Hellgate : Failure

As you probably know by now, Hellgate: London has proven to be a massive bust, nearly bankrupting Flagship Studios, killing Mythos, causing confusion and chaos.

What you probably didn't know is that my very first gaming blog was a Hellgate : London blog, which I abandoned after three posts because I was already bored with the game.

I'm older and wiser now. For the moment it's impossible to quit blogging about WAR because I'm bored with levelling, or because I hate the end game. I'm a blogging machine that cannot be stopped HAHAHAHA.

Hellgate : London is kind of an enigma to me. I know that I really disliked it, but I had a hard time explaining why I disliked it. Then again, I've never been at a loss for words before ...

Ten Reasons Why Hellgate : London Was Bad

1. Third Person Action
   
   Something about third-person gaming doesn't translate well into an action RPG. It's just not quite as satisfying to mow down your enemies when you can't even see them dying. Or taking damage for like five seconds before you can even find the guy who's doing it. Or dying and saying "What the **** just happened, there was nobody there?"
   
   Now that we've all seen Diablo III in all of its isometric glory, it does make you think. The rumor was that Blizzard discarded the original Diablo III, the current one we're seeing being a rewrite. Allegedly when this happened many of the Blizzard North guys left to form Flagship. Was Diablo III killed because of the lame third person view?
   
   
2. Cool Weapons that Don't Last Long
   
   I'd be chugging along on my engineer, putting points into pets and stuff, and then I'd pick up this awesome rocket launcher. And I'd be like "Whoa! Awesome Rocket Launcher." And then I'd kill all these guys with it (if you were there you would have seen that it was awesome) and then more and more guys. But as I levelled up the rocket launcher would get weaker and weaker until I had to get a new, stronger weapon that worked completely differently. Then I'd get into that weapon but then have to swap it out, etc.
   
   It was like you could pick up the coolest skills in the game but only use them for three levels until they just wore out.
   
   
3. Lame, Underpowered Skills
   
   I don't even remember if they were called skills, abilities, or talents. I just remember that they weren't that powerful and weren't that interesting. As mentioned above, it was the weapons that were really cool but unfortunately transient.
   
   
4. Disposable Loot
   
   I hate randomly-created loot.
   
   In the early days of WoW Blizzard had ... how to say this politely ... they had "not put a lot of effort into itemization." You'd get epic cloth gear with ... agility. There was pretty much no spell damage gear in the game so casters had no way to effectively boost their damage. It was a disaster but Blizzard eventually fixed it.
   
   Imagine getting agility on your cloth gear all the time, and you'd have Hellgate: London. This is really the problem with random loot systems. In a game with non-random itemization you might say "Hey, I want this piece of gear, why don't I have fun working towards it and then enjoy reaching that goal and then have fun using my new cool piece of gear."
   
   In a game with random gear you say "Hey look at the Awesome piece of gear that just dro... Oh, wait. I can't use that stat. No wait, I thought it was awesome, it's higher level than what I have now but it's worse, it gives me stats I don't need. That's a shame."
   
   This makes almost none of the loot memorable and pretty much all the loot disposable. When you finally get a named item (that is never for your class) it will sit in your bank wasting space because you hate to get rid of it, which is a terrible and avoidable situation all by itself.
   
   
5. Random Monsters
   
   With few exceptions most instances had random monsters. It sounds nice in theory but in practice you just don't get a sense of place. You'd go into a basement zone (yeah, there were basement zones) and there would be ... I don't know, zombies there. And you'd kill all the zombies, and then come back and it would be filled with ... demons. The whole experience is just forgettable because everything blurs together.
   
   
6. Random Levels
   
   This is an entire blog right here. In fact, this is more than an entire blog. I think I could write a book on why random levels are so horrendously stupid and awful.
   
   But there's really one overriding reason that's pretty simple. Ok, imagine you're playing the game ...
   
   You see the Corridor bends to the left. You turn the corner.
   
   But what if it were totally different experience for you? Something so innovative, so unexpected that the shock would kill you?
   
   You see the Corridor bends to the right. You turn the corner.
   
   AWESOME!!!
   
   
7. The TIlesets
   
   While you're tromping through these random instances (all totally different, all totally boring, as we've mentioned) you might notice another pattern. There are four instances in which you will spend 75% of your game.
   
   1. The Ravaged and Destroyed Town Instance
   2. The Subway Tunnel Instance
   3. The Basement Instance
   4. The Subway-Tunnel-Instance-connected-to-a-Basement-Instance Instance
   
   Occasionally you'll get to go to a different or (in some rare cases) cool instances but mostly it's just those four. Add in the random monsters to make them all seem the same, and realize that each time you beat the game you'll play about 15 different levels even though you've been to 60 different places.
   
   
8. The Fleeting Moments of Awesomeness
   
   I have a lot of ideas for games. One of my favorite ideas (and it's probably been done before, it seems like an obvious idea) is to have an action game where you control a small group of guys. You only have to move one unit (the units move intelligently given your orders) and they'll automatically do their thing (attack, heal, debuff, etc.) You control your special abilities and the movement and there you go -- awesome little action game.
   
   Well, Hellgate did this. In one level you control this unit of four or six guys in this little RTS/action thing. They use their abilities automatically, you move them and use their special abilities, and it was absolutely perfect. I ran to my wife and told her how awesome it was.
   
   I loved this mini-game but you only get to do it once. And then you're back to the main game which is, in comparison, 100 times worse. It just reminds you you're playing an awful game.
   
   (Also, I'll admit that I loved the story and I still kind of hope we'll see a sequel someday (in good game form) just to see what happens.)
   
   
9. Backtracking
   
   Randomized levels are what really make you backtrack, but I hate it so much I'm going to just to single this one thing out as being particularly loathsome.
   
   
10. Remember WoW?
    
    I was hoping for a great, "light" game to tide me over between bouts of WoW. WoW at this point has been out for three years, so you've had three years to absorb all the lessons WoW (made by your ex-coworkers) has taught you about making a great online RPG, so what do you do?
    
    "Hey, let's copy the punctuation over the heads and call it a night."
    
    No end-game to speak of. Boring, boring level grinding. No loot worth working towards, no skills worth working towards. Few memorable locations. No memorable mobs. No crafting worth talking about.
    

Ah, to be young, and to love a game before it's released ...