Vehicles are funny as hell.