i wish mmorpg.com would stop writing useless fluff articles like this just to fill space. The single biggest problem that caused hellgate london to fail originally was it's instability and bug ridden release to the point of unplayable.
1) How stable is the game now exactly? other than a one liner "it's more polished", does the game still crash from zone to zone? do you still get stuck in the doors? lag? network stable?
2) What is the price structure now? How much exactly do you have to pay after act 2, what is offered in item mall are they game changing items or just visual?
I cant comment on much of the extra stuff in the cash shop, but by the time I had to "pay" for the new content, I had enough in game cash to buy it from another player in the auction house.
AmazingAveryAge of Conan AdvocateMemberUncommonPosts: 7,188
I find it amusing that the video posted in the review has gold spam in it which if posted on the forums would be removed...
Way, waaaay too kind on the score there. Also, one of the cons is the dated visuals and yet aesthetics gets a 9? When you lack a graphic score, it gets lumped in with aesthetics since that is indeed part of the package. You can't give a high score to something then say it's one of its faults.
And 6 on value is...mmm....well, I won't even touch that. If I have to pay out my bum to play the game, it doesn't even get a mediocre on the "value" level. It would have been cheaper to keep it p2p, except no one found the game good enough to pay monthly for. And the solution for that, somehow, became to make it even more expensive to play through the item mall.
Brilliance.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Oh come on, this game has zero replayability. Complete waste of time if you ask me. Anyone thinking they captured even an inkling of the magic of Diablo would be soon be disallusioned with it.
Using the word "Great" when referring to this game immediately makes the reviewer look foolish.
All ratings are subjective. I happen to agree with the review. I should mention that I enjoyed the original versional as well. Most of the updates are real improvements. Unfortunately they removed the permadeath option which I enjoyed the first time around.
The cash shop price for unlocking the restricted content (act 2 or 3, don't remember which) was a whole four dollars last I checked. I can't comment on the price of anything else because I never felt the need to buy anything else (although you will need to spend at least ten dollars just because that is the minimum for a purchase).
I have a really hard time taking this review seriously, the scores just seem bloated and it feels like they're contridictions in the review. The only score that feels honest is the Value. I mean, just look at the Innovation review:
Frankly, Hellgate Global doesn’t do anything new. The majority of mechanics aren’t new. The idea of a futuristic demon world is definitely not common but is a new spin on an old idea. The game is doesn’t deviate too far from other hack and slash MMORPGs that we have come to expect from a large portion of the genre. Its biggest innovation is trying to blend the shooter with Diablo mechanics, and other games have done that better since.
And yet it is scored a 7.
Pretty much sums up my thoughts when reading this.... eh... "review". It's getting harder and harder to take anything from the staff writers seriously. Been a loot of silly articles in the news section over the last year too, written by clueless authors that appearently barely knew the name of the game they talked about.
Mmmorpg.com, hire professionals, not cusins, sons, daughters, whatever...
It stays at 6/10 for me like value i won't use item shop so its way to limited so uninstalled it after a few days. I never had the feeling it was a mmo not back in 2007 and not now. Its just a diablo hack and slash nothing more. Game is also downgraded from DX10 back to DX9 LOL.
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77 CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now)) MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB PSU:Corsair AX1200i OS:Windows 10 64bit
It's just so funny how people regard their own opinions as the "right and most superior" opinion of all. Anyone with a contrary opinion is a fool.
Why can't just people accept that some people like some games, while some people don't. If you don't like it, then don't play it. If you don't agree with the review, then shut up and read another article. Or better yet, make your own review and show us how "good" you are.
When the op mentioned that they were a WoW veteran i had to pick myself up off the floor from laughing, for they must be a formidable gamer to quote thenselves so.
Anyway, i will list some points about Hellgate Global that the op (kindly) missed out.
Graphics:
Graphics are/look like crap for they reverted to using dx9 instead of dx10 for online stability reasons. If you close one eye and max all details then it is not to bad.
4/10
..
Grouping:
Op mentions the ability to form a group now, but this feature was in from the original release, theres still a max number of 6 in a group.
Playing with others can be a pain for you will find numerous bugs in group content eg 1fps bug, loading screen bugs. If any group can stay together for any ammount of time without a bug happening then they are very lucky.
3/10
..
PVP:
PAY 2 WIN games are never really fun to play pvp in.
1/10
..
Content:
New content has been added, Weldone!. Extra zones / bigger maps / more baddies / bosses .. pls keep the extra content coming.
6/10
..
Free to Play:
Yes this game is free to play, Hanbitsoft does'nt ask you to part with any money at all. OP stated that you need real money for the act3 ticket but this is wrong, you just buy it from the market place, there are always players that will spend real money on these games and they buy the items everyone needs then sell then for in game currency.
If you want to try this game then now is the best time to do it, for you get 7million in game gold and 1000 nanoshards (crafting item) for free when you level to 45.
I have all content open on my account and i am Free2Play.
As f2p games go then Hellgate is not bad at all.
6/10
..
Bugs:
All the bugs that were in the original release are still there.
Loss of Frames (for no apparent reason your fps will drop to 1 for a short time)
Loading Screen bug .. your game will hang when you try to zone to a new map, only way out of this is to alt del out of game and close it down.
Server side lag .. Yep the curse of all online games, but Hellgate suffers more than others .
To many to list.
..
Overall:
I still play Hellgate now and again for i do like Action mmos.
Hanbitsoft needs to sort out the worst of the game breaking bugs to really have a chance at getting a few more players to play.
Constant stopping to dismantle items makes for frustrating play.
Hanbitsoft needs to tell the community of there game update plans.
Loads more things can be added but others can add their input too.
Hellgate is good for ARPG-loving people (like me), and currently it is the only MMO-ARPG around. Fans of other games may not understand us ARPG players, and why we are addicted to it. It uses the same formula of ARPG games - replayability and randomness.
I don't know about you guys, but I play it for what it is, an ARPG.
I might take another look at it but I can't find any info on "freemium" stuff or the shop on their site. Weird, I know.
Can someone enlighten me how much it costs to unlock all content, do they charge a sub somewhere down the line and does the item shop include stat-chaniging items?
Alex may come in to the topic later, but I will say that he and I talked a lot about HG while he was writing the review, and all he kept saying was that it's really gotten a lot better since the Flagship days. His honest opinion is that the game is worth this score, and that's enough for me. I'm likely going to be checking it out again myself soon, based on his opinion. But that doesn't mean he's "right". It just means that an 8/10 is what he thinks of Hellgate: Global.
Whatever happened to MMORPG introducing some consistancy in scoring and reviewing? I seem to remember it being on the agenda some while back..
Personally I just don't trust all those 9's, it certainly gives you know where to go if Torchlight II or Diablo III are game of the year materiall? 9's really? Come on now, if 10 is perfection (or at least 'as good as it gets')......
You know what? I was going to go onbut tbh I don't think it's worth it. It seems to me that MMORPG just do not take there reviews seriously or assume any sort of responsibility for any sort of real consistency or objectivity. Truly sad and a wasted opportunity.
It's just so funny how people regard their own opinions as the "right and most superior" opinion of all. Anyone with a contrary opinion is a fool.
Why can't just people accept that some people like some games, while some people don't. If you don't like it, then don't play it. If you don't agree with the review, then shut up and read another article. Or better yet, make your own review and show us how "good" you are.
Sure!! But if you are writing an editorial review for a commercail site, I personally feel you have a duty of care to your readers. It's not a question of whether you enjoy the game it is a question of accurately representing it.
I guess u guys ran out of things to right about....
That game will never be a big hit...it could very well have a score of over 9000 ...
I guess you also forgot how to spell "WRITE". Dont worry, we all no the american education system is going to pot.
"we all no the american education..."
1. How better to fail at pointing out someones mistake then to make the same mistake yourself? it's "we all KNOW"
2. Who ever said i was american? i am not actually and i am not from a native english speaking country....what's your point? or even better how exactly did your post counter my post which was related to the topic at hand?
Are u that self-centered as to think americans are the only ones posting on these forums? How is your geography? does it extend past the borders of your country? does it have preety colors?
in all fairness, I have to add something to defend this article.
this version of Hellgate is based on the Korean Hanbit version which has been quite successful in South Korea. When the international version was shut down, Hanbit spent years updating and developing the client, so it's really quite polished now!
It's been going strong for 4 years now and though not as popular as Vindictus or C9, it still has a stable playerbase in South Korea.
Also, T3fun will probably keep this game going until the playerbase gets too low. This is what happened with T3fun's version of Aika. They were doing great, until a SEA version of Aika was released in Singapore and all of the asian players left, leaving T3fun with a few odd European players that were not enough to keep the game going. So they had to shut it down and focused their energy on Hellgate.
As for this being f2p, it's not really, it's a mandatory freemium model, meaning that just like in LOTRO, you HAVE to buy expansion packs to continue. At the moment, you have to pay something like 7$ to continue past act 2, but after that payments are optional.
Hellgates client has not been updated, the same bugs that were present in Flagships release are still in Hanbisofts.
This is the North American server version.
Once again i will state that at no point do Hanbisoft ask you for any money to buy extra content, the Hellgate game and ALL the expansion are Free To Play.
If you play the game then you would know this, all items can be purchased with in game currency including the Act3 and Toyko expansion.
in all fairness, I have to add something to defend this article.
this version of Hellgate is based on the Korean Hanbit version which has been quite successful in South Korea. When the international version was shut down, Hanbit spent years updating and developing the client, so it's really quite polished now!
It's been going strong for 4 years now and though not as popular as Vindictus or C9, it still has a stable playerbase in South Korea.
Also, T3fun will probably keep this game going until the playerbase gets too low. This is what happened with T3fun's version of Aika. They were doing great, until a SEA version of Aika was released in Singapore and all of the asian players left, leaving T3fun with a few odd European players that were not enough to keep the game going. So they had to shut it down and focused their energy on Hellgate.
As for this being f2p, it's not really, it's a mandatory freemium model, meaning that just like in LOTRO, you HAVE to buy expansion packs to continue. At the moment, you have to pay something like 7$ to continue past act 2, but after that payments are optional.
If Hanbit spent so much time refining the client, how come the bugs from the original game are still there. And there are not a just a few of them? Giving kudos to Hanbit for not fixing known bugs, especially the grouping ones is misguided.
Hanbit has done very little with this game beyond taking the original code and perhaps adding some features that were close to being added at shutdown.
Hellgate Global, in this writer’s eyes, is a great value… at first. It runs on a Freemium model with an item mall. The item mall has both gear and items, including tickets to get you into the new zones. Without paying you cannot make it past act 2 (there are five acts plus additional content)
You do relize you can buy act tickets from other players for ingame currancy.
i wish mmorpg.com would stop writing useless fluff articles like this just to fill space. The single biggest problem that caused hellgate london to fail originally was it's instability and bug ridden release to the point of unplayable.
1) How stable is the game now exactly? other than a one liner "it's more polished", does the game still crash from zone to zone? do you still get stuck in the doors? lag? network stable?
2) What is the price structure now? How much exactly do you have to pay after act 2, what is offered in item mall are they game changing items or just visual?
It's F2P so who cares? Every video had non stop gold spam in the chat box. There's your community.
Hm. After buying this game not long after it's release, I gave up on it due to technical difficulties (lag,disconnects, slow loading, overly repetitive level layouts) and not having a good enough comp to run it well. Years later with a different computer I installed it and gave it another try after patching, and boy am I impressed and having a blast with it!
It's not Crysis level graphics, obviously, but it is very detailed and does have certain armors, certain weapons, certain monsters and areas that really look great! IMHO, the gameplay is fantastic as an ARPG/FPS hybrid, really satisfying action watching monsters explode and bloody flying chunks across the screen, getting ambushed, having to figure out how to tackle a room overflowing with bad guys. The controls are solid, the UI fine, the monster AI quite clever at times, certain enemies hiding behind obstacles, circling around you, strafing, teleporting, stealthing, and some of the best death cries of any game.
The weapons are quite brilliant, so many different kinds and uses, loading them up with mod items, augmenting them, levelling them up, trying different ones for different enemies and situations.
The skill trees are well thought out and offer lots of great choices.
There's even a story and plot that are interesting.
At the end of the day though, it makes me so sad that Flagship Studios ran out of money, didn't have another year, or 6 months even to polish the game up, have a closed or open beta, work out all the bugs and glitches, and come to the realization that an MMO subscription based pricing system doesn't work for a regular game without all the MMO features such as an open, perpetual world. This game could have been huge instead of a legendary failure. It could have had big content updates, expansions, new characters, new areas, maybe even a sequel, fighting the demon invasion in other worlds, and become a franchise like the Diablo series. I wish I could go back in time with 10 million dollars to give them and have it all turn out different.
I'm extremely skeptical about this new effort by Redbana/Hanbitsoft. I tried downloading it just to see and the download crashed my computer before completing. I tend to think of them as the room full of monkeys with typewriters, give them 1,000 years and they might come up with Shakespear.
Comments
I cant comment on much of the extra stuff in the cash shop, but by the time I had to "pay" for the new content, I had enough in game cash to buy it from another player in the auction house.
I find it amusing that the video posted in the review has gold spam in it which if posted on the forums would be removed...
LOL as the pot calls the kettle black. Perhaps you should practice how to spell know?
They also don't teach sarcasm in American schools. Though they do teach mocking, so I'm not sure why it wasn't more clear what he was doing there.
Way, waaaay too kind on the score there. Also, one of the cons is the dated visuals and yet aesthetics gets a 9? When you lack a graphic score, it gets lumped in with aesthetics since that is indeed part of the package. You can't give a high score to something then say it's one of its faults.
And 6 on value is...mmm....well, I won't even touch that. If I have to pay out my bum to play the game, it doesn't even get a mediocre on the "value" level. It would have been cheaper to keep it p2p, except no one found the game good enough to pay monthly for. And the solution for that, somehow, became to make it even more expensive to play through the item mall.
Brilliance.
"Forums aren't for intelligent discussion; they're for blow-hards with unwavering opinions."
Oh come on, this game has zero replayability. Complete waste of time if you ask me. Anyone thinking they captured even an inkling of the magic of Diablo would be soon be disallusioned with it.
Using the word "Great" when referring to this game immediately makes the reviewer look foolish.
All ratings are subjective. I happen to agree with the review. I should mention that I enjoyed the original versional as well. Most of the updates are real improvements. Unfortunately they removed the permadeath option which I enjoyed the first time around.
The cash shop price for unlocking the restricted content (act 2 or 3, don't remember which) was a whole four dollars last I checked. I can't comment on the price of anything else because I never felt the need to buy anything else (although you will need to spend at least ten dollars just because that is the minimum for a purchase).
Pretty much sums up my thoughts when reading this.... eh... "review". It's getting harder and harder to take anything from the staff writers seriously. Been a loot of silly articles in the news section over the last year too, written by clueless authors that appearently barely knew the name of the game they talked about.
Mmmorpg.com, hire professionals, not cusins, sons, daughters, whatever...
It stays at 6/10 for me like value i won't use item shop so its way to limited so uninstalled it after a few days. I never had the feeling it was a mmo not back in 2007 and not now. Its just a diablo hack and slash nothing more. Game is also downgraded from DX10 back to DX9 LOL.
Hope to build full AMD system RYZEN/VEGA/AM4!!!
MB:Asus V De Luxe z77
CPU:Intell Icore7 3770k
GPU: AMD Fury X(waiting for BIG VEGA 10 or 11 HBM2?(bit unclear now))
MEMORY:Corsair PLAT.DDR3 1866MHZ 16GB
PSU:Corsair AX1200i
OS:Windows 10 64bit
It's just so funny how people regard their own opinions as the "right and most superior" opinion of all. Anyone with a contrary opinion is a fool.
Why can't just people accept that some people like some games, while some people don't. If you don't like it, then don't play it. If you don't agree with the review, then shut up and read another article. Or better yet, make your own review and show us how "good" you are.
When the op mentioned that they were a WoW veteran i had to pick myself up off the floor from laughing, for they must be a formidable gamer to quote thenselves so.
Anyway, i will list some points about Hellgate Global that the op (kindly) missed out.
Graphics:
Graphics are/look like crap for they reverted to using dx9 instead of dx10 for online stability reasons. If you close one eye and max all details then it is not to bad.
4/10
..
Grouping:
Op mentions the ability to form a group now, but this feature was in from the original release, theres still a max number of 6 in a group.
Playing with others can be a pain for you will find numerous bugs in group content eg 1fps bug, loading screen bugs. If any group can stay together for any ammount of time without a bug happening then they are very lucky.
3/10
..
PVP:
PAY 2 WIN games are never really fun to play pvp in.
1/10
..
Content:
New content has been added, Weldone!. Extra zones / bigger maps / more baddies / bosses .. pls keep the extra content coming.
6/10
..
Free to Play:
Yes this game is free to play, Hanbitsoft does'nt ask you to part with any money at all. OP stated that you need real money for the act3 ticket but this is wrong, you just buy it from the market place, there are always players that will spend real money on these games and they buy the items everyone needs then sell then for in game currency.
If you want to try this game then now is the best time to do it, for you get 7million in game gold and 1000 nanoshards (crafting item) for free when you level to 45.
I have all content open on my account and i am Free2Play.
As f2p games go then Hellgate is not bad at all.
6/10
..
Bugs:
All the bugs that were in the original release are still there.
Loss of Frames (for no apparent reason your fps will drop to 1 for a short time)
Loading Screen bug .. your game will hang when you try to zone to a new map, only way out of this is to alt del out of game and close it down.
Server side lag .. Yep the curse of all online games, but Hellgate suffers more than others .
To many to list.
..
Overall:
I still play Hellgate now and again for i do like Action mmos.
Hanbitsoft needs to sort out the worst of the game breaking bugs to really have a chance at getting a few more players to play.
Constant stopping to dismantle items makes for frustrating play.
Hanbitsoft needs to tell the community of there game update plans.
Loads more things can be added but others can add their input too.
..
I would give the game a 5/10
..
Wow. A review of my current game.
Hellgate is good for ARPG-loving people (like me), and currently it is the only MMO-ARPG around. Fans of other games may not understand us ARPG players, and why we are addicted to it. It uses the same formula of ARPG games - replayability and randomness.
I don't know about you guys, but I play it for what it is, an ARPG.
My Blog About Hellgate Global, an ARPG/FPS hybrid MMO:
http://kashiewannaplay.wordpress.com/
Hellgate Global Official Fan Blog
http://t3funhellgate.wordpress.com/
Currently Playing: Hellgate Global, LoL, Skyrim, Morrowind
Recently Played: Cardmon Hero, Cabal, Oblivion
I might take another look at it but I can't find any info on "freemium" stuff or the shop on their site. Weird, I know.
Can someone enlighten me how much it costs to unlock all content, do they charge a sub somewhere down the line and does the item shop include stat-chaniging items?
Thnx guys in advance.
Whatever happened to MMORPG introducing some consistancy in scoring and reviewing? I seem to remember it being on the agenda some while back..
Personally I just don't trust all those 9's, it certainly gives you know where to go if Torchlight II or Diablo III are game of the year materiall? 9's really? Come on now, if 10 is perfection (or at least 'as good as it gets')......
You know what? I was going to go onbut tbh I don't think it's worth it. It seems to me that MMORPG just do not take there reviews seriously or assume any sort of responsibility for any sort of real consistency or objectivity. Truly sad and a wasted opportunity.
Sure!! But if you are writing an editorial review for a commercail site, I personally feel you have a duty of care to your readers. It's not a question of whether you enjoy the game it is a question of accurately representing it.
"we all no the american education..."
1. How better to fail at pointing out someones mistake then to make the same mistake yourself? it's "we all KNOW"
2. Who ever said i was american? i am not actually and i am not from a native english speaking country....what's your point? or even better how exactly did your post counter my post which was related to the topic at hand?
Are u that self-centered as to think americans are the only ones posting on these forums? How is your geography? does it extend past the borders of your country? does it have preety colors?
in all fairness, I have to add something to defend this article.
this version of Hellgate is based on the Korean Hanbit version which has been quite successful in South Korea. When the international version was shut down, Hanbit spent years updating and developing the client, so it's really quite polished now!
It's been going strong for 4 years now and though not as popular as Vindictus or C9, it still has a stable playerbase in South Korea.
Also, T3fun will probably keep this game going until the playerbase gets too low. This is what happened with T3fun's version of Aika. They were doing great, until a SEA version of Aika was released in Singapore and all of the asian players left, leaving T3fun with a few odd European players that were not enough to keep the game going. So they had to shut it down and focused their energy on Hellgate.
As for this being f2p, it's not really, it's a mandatory freemium model, meaning that just like in LOTRO, you HAVE to buy expansion packs to continue. At the moment, you have to pay something like 7$ to continue past act 2, but after that payments are optional.
I review lots of indie games and MMORPGs
Lalartu:
Hellgates client has not been updated, the same bugs that were present in Flagships release are still in Hanbisofts.
This is the North American server version.
Once again i will state that at no point do Hanbisoft ask you for any money to buy extra content, the Hellgate game and ALL the expansion are Free To Play.
If you play the game then you would know this, all items can be purchased with in game currency including the Act3 and Toyko expansion.
"When originally asked me to review Hellgate"
Please edit your work, there should be no 'me' in that sentance.
Both the review and the critque by posters did give me a good feel for the game, so job done.
If Hanbit spent so much time refining the client, how come the bugs from the original game are still there. And there are not a just a few of them? Giving kudos to Hanbit for not fixing known bugs, especially the grouping ones is misguided.
Hanbit has done very little with this game beyond taking the original code and perhaps adding some features that were close to being added at shutdown.
Hellgate Global, in this writer’s eyes, is a great value… at first. It runs on a Freemium model with an item mall. The item mall has both gear and items, including tickets to get you into the new zones. Without paying you cannot make it past act 2 (there are five acts plus additional content)
You do relize you can buy act tickets from other players for ingame currancy.
It's F2P so who cares? Every video had non stop gold spam in the chat box. There's your community.
8/10?
Sure.
So did you intentionally misspell "there" for his benefit?
Hm. After buying this game not long after it's release, I gave up on it due to technical difficulties (lag,disconnects, slow loading, overly repetitive level layouts) and not having a good enough comp to run it well. Years later with a different computer I installed it and gave it another try after patching, and boy am I impressed and having a blast with it!
It's not Crysis level graphics, obviously, but it is very detailed and does have certain armors, certain weapons, certain monsters and areas that really look great! IMHO, the gameplay is fantastic as an ARPG/FPS hybrid, really satisfying action watching monsters explode and bloody flying chunks across the screen, getting ambushed, having to figure out how to tackle a room overflowing with bad guys. The controls are solid, the UI fine, the monster AI quite clever at times, certain enemies hiding behind obstacles, circling around you, strafing, teleporting, stealthing, and some of the best death cries of any game.
The weapons are quite brilliant, so many different kinds and uses, loading them up with mod items, augmenting them, levelling them up, trying different ones for different enemies and situations.
The skill trees are well thought out and offer lots of great choices.
There's even a story and plot that are interesting.
At the end of the day though, it makes me so sad that Flagship Studios ran out of money, didn't have another year, or 6 months even to polish the game up, have a closed or open beta, work out all the bugs and glitches, and come to the realization that an MMO subscription based pricing system doesn't work for a regular game without all the MMO features such as an open, perpetual world. This game could have been huge instead of a legendary failure. It could have had big content updates, expansions, new characters, new areas, maybe even a sequel, fighting the demon invasion in other worlds, and become a franchise like the Diablo series. I wish I could go back in time with 10 million dollars to give them and have it all turn out different.
I'm extremely skeptical about this new effort by Redbana/Hanbitsoft. I tried downloading it just to see and the download crashed my computer before completing. I tend to think of them as the room full of monkeys with typewriters, give them 1,000 years and they might come up with Shakespear.