Three Months Later

An Afterward

2009-12-25T17:19:00.002-05:00

While this blog, when it was active, pertained only to a small group of people (and an even smaller group now that everything is over), I still feel it is necessary to provide an afterward on everything that eventually happened, considering that, shortly after the servers went down for the game, so did flagshipped.com. Unfortunately holding out for things to change at Flagship Studios was something that just wasn't meant to be. While we thought we were helping by heavily scrutinizing the company and their game, Hellgate: London, we may have just instead quickened the death of a project that launched on life support.

Cutting through all the hate and backlash both sides threw at each other, it proved right that, right from the start, Hellgate: London was never going to be as great of a game as it should have been. Despite having an all-star team of some of the original team members at Blizzard North, the numbers did not end up adding up for the production team in the end of things. This is also essentially why more and more staff was pulled off the further production of Hellgate: London and put onto Flagship Studios's other project, Mythos. The idea there was that Mythos was originally going to be the polished product that Flagship Studios was going to bank in on--and that Hellgate: London was simply put through to pay some of those bills.

Like I said, with flagshipped.com down now, you can find the first summary of the confusion that befell the time of days what first started as rumors and then ended up as the awful truth, over at VE3D. I nod again to Andrew Burnes, who may have been one of the few journalists in the video gaming media that actually sourced us for some of the information (Kotaku, Bluesnews, and Gamasutra failed to do so on many occasions). After following the news on Community Manager's Evan "Scapes" Berman likes and dislikes, as well as his buddy Taylor Balbi's rather rude comments, it was confirmed--the studio went under. Many of the staff didn't even know it was happening. Some others didn't get their severance checks as well.

The source of the problem, Bill Roper, went on to do just fine, however. Despite confessing in 1UP's interview that he literally had no idea what he was doing, he was picked up later by Cryptic Studios. He brought along Ivan Sullic too, who I had the pleasure of getting numerous retorts from him on what paraphrasing actually meant and that it "wasn't that different from direct quoting." Of course some of you may know how well his talents were spent when he practically refused to apologize for purposely trying to covertly turn away Call of Heroes players to come and join Champions Online. The integrity of some people never change.

Since the intellectual property of Hellgate was put on for a loan, it was eventually bought by HanbitSoft, a Korean developer that has been having a tumultuous time of trying to get back onto its feet as the Asian release of Hellgate nearly sent them under as well. Since their taking on of the IP they have altered the game and have brought it up online in Korea. Still no word on if it will ever be brought to US/EU markets. There still are some fans out there trying to do their own thing by trying their hand at modding the game. Personally I haven't been following much of it ever since the servers went down back in February 2009, but their forums are here. Maybe they'll be able to do something with the game.

I once said that I would write a review for the game. In truth, I think the history behind the game has written its own script upon its headstone. The dead horse is indeed dead. And perhaps it simply was for the best. A lot of us learned from the experience. I myself went on to write a personal blog with taking the words "caveat emptor" to heart. I have nodded at the attempted boycotts of Left 4 Dead 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, but was saddened when neither had the necessary leadership to put forth their platform and remain steadfast. But looking on the other side of the looking glass I see the opposite of what happens when the mob gets their hands upon their monster, and all that's usually left are the ashes of a memory.

I ask myself, "Was it worth it?" Did we, at flagshipped.com play a roll in Flagship Studios's demise? We were fans, after all. We wanted the game to improve. To live on strong. We thought that by bringing the light to those that wore rose-tinted glasses that they'd see their mistakes and strive to improve on them. But the reality to that hat trick is that we had no play in their downfall. We were not the chief executive officers of the company. We did not make the blunders in business decisions that sealed the game's, and the company's, fate even before Hellgate was a whisper on people's lips. The pieces will fall where they may if those that are putting the puzzle together are careless. And, when left out long enough in the weathered conditions, they will fade away, a picture of a place that no one could ever go. And now no one ever will.

Chapter 14: And so it ends

2008-05-14T18:13:00.059-04:00

Yes, I return from my one-month hiatus. Actually, I haven't "played the game" (which is to say I haven't continued on with the main quest) since late March, so it's actually been about two months. And you know what would've happened if I continued on for another two hours back in late March? I would've beaten the game, that's what, because in the two hours I recorded here, I beat the game. So let's start where I started then, shall we?

So, patch 1.3. I had been told by many that patch 1.3 actually broke more things then it fixed. This includes graphical errors, glitches, exploits, the mail magically disappearing, and the infinite loading screen of death. It was also the patch in which some of even the most die-hard supporters of Flagship and Hellgate actually decided to have second thoughts (RIP Shagsbeard; we knew him so). So, after having been asked by a few people of when I was going to update my blog, I decided last night that I should continue my endeavor. I guess I just didn't expect for it to come to an end last night as well.

So, anyways, I'll start off with what I noticed first, which happened to be that the useless and redundant station medics had turned into beggars--I mean, "donation receivers." Yes, apparently if you donate a certain amount of palladium, the entire server gives everyone's character a "buff." I'm also told the buff is quite useless and the feature itself is useless as well, but I can't actually comment on it myself, except see it as more of a pointless addition then anything else.

Money sink. Because, you know, the Augumentrix doesn't do a bang up job as it is.

Seriously, why was this added? Did anyone ask for this? Or were they just trying to bring in some more Diablo II charm into the mix ("SoJ has been sold! A new terror arises!")? I mean, seriously. Why add something like this in when you can be working on things that need to be fixed? Or things that are still missing from the game? Oh, but bless me! They did add things missing from the game. Like, for instance, this:

Well this is new. An advertisement advertising the game itself?

Yes, you know things must be going well if all the adverts for the Greatest Catch have been replaced by adverts for subscriber content. Just before I could make heads of tails or more of this issue, a little message flashed in chat:

Thanks for telling me. Let me just donate the 1.8 million left so we can all get a server-wide buff.

I was then informed by a guild mate that the appropriate message flashes every time someone donates 100,000 palladium. Sure enough, as soon as this message had flashed, someone else donated 100,000 to bring the message to flash 1,700,000 more palladium needed. Oh well. It's not like I have the chat bar showing anyways. That God-awful red font on such a dark background takes my focus off of playing, so I suppose it will stay closed until we can change font color and font size.

Moving right along to new things I was rather peculiar about a new character tab on the options panel labeled "expertise." Thinking I had extensively read the 1.3 changes, I clicked this tab, only to groan to realize what "expertise" really was. It was just ranks. You know, ranks? It's the current fix for LV50s waiting for higher level content or the raising of the level cap. It's also a weak fix to the feed system as well. You see, what the rank system does is it allows you to place points into it after achieving a certain amount of rank to earn permanent buffs, such as +2 to will power or to strength. The ranks can increase just about anything, from shields to defense to damage over time. The catch? You have to be LV50 to first access the features. So basically if you were screwed over by the feed system before then then tough shit. So I closed that tab to probably never open it again and checked out some other things.

Next up were the emotes. Yes, these lovely little things are the very reason why I looked forward to 1.3. I mean, these little guys pushed back other content such as splitting stacks or achievement points or reputation meaning something. Yep, emotes and hiding your helmet were much more needed features that needed to be put in the game. Anyways, I took a snapshot of all 13 new emotes for our viewing pleasure. Here they are:

I like the /wave animation the best.

Well, that was pretty much it for 1.3. Now to press onward to finishing this game! After all, I'm only half way through Act 4. I wonder what the other half had in store for me? If it was anything like taking down the beast of Abaddon minus the cheap mini game behind it, then I'd be definitely looking forward to it. Either way, I got a little confused on the way when I decided to take a left turn too quick to run into a wall. Well, except, I didn't actually run into it.

Please mind the sloppy work.

Yes yes, this is very "minor." Just a little clipping issue with a wall that really isn't all the way there. I suppose if this wasn't the prevalent issue with the other 99% of the game then it really wouldn't matter. However, it just amazes me that, by chance, I decided to run into a wall and, lo and behold, something happened to be wrong with it. Either way I took the time to take advantage of my skill respec token. I didn't change much around except get rid of precision stance and focused more on my drone, but that was it. I mean, I've gotten by more than fine just using four skills. 98% of the kills are attributed either to me or to my rocket bot. The other 2% are from my drone--when it decides to hit enemies, after all, and not hit the wall instead. As a matter of fact, the drone has the same AI as the romping Templars. Or is that the other way around? But I digress!

So having read on the forums that you can apparently identify quest rewards by first right-clicking on the item and then selecting the identify option from the wheel, I decided to give it a go. I mean, it's not like I would be losing anything from trying it. But, alas, it would seem either the 1.3 patch broke that feature or someone on the forums was lying. Either way, I couldn't identify the item--not when I was looking at it as a quest reward, or not even after receiving it after a quest reward.

So much for this working.

Just for the sake of curiosity, I decided to return to the station to identify the item anyways. Hey, at the least it could probably turn out a rare nanoshard so I could possibly upgrade my weapon. And, lo and behold the luck of the Irish, I did get a nice shiny nanoshard, which I happily skipped over to my stash to stack with my other lone nanoshard. Of course, I was a bit surprised to find something else in my stash.

We want YOU...to subscribe.

Either someone has a sick sense of humor at the office and decided to torment my account alone of making it seem like I have subscriber benifits when I don't, or this is either now the norm for all accounts, regardless if you have a subscription or not. Of course, I can look at this both ways. For one, when you are a subscriber, you are able to utilize the extended and shared stash. However, when you unsubscribed, these things became unusable, and thus the slots then disappeared, which meant if you had any items there, they would appear invisible to you and out of reach. Now, either this cures this problem by allowing subs who stopped subbing to remove their items from those slots, or it works towards my second suspicion, which is that this is more of a marketing ploy and even if you unsubscribe you won't be able to move items out of your inventory. I know, sounds a bit ludicrous, but given Flagship's track record in the past, I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if that's how it actually worked. Either way, if someone could clarify that bit up for me, It'd be much appreciated.

Anyways, like I said, I decided to continue with the main quest. So I receive the quest and, just for kicks, because it has to deal with the Truths (a.k.a. a story plot that is a bigger mystery than Jimmy Hoffa), I decided to look up Murmur's help (because we all at least know he's a bad guy). Of course, I first had to do a double take when I read his quest text.

Steal the bacon? What is this, Field Day on a Sunday afternoon at the park?

I had to most certainly believe this was just Murmur joking. It had to be. I mean, seriously. Is some Truth about to put me to the "test" by making me play a recreational mini-game? No no, this most certainly had to be a joke. Of course, there's always that sinking gut feeling saying, "It wouldn't be all that surprising given Flagship's track record." Either way, on my way to go take on this "test," I happened to know that a feature that had been labeled as "fixed" was, indeed, not fixed at all.

I'm holding in my hands all the great things this game has to offer.

Damn, they fixed that bug real good. Apparently emotes and hide helmet, much more important features in the game, got added in and might've just borked the fix for the invisible rifle. Or maybe not. Maybe someone is just too damn lazy to fix it. I vote the latter. Either way, I finally made my way to this "test" to meet and speak with a Truth, and wouldn't you know it, the quest is actually a mini-game, and in this mini-game you play Steal the Bacon. Of course, it's fed sort of like this:

"There has always been Good and Evil. Don't ask why. Just has been. Up shut. Good. Okay. There is this book in the middle of the arena. Who ever gets the book and brings it back to their base wins. Oh, and if the Evil side does it, don't worry, you'll get to try until you bring it back. Yeah, because, you know, Evil can't win. Don't ask why. They just can't. Up shut. Now run along then."

And if you think I'm exaggerating I am unfortunately not. Yes, you are now locked in an eternal battle between good and evil, and the fate is decided on an old-fashioned round of Steal the Bacon. So I play along and the first thing I come across is a "knowledge tower" (see: replacement textures for a cop out to an actual skinning of something unique and a radar that tells you were the enemies are).

The knowledge tower. It lets us know how much effort went into Act 4.

After looking at it briefly and realizing it was a waste of time, I decided to dash to get this book. After all, I'd much rather complete this quest on the first try and get it done then be offered it a second time because the demons had won (do note here that the demons don't get a second chance if I complete the quest). I find a pop up message along the way, telling me that "Dark!" has the book. Of course, I stand in the way of the demon...

You die now.

Only to have him drop the "book"...

I might need a new pair of glasses, but this looks like a 6-foot obelisk, not a book.

I don't even need to say it. Really, I don't. Okay, maybe I do. Place-holder textures making it to the final version of the game. Yeah, what a big surprise, right? Only 95% of the entire game is a place-holder of real, finished content. So, hey, I just realized that I was still playing beta. You can imagine my surprise. Or you can imagine how not surprised I was. So when I completed this quest and found out that I had to do another "test," my stomach sank. I had the unnerving feeling that the rest of Act 4 was going to have each truth give me a field day activity to do in their "epic quests to battle evil." Or aliens. Or what ever the hell these things are (We're never actually told). Sure enough, when I got the next quest and checked Murmur's help, I realized that that is what I was going to do.

So moving on to Capture and Control. This was an interesting little mini game I had to play. Apparently there are four neutral control points that I first must control. Afterwards I must then kill the opponent's "bishops." Only then could I topple the "king." Of course, holding the control points proved to be a bit hard, given the distance you had to travel to get to them and hold them, and especially considering the AI on your side does nothing but sit there with stupid looks on their face and doesn't fire back at the enemy.

Thanks for standing still, wanker.

Of course, I eventually drive back the attackers and press forward and kill the demon lieutenants. After doing so I realized that I was receiving extra boosts. Boost in health after capturing all four points, a boost in shields after killing one lieutenant, and then a boost in damage dealt after killing the second lieutenant. Basically what ends up happening is that the Staples easy button was pressed a few too many times, so by the time I get to the end boss, I can literally stand still and shoot at him and survive.

Sorry, I don't believe I have enough buffs. Someone needs to donate 1,700,000 palladium to really make this feel like overkill.

Next up we have Tug O' War. Always a school yard favorite. I'm glad we can find it in an M-rated title. The mature content is just oozing out my left ear here. Anyways, I'd like to share an interesting experience, as you must actually go through a worthless instance before getting to the challenge. In this instance I was fighting the normal baddies of bad design when, suddenly, by the forces of Sauron's dark magic, the game started to stutter. Whereas I was running with over 100+ FPS, I was now rockin' the boat at 1 to 2 frames per second. My my, what a wonderful sight it was. Just to see that, after killing an enemy, my FPS dropped for no reason. Nearly on the brink of running the medley of ctrl + alt + delete, I decided to call in a recall portal. Just as magical as making one appear, it did indeed do the trick to curing this mysterious problem, and my FPS jumped back up to where it was before.

I can see why patch 1.3 even turned some people's fansanity into regretting what they were saying.

Anyways, on to Tug O' War! Yes, in this quest I have to do what I've done in every other quest. Run to the control points, control them, hold them, and push forward until I hold them all. The catch with this one is that the control points are in a straight line, and in order to control them you have to clear the area of boils (thus bringing in the whole test of "beauty" to make any sense, I suppose). The magic of this quest is that it's actually quite a challenge. You see, you're not given any boosts like you were in the last quest. No siree, you're all on your own here. After controlling a point all you need is a demon to step in the general vicinity to lose it, and then you'll have boils to start to spawn. The trick to this quest, however, is that, as you get closer to the end, the more you get bottlenecked with respawns coming in to fast, so by the time you turn around to clear the boils, another demon pops down to ruin your progress. What you have to end up doing is standing on the stairs while you clear out the room of boils, thus making the demons focus their fire on you and not dropping down to the last control point. Of course, how any other class that isn't ranged could do this...well, I'm not willing to spend...no, sorry, waste more time finding that one out. Either way, I end up being the victorious one.

Oh, I forgot to mention that when you complete the tests you are then taken to a place that was already used in the game that holds these "sigils." What the hell these sigils are and do no one bothers to explain. All you need to know is that you were told to do something and you need to be a good little boy and do it. Cuz, you know, it says so in the quest text. Either way, I just had to admire this one spot that they send you to:

No skybox, floating lights in the distance, invisible walls around a 2-foot fence...yep, it's official. I'm in beta.

So, onward to King of the Hill! Of course, first I'd like to share a few things I found along the way. For instance, I found out that the invisible rifle glitch actually WAS fixed. Yes, all you need to do is that, after the problem persists, you just need to switch to first person mode. Yep, that fixes it! Glad to know that all I need to do to fix the problem is go the extra mile. Because, you know, how awful it would be of me to expect this glitch to be fixed completely.

Second, I move quickly on to an item I haven't seen since LV7. Yes, what I'm talking about here are blueprints, folks! Yes, these things are a rare sight indeed. First brought in as an alternative to nanoforging your armor and weapons, these little crafting tidbits are so few and far between that when you actually find one you find out that it's for a completely worthless item. And here I was, finding my second set of blueprints. Ah. You'll have to forgive me if all I did was just take a snapshot and move on.

Fiery Ammo Blueprints. Translation: Something that is just going to take up a slot in your inventory.

So King of the Hill. Right then. Okay, what this really was was control points, except with the King of the Hill concept, i.e. when you control the point your score is counted towards your goal over a set amount of time. The catch, however, is that the more control points you control, the faster you earn points (100 is what you need to win). Sure enough all points start off neutral, but you, my friend, are started off in an equal distance between the first two you can get. Yes, of course, while the enemy spawns two demons and sends both in different directions to capture their control points, you my friend, must do it all on your own. While at first I was losing, these enemies, however, seemed to be complete push overs (believe me, it's a hit-and-miss when it comes to whether or not these enemies will be easy or hard to kill), so I eventually pushed into their territory and took over their control points and won the game.

You can't see it, but there used to be a stick where you would know where to click to first turn the control point neutral and then click again to turn it to your side. Of course, for it to be invisible is not surprising at all because...well, you know why by now.

Thankfully, that was the end of the 2nd grade field day quests. Oh sure, the "Final Test" doesn't really specify what you'll be doing, but I'm sure if it was a field day quest Murmur would tell us. Either way, to sum up the slew of these boring, unimaginative, and senseless quests for the end of Act 4 can be done so with this picture:

Act 4; it's a series of tubes.

So on to this "final test." Hmm, oh yes, how very interested I was...in finishing this game and being done with it once and for all. But let's take a moment here to reflect on some interesting things I found on the way, yes? Like, for instance, the last quest Murmur offers us, which is to meet him along the way. I can't remember the quest text because I seriously didn't care, which is to say how I felt for about 99.8% of the other quest text presented in this game given the horrid delivery of it all. Either way, what I remember is that he had an "important message" to tell me, and this is what it was:

Such language for an M-rated game! At least they censored it.

I still like to call that quest, "Letter from Management," and pretend Techmsith 314 is Bill Roper talking to single players. Anyways, moving this show along, yes. So I finally get to the "Final Test." Waiting for me is the cryptic and nonsensical emo chick Emmera and my favorite evil sidekick Murmur. Hmm, right then. I shouldn't be concerned at all that Murmur, a completely unintegrated character for the entire game, is accompanying me on this quest. Nope, not one bit. I'll play along, cover my eyes, and pretend to have an IQ like that of Forrest Gump. I'll work with ya, Flagship! You fooled me good!

Here in this scene, we finally learn who Sydonai is, a half hour before the game is finished. Great delivery.

Anyways, I accept the quest from Emmora, and right after doing so I get a voice communicado with Murmur.

Sirens. If they aren't going off for you then you were dropped.

Yeah, apparently Murmur, Mr. Incofuckingspicuous, is quite evil after all, talking about Sydonai like as if he's a pal or a chum, saying he was "so close!" Ugh. If they would let me shoot Murmur in his stupid face I would gladly do so. Not because I know he's evil (and have known since the start of the game), but because of how horribly cliche it is. Who ever writes this crap has been playing too much Diablo Tw--oh, wait.

So, moving along. I run up the street hoping not to see a familiar face, because that also wouldn't be overtly cliche. You know, like find last-minute help from two characters that tried too hard to be memorable and yet just ended up being a complete nuisance and an add in to please the kiddies. Oh. Well, damn, spoke too soon. Yep, just a short ways up the street? Good ol' Techsmith 314 with the Oracle still attached to his face and Luscious are there to greet me, with a "giant robot." After some stupid dialogue about a sandwich, I am told that I am given the "Lightning" to help me in my endeavor. Of course, this "robot" seemed to have some very nice Hunter idle animations.

The Lightning, AKA a scaled Hunter with a few cosmetic changes.

So I got into this bad boy, expecting something like a Mech cockpit to follow. Of course, that would've been the logical thing to have happened, and, as we all know, there is no such thing as logic in this game. So what did I get instead? A reliving of a nightmare, that's what. It was The Wall all over again. Yep, the same UI used for that poor attempt to be an RTS sequence of a quest. Oh, and how about that. The same AI that does the same kind of damage too!

The Lightning, better known as Truman now, decided to engage the enemy on his own. The only problem? There were objects in his way, so all he did was just run around shooting at containers.

Of course, after some guidance, he did at least aim at the enemy 1/4 of the time. The other 3/4? Truman seemed intent on shooting the wall. Either way, when ever he did hit the enemy I think he was doing about 0 DPS a second, while I, on the other hand, was only taking damage.

So what did I do? I did what any sane person would do. I bailed. Yep, got out of that worthless addition to a quest that did worthless damage, has the AI of a Goldfish, and just killed the rare enemies in the way. Of course, thinking that maybe I had to continue with this stupid thing, I tried to get back in, but oh hohoho! To no avail, as no option to get back in was available. So I just continued on, hoping it was going to end soon enough. On my way I pass an inconspicuous portal that I couldn't open. Nope, just opened, not doing anything at all. Hmm. Right then. So, anyways, I eventually round to the end of a corner of a street where the last sigil is. Yes, why the last sigil is on Earth is unknown to me. Every other one seemed to be in its own dimensional pocket. But right! Remember the golden rule! Kick yourself in the face and pretend it makes sense! Anyways, before I can activate it, Murmur starts to whine again, saying Sydonai is coming and to hurry up to activate the Sigil. So after ending that conversation with Murmur, because I was tired of his crap, this wannabe Cthulhu rounds the corner. At first I thought this might've been the boss fight--that Act 5 was subscriber material. Of course, I wouldn't be surprised if it was, but then I realized he was just there to kill Murmur. Or, at least, he tried to. Yeah, he slapped Murmur once, but Murmur was still standing. So wannabe Cthulhu just stood there for a few seconds, confused, and Murmur stood there just as confused as well, all the while I was firing away not making a dent. Then wannabe Cthulhu stuck Murmur again and he finally went down, after which wannabe Cthulhu then ran away.

Well someone's gotta take out the garbage.

So Murmur's dead. Why is Sydonai bad again? He just did me a favor. Anyways, I turn around and activate the sigil. Hooray. Portal opens up and I speak to the last Truth. Oh, and how un-cliche, it's a child.

Yes, children are the future hope of mankind. Like everyone and their mother doesn't know this.

So after finishing talking to the Child (I didn't even bother with the quest text; I'm sure it would've been some O'ma-fied crap of, "I am hope, don't give up hope, you took this journey to learn the importance of life, now you can win, blah blah blah" ) I was treated to another cut scene of a floating book, thus telling me I had finally finished Act 4 and had moved on to Act 5. Wee. The voice actor started to go on a worthless rant. I just pressed space bar. Seriously. Let me know when the story gets interesting or half-way decent, because here, right now? It was just getting less and less interesting.

"Hope is peace. Hope is man. Hope is blargh. Blargh blargh blarghhhh."

Of course, the shocker came after canceling the low-resolution cinema classic of the floating book the following message:

End of Act 5? No no, I think you meant, "End of Act 4." Then again, maybe the game DID mean the end of Act 5.

Anyways, afterwards I get a message from Emmora. She starts to go on about how is the time to strike and all that crap. She then broadcasts a message telling everyone to get to the Hellgate. And then? Then my quest log updates with this:

Gogogo! We gotta move!

Now I was about to log out, but this piqued my curiosity. I mean, let alone that I'm just finding out now that there is a main Hellgate in London I was unaware of, but now everyone is to rush to it. Does this mean that the end of the game is very near? Of course, knowing that more than half the time I have unanswered questions, I just decided to make my way to the last station. Of course, along the way I bumped into Lyra, and, would you believe it, she explained to me that the demon that she "survived" 20 years ago, the one that died from tripping over a boil, was, in fact, not dead at all, and rather have herself deal the judgment, she wanted me to go on a wild goose chase, track him down, and kill him. So I thoroughly told where Lyra could stick her quest and proceeded to the last station.

So here I was, at the last station. It was dismal and not another soul was in sight. there was, however, a rather inquisitive NPC by the name of Sammy, with the subtitles "SUBSCRIBER ONLY" under his name. Right, like I didn't feel alienated. Anyways, I go on to rush my way to "the Hellgate!" certainly not expecting the game to end. I mean, come on. Act 5 just started. Are you really telling me that it's going to end in 15 minutes? Well, as a matter of fact, it was 20 minutes. Anyways, once you arrive you are finally introduced to an actual cinema. I mean, it wasn't a floating book, it was finally something new. Oh, sure, it was low resolution as well, but I think I'll just let the shots do the talking for now.

"Yes, I've heard. Kills men by the hundreds. And if HE were here, he'd consume the English with fireballs from his eyes and bolts of lightning from his arse. I AM a Shock Trooper!"

"No, not the Hunters. My scouts tell me their Imp Snipers are miles away and are no threat to us. Bullets cost money. Use up the Templar. Their dead cost nothing."

"For Frodo!"

"On a highhhhwayyyy to helllll!"

"PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWAHS!"

So it was the end. Freaking. Finally. I mean, let's just forget the fact that Act 5 is just one quest. Yeah, I'm willing to forget that. Believe me, I don't think I could've stomached going through more useless and worthless quests. The end of Act 4 proved well enough just how much they were running out of ideas. But hey, here I was, at St. Paul's Hellgate, apparently the super giant mega Hellgate that has been opened and no one has bothered to mention. Of course the only problem is that from afar it doesn't look like a Hellgate at all (not even scaled); it looks more like a giant ring of fire.

"One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the Darkness bind them!"

So I'm expecting an epic battle. You know, Templar romping around and all. Instead what I find are a few sparring parties here and now outside of the Cathedral dancing around or standing around doing nothing. I mean, I tried to look down into the crater that was behind the place, but nothing was down there. It was like as if everyone disappeared or something. I mean, sure, most of the fighting was taking inside of the Cathedral, but nothing on epic proportions.

This place is PACKED.

Eventually I make my way to the cathedral, where Emmora then tells me that I must enter the Hellgate and do all that heroic junk and kill everything in sight. You know, just like you would do in any other generic game.

Oh, so this is why we have to kill Sydonai. He's the root of all evil. So glad I'm learning this 15 minutes before the game ends.

So I rush past the floating emo chick, kill some demons, and step through the fiery circle that is the Hellgate, expecting something of epic proportions on the other side. Of course, I first had to kindly wait for a loading screen.

We're not in Kansas any more, Toto.

So the area loads up and before I can do anything Emmora follows me in and starts to talk to me, and as much as I'd like to actually listen to her explain to me the end of the game, I can't do much when her voice communication is blocking me from trying to shoot at an incoming Shulgo--oops, I mean, Discord.

You can cry to me later. First, we have recycled mini-bosses to kill.

So much to my surprise it would seem as if the game finally decided to get hard. What, I mean with Shulgoth coming at me hard like a raged pitbull and that one teleporting demon that uses guerrilla tactics to port in and port out are doing their best to gang bang me from just stepping inside the portal. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that the change of pace doesn't really make sense. Sure, I survived--by running around and spamming health potions and running back out of the Hellgate--but why put two demons together from the start of things? It wasn't challenging, it was just plain frustrating.

Anyways, after killing both said demons, I decide to take in my surroundings. Hmm, yes, and the surroundings I took in very well indeed. Fog distance of 25 feet and nearly swearing that I was still on planet Earth and just merely had stepped through a hole to find myself at the crater where the cathedral used to be. I mean, if this is Hell, then I must say this has to be one of the weakest interpretations of it. Might as well just dumb it down to Heck, or even H-E-double hockey sticks. Either way, it just boggles my mind why this game even earned an M rating. What further vexes me is how the creators from FREAKING DIABLO were unable to create an immensely impressive environment to represent Hell. This literally just felt like something that was just shat out at the last minute.

The only nightmares this picture will cause are for players who were expecting something good out of this game.

I think the worst part of it is how I felt the impact of the entire game summed up in this sequence. I mean, for one, the only Engineer skills I EVER used in the entire game were rocket bot, haste bot, and my drone. Oh, and I tossed a shock grenade every now and then. But you know what? The drone is only there as an off-hand tank, because he can't actually do any damage. The only people doing any damage are me and the rocket bot. In the end of it all it's just a point-and-click game. You point the reticle at the enemy and you click. Boom, you win. Rinse, lather, repeat. That's exactly how it worked for these boss fights, except the only problem is that they took forever. I mean, after the first two, I spent about three or four minutes with each boss just aiming, shooting, and dodging, and the worst part is that half the time I wasn't even being hit. No, this was not challenging, it was not hard, it was not a change of pace--it was time consuming, tedious, boring, and had me falling asleep.

Just die already.

Eventually the damn demons died, at which point in time I was welcomed to another cinematic--and this time it wasn't a floating book again! So let's do the pictures do the talking once more, shall we?

Here comes the Cthulhu wannabe.

Rawr. ^_^

Time to go Super Saiyan!

KAMAYAMAYA!

His power level! It's over NINE-THOUSANDDDDD!

Yeah, so apparently Emmora dies. Well, I say apparently. I mean, all she does is fall to the side and then throws a little spell at you, sort of like translating, "Okay, now you can kill him." So, after the cut scene is over, I finally get to dance with Cthulhu in one final showdown to finally beat the game. The sad part, however, is how Sydonai was easily killed or how the majority of his attacks involved running away.

One of the end-game boss's prominent skills is to run away.

Hooray, Sydonai's dead. End of the game. Or, at least, so I thought (hey, Stonehenge has got to at least drag it on afterwards, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised). More cinema time! But this time the floating book makes an appearance.

C'mon. Be honest. You didn't really think I was really dead, did you?

Don't drink and drive, Syd. You only have one point left on your license, bud.

Don't worry, I'll take care of everything while you're away.

Well, I can say I was surprised to see Murmur still alive. Though was I happy they pulled a Halo 2? Well, either way, I can't say I give that much of a damn at all. You see, when you do a cliff hanger, you usually lead up the story where the character knows everything there is already to the story. Here in Hellgate, however, the mystery of the story is just a fabled myth where you are fed bits and pieces five or ten minutes before the game ends. I'm not interested in how Murmur lives or what/who he really is, or why he now controls all the demon armies, especially after being told Sydonai was the key that would seal the world from Hellgates. Instead, he just goes on about some useless things and tosses you into a portal (which I am assuming leads to nowhere, considering you're already in Hell). After the cinema is done, however, you're returned to what you were doing before hand, which was watching Sydonai die and then looting the worthless drops. But, ah, how do you exit out of Hell then? Well, by stepping through the portal named, "Exit Game," silly!

Some things never change.

So I exit the game, watch the credits for a whole five seconds after laughing at the Game Design credits (Flagship Studios), and then clicked on the 'X' to stop viewing them. I was then taken back to the main menu of the game. Just to satisfy my curiosity of what happens to your character after beating the game, I log into my account once more. There I find that there is a "Nightmare Mode" to be toggled, which, of course, I then immediately decided to face palm. Please tell me it ain't so, please tell me it ain't so.

It is so.

Now I can see why they have a rule on their forums that forbids us from making comparisons to other games. For those of you who are raising your eyebrows, allow me to fill in the gaps. Nightmare Mode is really just a translation for, "Run through the game at a greater difficulty." It's what drove their original game Diablo 2 after you beat the game. What you would do then is...beat it again. And then after beating that mode you would then...beat it on Hell Mode. Keep in mind the only thing that changes is difficulty. So, basically, once you've beaten the game, you are given the chance to beat it again. Why? Oh, I don't know. Some people are closet masochists, I suppose. I, however, am not going to invest my time doing the same thing all over AGAIN. Fool me once.

So what now? Well, seeing as I have divulged enough information to make a detailed review, that's all I see left to do. I can say, however, that the experience I had with Hellgate is one I will never forget. Oh yes, I learned an important lesson here, and the lesson is this: caveat emptor.

I'm never going to get back those 36 hours of my life.

Chapter 13: Let's bring in some new things and leave out others

2008-04-15T18:51:00.011-04:00

(This play through was recorded before the /who feature was removed)

So, patch 1.2. I heard the Marksman had their class balanced quite a bit. However, since they made some changes to grenades, my Engineer was lucky enough to get a respec token anyways. Maybe I'll plan out to make a viable build out of him now that I know what Engineer skills are there as fluff and which ones bring something to the table. Anyways, I thought I would have a bit of fun with the mail, a feature that is usually launched standard with other online games with a semi-interactive community (I'm avoiding the term MMO here because Hellgate is far from that classification). Despite how long it took to finally arrive in the game, however, is something I was rather willing to overlook. Now I finally had a reason to hold on to all the junk from other classes I was picking up.

E-mail is fun.

To test out the features more extensively, I decided to create a Guardian alt. So I run my Guardian alt through that horrid bit that's called an "introduction" and send him right down through the tube. I then exit and log out of the game (as there is no feature to just log out of your character and be back at the character log in screen) and log back in to my account and select my Engineer. Then I have my Engineer mail some of the items and some palladium to help start off my tad poll Guardian. Then...well, you know what I had to do then. Let's just skip to the part where I log back into my Guardian, shall we?

See that tiny little button flashing red? That's the equivalent to, "You got mail!"

I was rather surprised at first when I logged into him. I mean, I knew where the mail button was (obviousy). I suppose I was just expecting something much more noticeable when it came to you getting a message. Of course, there's the usual, "just hit 'z' every time you log in," excuse, but I believe that's just it; it's an excuse. I mean, we already have notifications when we finish acts "Congratulations! You finished Act II!" How hard would it to have a message pop and say, "You have mail"? Perhaps my biggest gripe, however, is that you have no indicator that let's you know if an alt of yours has received mail as well. Which brings me to my next point.

The mail system works on a dynamic decay. It takes 28 days for mail with money/item attached to it to decay; 21 days once you've opened it; 14 days once you've detached the item.

It's nice the way Flagship Studios combated the inability to know whether or not your other characters have mail (I imagine it's 21 days standard for just a message between people). Besides, mail is so inexpensive (5 palladium fee regardless of what you're sending) that it would be a steal to use in transactions. My only last complaint, however, is the most crucial. I mean, that's just the thing. Transactions. Do they know how easy it would be to get a lot of the trading to be done around in the game if there was a COD option? Come to think of it, every other game that has some sort of mail function has a COD option. Was this just one of those things overlooked as well? Or maybe it was just one of those, "we have the core system of mailing working, so let's just put it out in the next patch without the bells and whistles."

I shrugged, equipped the items, and went my merry way. After all, I wanted to at least get this character to the next station. And so I did. I went through the dismal level once more. Click, slash, smash. The Guardian isn't anything new, he was a class I also extensively tested in the game as well. However, I was surprised to learn that he lost the ability of Heaven's Arch at a low level (another weak argument: "Guardians have the grapler"). I think the key word here is "variety."

When I arrived at the station, I immediately decided to transport myself back to the first station to turn in the dismal quests I did on my way. Of course, I was a little bit surprised when my character sat there frozen for a few seconds before this flashed on my screen:

They sure fixed them bugs good!

So I relog once again just to fiddle around a bit more with my Guardian, but just before I enter the wonderful world of Hellgate with him, I notice something quite peculiar about him.

Now I'm no a doctor of anatomy, but it would seem as if my Guardian is missing his kneecaps.

Thinking perhaps this is just a kink in the uploading of the patch (Yes, I know, I can't believe I used one of those horrible excuses to think that as well), I decided to turn off the game and come back the next day. What was even more to my surprise was when I logged in to my account once more and was met with a loading screen that was downloading something.

Anonymous: "I don't care if the patch isn't stable, just release it and hot fix it as we go on!"

Yep, seems really common for developers to release patches and then to hot fix the client in the later days. Of course, it's more common for developers to only have one or two hot fixes. Here in Hellgate, however, we went through a hot fix each day for the week the patch was implemented--all the way up to Friday. I guess the whole mindset of, "It's done when it's done" isn't a thought they like to put around the office. After all, it would make sense why they then left Blizzard, has Blizzard had the uncanny knack to hold off their products until they were finished. Hmm. I guess nothing really was learned from that experience.

Perhaps the biggest insult to injury of this whole patch deal is how much content still goes untouched or still left on life support. You know, like achievements? Oooh, how about reputation! Yeah, those are really nice things to look at. Too bad they aren't functional in any way besides recording data. My favorite, however, has to be the splitting of stacks. Now here's a feature that is absolutely ridiculous NOT to have at launch--a feature that has been suggested since the hay days of alpha. And how about that, we still can't split stacks. Oh well. At least they know they'll always have about 2,000 loyal fans that think they are doing an "okay" job (this isn't including their "successful launch" in SEA of all 30 players).

Screenshot taken on: March 18, 2008, 11:00PM EST (otherwise known as peak time)

Chapter 12: Losing interest

2008-04-15T13:24:00.054-04:00

I always say that if you commit to something you should finish it, and I intend to keep my word. My apologizes for my hiatus, however, as the situation in trying to remain positive about this game has been dismal at best. I haven't played the game since the 1.2 patch went up and it was only for a little while as well, which is really due in part to me having lost a lot of interest for this game. So to try and play catch up with the game (as I have over 40 shots from pre-1.2, and we all know that since the 1.2 patch fixed a few bugs, this makes all of the recorded content of things found within the core game obviously dismissable), I'm going to try something different here by just writing a little synopsis of what I was thinking when I captured these shots.

Ah, the good ol' "first quest in a line of generic quests" quest. What's this? Explore an area and recieve 550 experience and 0 palladium and a pair of unidentified green gloves? Why, sure, why not! Sounds rewarding!

Rather then waste my time clearing out a low-level area to complete a dismal quest I didn't have time to do my last play through, I just decided that sprinting through this area and avoiding the enemies was a good idea. Want to know the sad part? I was able to.

Wow, that's some great shadowing work. I especially like how the shadows on the left there are cast by a non-existent object.

This is a great-looking gun. Too bad it's completely worthless when it comes to doing battle with it. I wonder how many more of these useless weapons I'll come across? Anyone want to take bets?

Hooray! I just achieved another worthless achievement! Chalk one up for a 100% on a list of features that haven't done anything since they were implemented!

And here we have the third respawn of a unique enemy I have already killed twice now (check my quest log there). Seems like each time I kill one it has the uncanny habit to respawn.

Why thank you Warden of Stonehedge. You certainly are allowed to break immersion for the sake of advertising an area I would have to pay $10 a month to explore. To the management: Have you ever heard of "free content patches?" Hmm, I guess not. Turbine must be losing tons of sales for not charging extra for those Book patches.

This was the first time I stopped to admire my surroundings. Why is it this one wall has detail that the entire game doesn't feature?

This is where I finally had a bit of fun in the game. With the Quake 2 soundtrack blaring in my headphones and a pack of Templars storming down the street, I certainly felt like something new was finally happening.

Of course, that feeling dropped like a rock when they all decided to run into a wall and then decide to stand still. Oh, and don't forget the part where they're copy and pastes of one another.

A "thing." That's rather descriptive. It's nice to see an alpha-esque placeholder quest actually be formed into a "real" quest.

Do I really need to say something for this picture?

Remember when I said I liked the Templars romping around the streets? That was before I knew they killed all the zombies that I needed to kill myself for a quest.

So that's what happened to George's immersion-breaking voice set. They stuck it on the most unimaginative Hobbit in the game.

I thought these hubs were supposed to be "hidden?" How does one pre-build a giant Mario-esque tube in a ten-times-too-big Cathedral?

Alpha Ravager? Does that mean he's from alpha? Must be. I've seen floating dead enemies, but not floating alive enemies.

I never knew stone could be as flexible as plastic. But what am I saying. Practicality does not mix well with this game.

These cardboard boxes are called "sensor arrays." Maybe there's a person inside with a walkie-talkie? If so, they picked a hell of a hiding spot. No one is going to find them here in the middle of a street.

There's about 50 Templar here in the planes of Oblivio--Hellgate. It's a wonder that they apparently can't deal with the gate crisis.

Well this is interesting. I thought I already saved Brandon Lann? Ooooh, never mind. It's one of those, "We didn't bother to remove him once you completed the quest" things. Silly me.

While this gun looks like it could create new doors into walls quicker than the Kool-Aid guy, we are learning, however, that looks don't mean a thing in this game (except my black dye kit, which I've stored away in a dark corner in my stash). This weapon does as much damage as a pee-shooter.

Lord Slornas! Wait, didn't I kill you already? Oh, you're back for revenge for the fat jokes? Bring it on, Chunk!

Drones might be one of the few things that impress me in this game (if not the first). I like their complexity in options when it comes to weapons, it's just too bad there isn't a weapon switch so I can have him switch between swords and rifles.

"Fringe protrusion?" Do I even want to know?

My mini-game finally unbugged.

You know, with all the time and effort they put into adding "help" text from Murmur, you would think that the game would also reflect this sort of pinpoint detail in it as well. I thoroughly believe, however, that this function was left to one individual (or group) who, apparently, pushed the envelop to actually finish the task he was given before the game launched. It's just a shame that his co-workers couldn't do the same.

Wow, a quest devoted to forging bits that you collect from dead enemies. How so imaginative and fun. I feel memories from The Wall quest coming back.

Station medics, or, otherwise known as, "stacked women wearing pieces of leather that serve as a totally useless and redundant feature."

So I'm "carrying" this piece to replace a train (why exactly it's strewn across this demon-infested area is something we shouldn't question) and my speed is drastically reduced. So, while trying to serve as a function to "realism," I am instead, in effect, wasting quadruple the time of having to complete this innate quest. Bravo!

These huge beasts thought that if they line up in succession and just stay in one spot that they could "stop a train." Of course, how these things even got down into the subways first is a mystery to me.

Notice the first text that pops up. "Wait for the train." Reading through the transmission, I only find out at the very end that the train is "coming my way" and I should "move out of its way." It isn't until I scratch my head at the first suggested advice, close the transmission, and turn around to see this train coming at me do I then decide that I shouldn't adhere to anything the game tells me to do any more. Sure, while I was able to simply respawn, but as a hardcore player, I know I would be extremely pissed if my character died permanentely because I followed the game's advice.

Two out of the six items that dropped are items that I could use (a pair of useless green gloves and a rare rocket mod no less). Oh, how I absolutely LOVE these loot drop tables.

Oh look, another floating book cut scene. This just screams effort here! At least I know I'm on Act 4 now.

What's this? Murmur finally doesn't have something to say for a quest? And on a quest involving the "truths" (see: things that are never fully explained as to their purpose in the game) no less? Why, I am not suspicious at all. Nope. Not one bit.

Oh look, more "healing." Point and activate, point and activate, point and activate. Phew, that was HARD.

I'm fondly reminded of O'ma from the SG-1 TV series. She says a lot of imaginative mumbo jumbo that seems like it means something on a deeper level, but, in truth, it's nothing but garbage writing material.

This is Arlo, otherwise known as the NPC that was added later on to appease the people that cried when they removed Holloway's old sexual innuendo voice set. Arlo cusses like a sailor and makes as much sense as a pebble. I hear he's a hoot with the 15-year-olds.

Ah, the good ol' corpse stretching glitch that was prominent in alpha/beta. I'm also glad to see you made it to the finished product as well.

So apparently this huge-ass demon can only be damaged when the turrets are activated to shrink him. Of course, why he doesn't just smash the turrets (or me, for that matter) is beyond me.

Lord Yerination? Let me guess, he has a brother named Lord Defecation?

Lyra tells us how she survived a grenade blast in her face (after you complete a slew of useless and tedious quests for her first, of course). [Note: If that is too small to read, try this.]

This was my most fun experience in this game to date. I partied up with a guild mate to do the quest that has already been done in the comic book. Not only was I glad to see a new tileset, but the difficulty level was also increased. Couple that with the Quake II music and it was some fun, mindless running-and-gunning.

Um, hello? Who's Sydonai? Anyone? Oh, you're not going to explain who he is but you'll mention him through Act 4? Ah, okay then. Glad to know we're on the same page.

Why is it Act 4 is the only act that has a clear distinction from the other acts? I suppose the introduction of new tilesets might be it (even if it is barren tileset).

Looks like someone forgot to finish up their work here.

You can't see it, but I'm actually falling in this picture.

Apparently scaling your monsters smaller and making them run quicker makes them also 10 times as strong as their regular counterparts. Oh, and don't forget that it makes them "new" enemies as well.

While this beast looked ferocious and is tremendous, he still fell like I was smashing through crates. Another question: How exactly does this humongous creature even end up in an enclosed warehouse where the passageways are smaller than his entire body?

What was that, Murmur's twin? You're speaking in riddles about information I'm searching for? Oh, and enemies don't attack you as well? Oh, and you're out here by yourself? I'm callin' it; you're a fraking cylon!

Gravity? In my Hellgates? Preposterous!

Of course, if you're sitting there and saying, "All these complaints are null because of patch 1.2 lol," then I would please ask you to exit stage right to the deinternetized zone and stay in school. For one, patch 1.2 did NOT fix the graphical bugs and glitches I posted (the only real fix I am aware of is the invisible rifle). Second, more than 95% of the content I have covered here deals with the core game (quests, quest rewards, quest text, enemy practicality, enemy projectiles, enemy design, etc.). The only reason why I didn't extensively cover my pre-1.2 experiences is because I was so far behind in updating this content that I needed to seriously play catch up and bring myself back up to speed. Either way, all the arguments made here? They are still valid. So, sorry, that weak argument isn't going to work.

As for the future of this blog; like I said in the beginning, I plan to see this through, even if it means taking month hiatuses to regain my sanity and play something that holds my interest. In the mean time, however, I would suggest to frequent your visits to flagshipped.com, as I am now a writer over there. Many of the issues I bring up here on this blog I also put forth and discuss there as well. Either way, this doesn't mean that I'm going to stop with this blog. Oh no, far from it. When I said I would see this until the end of the game, I meant it. So here's to more headaches and drowsiness!

Chapter 11: Network Error

2008-03-24T12:37:00.011-04:00

(Note: This play through was recorded pre-1.2 patch)

Yawn. Fun time, fun time. I love fun time. Too bad it doesn't happen when I play Hellgate. So let's start off with more crap then, shall we? I mean, it's not like I try to pick at small, meaningless things. These things just pop out and say, "Hey, look at me! I'm unfinished/illogical content!" Take the bruisers, for instance. I mean, what a great concept for an enemy. They can be ranged attackers and they can be melee attackers as well. Why exactly they couldn't do this with other enemies is unbeknownst to me. After all, they seem to be very keen on putting half of their game into niches is pretty cliche. Of course, my favorite part is how the bruiser's long-ranged attack has an AOE explosion. Which is completely fine--I make every attempt to get the hell out of the way. However, what I don't find "completely fine" is the gigantic hit box that accompanies the projectiles.

I'm glad to know a projectile 15 feet away from me can magically damage me.

I dunno, maybe it's a compromise because it's so easy to dodge the 20MPH projectiles? But, ah, you've always got to love compromise in this game. Why make the game work when you can break it in the process? Why take your time to make something logical when you can just rush the content and hope people will just say, "Oh, it's not big thing." After all, that mentality is how we let them get away with all those "little things," which, combined together, become a huge, big thing.

Anyways, moving along and having fun in Act 4. You know, only one act left before I get to complete the game. I quick look at /played tells me I've only played 18 hours. I suppose half of that time I have to credit to doing all those worthless side quests as well. Either way, it's a little disheartening to know that I'm only one act away from having this game to leave a lasting impression on me or to finally get better. Either way, I wouldn't let the game get off that easily either by saying, "Oh, it gets good by Act 5." I wanted a finished game, not a half-assed one. You got that one, Roper? While you're out there screaming bloody murder to every news media outlet you can and telling people that the game "failed" because people expected "too much," I'm telling you that you're wrong for labeling my playing expectancy out of your game. After all, maybe if you guys actually bothered to discuss this on your official forums instead of hiding then you might know that.

Things did look to start brightly. Finally, a new tileset. Friggin' finally. Seriously. I was getting VERY tired of the recycled street/sewers combo, not to mention I didn't bother to slip through an Oblivion gate--I mean, a Hellgate, because there is only one tileset for the dreary platform universe. Of course, having to wait until Act 4 for feel like I had actually progressed somewhere from the beginning wasn't exactly my idea of believing there was some effort going on here.

Finally, a different area. Too bad it looks too much like the Catacombs of Diablo II Act I. Oh well. Maybe the people who haven't played Diablo II will be none the wiser.

Of course, it's great that the place is lit up like a Christmas tree. Everything seems to be so well-lit for an area that only seems to have tiny candles as light sources but seem to radiate a light radius of halogen light bulbs. Anyways, Act 4 also happens to be the first Act in which you get to experience random Templar romping around some areas. These guys not only look like they might've been undecaplets, but they also seem to have Forrest Gump's IQ level as well, which might be the reason why we're even losing the war in the first place.

Aim, then shoot. Aim, THEN shoot.

I mean, Flagship needs to get an award for quite possibly the WORST friendly AI that has graced the gaming industry in quite some time. Half the time these guys stand around shooting in the wrong direction; the other half they are hitting the enemy for 1 to 2 damage. It's the greatest looking fluff I've seen in a game, I must say.

Why are these sandbags even here? They're not protecting anyone, they're poorly placed, and any attempt to make a fortification is destroyed because it isn't closed. Couple that with four bumbling idiots, then you're more likely to have a single rocket bot do more protection then this "fortification."

Let's make a quick direction change here. Let's talk about the storyline. You know, the one with a cliche arrogant high-and-mighty leader who doesn't actually know what they're doing? Yeah, anyways. So I'm off saving some Templar butt. Now let me paint you a picture. When I'm given a quest to save an important Templar lieutenant, I expect it to be an epic battle. I don't, however, expect it to be a little gauge marching across the screen to "heal" them.

How original.

Speaking of "new" things, I happened to chance upon a new enemy as well. It was an interesting creature alright. It looked like a flying scarecrow dressed like a Harajuku kid. He also seemed to have a Boo Complex because he kept running away from me. I stood there for a while wondering if he was going to do anything except float there, but he didn't. So either he's giving peace a chance or this was just one of those "unfinished content" times (I seem to come across a lot of those moments).

"Doom Husk." I'm shaking in my boots.

On to the streets of more useless and nonsensical "new" things. It's great to see that turret from shooting down the Exospector make its way to the middle of the street. I mean, sure, why it's even there or why it's even intact when the place is demon ravaged is a bag a logic we don't want to open because it involves thought, but I decided to play along and man the turret. Of course, I continued to do this every time I saw one after my first experience with a turret, because about 95% of the time it seems the line of sight for the turret is blocked. So unless the enemy has flying enemies, the turret becomes a nice little thing to look at and admire and nothing more.

It's great to know I can use this turret to kill nothing at all.

Of course, my current favorite feature is my invisible rifle. Oh, I just love my invisible rifle. I shoot it and the sound bite for the firing of a round doesn't play, but the impact of the bullet upon the surface does. I see my weapon muzzle flash and I see my weapon mods on the weapon, but my rifle? Invisible! How spooky! But, more importantly, how extremely half-assed and insulting to see something that should have ONLY been found in alpha find its way to the "finished" content.

Look ma', no rifle!

I always love the equally half-assed responses as well. "Oh, don't switch your weapons when you summon your bots/drone." Yeah, that makes it all better. I, the consumer, should go the extra mile for the developer, the provider, that borked the function in the first place. Silly me to voice my opinion--an opinion I have more than a right to voice. Of course, while the invisible rifle is a fun feature that has been currently irking me quite profusely, I must say I did let out a laugh when a familiar screen everyone from alpha/beta remembers popped up on my screen when I tried to zone to another area. I guess some things never change.

Flagshipped!

Chapter 10: Who left the content out from the content jar?

2008-03-23T00:27:00.018-04:00

(Note: This play through was recorded pre-1.2 patch)

I think I'll start things off by showing you guys a pretty picture. It's serene and keeps you at ease; something you'd probably find hanging on a masseuse's wall.

I think the game had a darker atmosphere when it DIDN'T have sky boxes.

Of course, the only problem is that the screen shot comes from a game where you're supposed to find yourself on post-apocalyptic world ravaged by the things of biblical nightmares. And despite the fact that the moon is hiding behind sparsely-dark clouds, the area seems to light up like a Christmas tree. I think this might also be a key moment in time to mention that, at this point in the game, I hadn't died a single time. Not once was I rushing away from battle and using a potion or anything at all. As a matter of fact, if I could I'd probably put out a nice bed out on the street and call it home because disaster is more likely to strike in a station between two children acting like adults.

But enough about trying to make sense out of the atmosphere. Let's move onto some other great game mechanics, eh? So after figuring out that I wasn't going to need two categories of the items I was getting from breaking down non-Hunter stuff, I decided to sell it off (considering trying to sell it on a chat channel would've been tedious and would've yielded little to no results). So I head on over to Wilde (who I'm sure is in no way an attempt to make an attempted pun to a famous Oscar) to sell the garbage. Of course, before I did, I took a close look and found something a little curious.

Math is hard. At least for London survivors it is.

As you can clearly see in this picture, you'll notice how the normal relic shards (the ones on the bottom) equate a multiple value of 5 per shard. So 110 normal shards brings us out to 550 palladium. Now, are you following along? Good. Of course, now logic would dictate that rare shards would yield out a higher selling price. I mean, they are rare, right? Wrong. As we can also see, the rare relic shards also equate a multiple value of 5 per shard as well, so my 75 rare relic shards only bring in 375 palladium.

So I retract my previous statement. I could probably make more money spamming a chat channel and then rising the core price of rare shards by twice their shop value. At least, that would also seem logic at least. So my 75 rare relic shards should actually bring in 750 palladium. My biggest question, however, is how this was even an oversight in development. So basically the protip here is that you're better off selling off rare shards then you are selling them at the shop because you can make more money that way.

Now, while I did complain about how the stations were packed earlier, I had reality hit me like a wet salmon when I stepped into Monument Station one fine day.

This town ain't big enough for the two of us.

Now I can only come to three conclusions concerning this matter. Either the difference from lowbies to highbies is as big as the Bomber Gap, the majority of players are off playing in instances, or the majority of lowbies get a taste of what Hellgate is and quickly drop the game. Of course, considering peak play times would usually yield about 8,000 players at launch and now they only yield about 3,000 players (and dropping), I wonder which one is the likeliest (and I wonder how many of the "lowbies" are just alts).

Either way, I was just glad I had finally finished Act 3. I was hopeful when playing through it. You know, still hopeful and all that garbage and what not. Hoping that maybe this will make a quick turn around. Hoping I'll see something that seems like it wasn't alpha content picked up off the floor and duct-taped to the "finished" product. Hopeful that the finishing of Act 3 would be interesting. Of course, which came to no surprise, all my "hoping" did nothing at all. Let's recap on the recrap, shall we?

You're in the Army now! You're not behind the plough! You'll never get rich, you sonofabitch, you're in the Army now!

Yeah. That was fun. Shoot at some boils, shoot at some orbiles/worms. Rinse, lather, repeat. Times ten. To the power of seven. Honestly, this was one of those parts when you're playing the game and you're trying not to fall asleep--literally. Do I need to even say it any more? Moving on to an even heavier subject; the act 3 boss. I mean, if you can call it a boss.

Like shootin' a giant vagina in a barrel.

Now, I'm told from melee classes (read: Templar) that Oculis is actually a challenge. However, for my Engineer, standing there and shooting at every eye and popping those zits before they could sputter around and do anything, it was more like amateur voyeurism. At one point in time I even stopped shooting to see if the eyes were even supposed to do anything, but all they did was float around, to which my rocket bot made short work of. Talk about a worthless boss. Oh well. Hooray for Act 3, I guess. I know it's the end as well because a magical portal opened up and I met some obscure person/thing talk about some nonsense followed by a cut scene of a book for the third time. Hold on a sec, folks.

*stands up*

*applauds Flagship Studios for a job well done in the effort-making department*

*sits back down*

Now that we have that out of the way, I'd just like to finish up on some other fun stuff I observed in this play session of mine. You know, just some cooky stuff we find in Hellgate that makes a boat load of sense. Let's start, shall we? Exhibit A is a nice screen shot that proves that optics is just a bunch of hooey.

Schizophrenia or piss-poor developer effort? You decide!

Next we have Exhibit B, which teaches us that in Hellgate you can never be too redundant.

Holy crap, you solved the mystery Colombo!

Next we have Exhibit C, which proves to us that obtaining a nanoshard is about as random as a Chinese fire drill.

Don't waste your time breaking down rare, legendary, and unique items in the desperate attempt in thinking you have a better chance at earning a nanoshard, just break down a pair of normal boots and you might be surprised by the results!

And last, but definitely not least, we have my favorite, Exhibit D, where, due to budget cuts in the art department, led to the infamous manufacturing of invisible rifles.

How to obtain the invisible rifle.
Step 1: Zone in.
Step 2: summon a bot/drone.
Step 3: Switch your weapon in the process of the summon.
You now have an invisible rifle.

But enough fun and games. The real highlight of tonight? Why, it has to be my oath to not abandon or shirk a quest of any size or sort, just to get the "real feel" of what any other player would go through. Which brings me to that damn Hunter in Monument Station in which you have to do a slew of quests just so he can get into some other Hunter's quartermaster pants. Despite the fact that the whole line of all side quests I have performed so far are fed exes, I still didn't bite my lip. I didn't even bite my lip when the first four quests I came across I needed to zone over again to spawn the last needed item. I didn't even bite my lip when the last "inconspicuous workstation" was clipping through a tunnel and took me about a half hour of searching to find and only see that I couldn't select it. However, I nearly chewed off my damn lip when I rezoned and found three giant legendary skeletor mobs, two rare skeleton mobs, and two rare bull-thingies that happened to all be camping out right at the entrance to the zone. Needless to say, I was gang banged.

Hey, hey! if you want to pillage my corpse please take a number and wait your turn!

Well that was certainly fun. My first death was attributed to a spawn rape of seven mega mobs. So now things are starting to become much clearer now. Hellgate does not have a middle ground. It's like Marxist theory, really. You've got your bourgeoisie and your proletariat; your insanely hard and insanely easy. Hell, why come to a middle ground when you can just continue on to frustrate your players? Why do anything right when you can continue to do it wrong and make the outlines in stone deeper at how much you can't do anything at all? More so, I would like to know why you remain silent about this issue. Is it because you're afraid of losing subscriptions and having numerous founders rally for a refund? Is this why you're desperately scrounging to other markets and advertising it as, "From the makers of Diablo!"? Because right now it looks like you're just trying to sucker in as many people before they start to take a hint that this game happens to be one of the most horribly buggy, horribly over-played-in-themes, horribly reused ideas that has graced the gaming market in a decade and has made a significant impact in sales on launch. It's like the Great Train Robbery, Ocean's 11, and Entrapment rolled up into one game. So, are they incredibly smart or are they incredibly stupid? Eh, I guess it depends if you're either a consumer or an economist.

You know when I said I wouldn't drop any quests? I lied.

Chapter 9: Sense and Sensibility

2008-03-16T12:22:00.013-04:00

There I was. Standing on the edge of a building that had the floors above ripped off. A small little fellow by the name of "Rob Someone" stood next to the turret. He was a surely fellow who didn't talk at all or explain why he was there. Such mystery! Such drama! Such plot depth! I looked to the skies and saw the creeping behemoth. The Exospector was making an attempt to escape. It was scared. Scared of what could happen to it if I caught up with it. We had the demons on the run. I immediately manned the turret and took aim to the sky. I was about to give London a firework show it had never seen before.

Of course, it sounds much more interesting when I try to make it as such. However, I just pretty much shook my head through the whole ordeal. I mean, what, with some inconspicuous 4-foot-tall man by the name of "Rob Someone" standing next to the turret with no apparent explanation as to what the hell he is or why he's even there or why he still has his alpha placeholder name, followed by an Exospector in the sky that doesn't move at all. Oh, and hey, how about that. There's a turret conveniently placed on an already-rickety structure. So I put a blanket over my head and had some fun.

Well, this was certainly fun. Shooting non-stop for five minutes at this big thing in the sky certainly screamed excitement in every bone in my body.

I keep telling myself: "This has to get better. Please, for the sake of my humanity, this has to get better." I mean, I'm willing for Hellgate to prove me wrong. I'm wanting! So why not prove me wrong? Why lower the bar so low that you end up tripping over it? The game plays like a F2P game, considering how one-sided it is in its game play, and every now and then it tries to change up the mix with this sort of garbage. I mean, it wouldn't be garbage if there was some effort put to it. Why didn't they have a high-time action sequence where you're riding on the back of a truck manning this turret as the truck tries to keep up with the fleeing Exospector down the ravaged streets of London? Now that would be FUN. As a matter of fact, that would indeed scream effort. So would many other sorts of sound effects, or, quite possibly, the ground shaking and buildings crumbling when the Exospector hits the ground. Or maybe bring it up a notch and have Rob Someone driving the truck, spouting out drivel and nonsense as he piles through demons trying to block his way. Then you bring in one of those catchy boss tunes that blare out of your speakers at the wrong time in game play and you have a recipe of effort and win.

Of course, what I just described would take time and effort, two things Flagship Studios has rectified over and over again that those are things they are not interested in. No no! Why do something brilliant and new when you can just press ctrl + v? I mean, I'm only in Act 2. Why the hell does it look identical to Act 1? Yes, yes, I know; it's a city. It's not like it could drastically change. However, having more than five "random" city areas would certainly take away the feeling of piling through a level I've played before.

Then again, time and effort. Alas, poor Hellgate! I knew him, Horatio!

Perhaps what gets me riled up the most is that all these side quests that I am still doing are still not scaling one bit to my character at all. I mean, honestly. I understand that the first quest in a line of quests given by an NPC isn't going to be all that rewarding, but for God's sakes it doesn't give me an incentive to go out and perform it either. I'm sick and tired of being given 30 palladium and 1,000 XP as the first quest reward. I would actually earn more in both departments just by trudging through the areas to collect the damn items needed to complete the quest, only to be offered ONE item type for my class, which usually ends up being worthless junk anyways.

Very slick you cheap bastard. I mean, I DEFINITELY want an 18/17 armor over my 112 armor. Oh, and hey, why don't you give it to me unidentified as well?

I suppose the driving incentive to do these quests is that, eventually, you are offered blue and orange quest rewards. Of course, I've yet to get a blue/orange item from an NPC that I've decided to keep, but they are quite ripe in the department of breaking down items. Apparently this whole new system of nano forging items was too "easy," so Flagship Studios upped the anty by requiring extremely rare items called nanoshards in order to upgrade the items. The catch? Nanoshards can only be obtained by breaking down items and crossing our fingers and hoping that you'll get a shard. Of course, the process is completely random. You "supposedly" have higher chances if the item is blue or orange, but ten to one I usually find myself breaking down orange items and only getting components out of it, which usually leaves me with something like this:

I'd love to be able to keep my volt rifle and take it to me to higher-leveled areas and be just as effective, but without nanoshards I'm up the paddle without a creek.

I don't really understand it at all. This isn't challenging, it's just plain stupid. Why is there only ONE way to obtain nanoshards (short of trading for them)? Why can't we bring in components from all four categories and have, let's say, 50 pieces from normal components and 25 pieces from rare components from each category and have that forge as one nanoshard? Then again, as I am not a subscriber, there probably is a system set up like that for those that have Horadric--whoops, I mean "transmogrifying" cubes. Of course, I thought the idea for subscribing was to have added content, not have an incentive to stop playing with a broken system.

Moving right along. As I spoke earlier of "random" level design, I happened to finally chance across the fabled "new" level design for the streets. It was quite interesting really. I mean, here I was shooting down a continuous pattern of alleyways leading to nowhere, and when I mean continuous, I mean they probably designed about 5% of the level and then copy and pasted it about 20 times. So instead of trying to create something large and complex, they created something tedious and repetitive. I'm sure they fooled some people out there in thinking it was "new."

After about half way through this level, and figuring out it wasn't going to change in looks, I just decided it for the best to run past it all. After all, it's not hard to get to the next area when the level you're in is completely linear.

Of course, along my way I just had to stop for a second and finally talk about the destructibles in the game. You know, all the propane tanks and explosive barrels just sitting around in the middle of the street completely untouched in a demon-ravaged world. Same goes for all those boxes as well. I mean, makes perfect sense, especially when you walk up to a couple of barrels and shoot them, having them explode in your face without a single point of damage, but yet, miraculously damaging your enemies.

Got any questions about propane? Or propane accessories? Or why exactly they don't hurt you?

However, I finally came to an end to the old content I didn't get a chance to test in alpha/beta and found myself needing to delve deep into an Exospector and obtain his heart. I was actually excited for once, expecting to find new content, and such questions as, "I wonder what does it look like inside?" filled my head. Of course, I had a bad feeling about it when I finally came to the scene where the downed Exospector was.

Hmm, a magical portal appearing out of thin air for no logical reason at all. Does that come standard with all Exospectors?

Of course, I'm still trying to be positive here. After all, I still hope that the game can improve. However, my hopes seem to be falling on deaf ears and might just start becoming wishful thinking. Of course, this was more so spurned when I stepped through the portal and thought I had glitched myself to a very familiar place.

Wow, the inside of an Exospector and the mind of Techsmith 314 seem very alike! Gasp! Maybe they are ONE IN THE SAME? BURN THE WITCH!

Honestly, how stupid do they think we are? I was nearly expecting Bill Roper to pop from the side of my screen and say, "Toasty!" It's things like this that bring out a strong consumer reaction in people, and I certainly say they have a right when the developers are insulting their intelligence. If I wanted to treated like an idiot, I'd become a caveman. Of course, until then, I'm sure we'll keep coming across senseless antics of broken systems and repetitive content. Oh well. Here's to looking forward to Act 3.

Analyzer: 25 palladium
Realizing identifying the majority of the items will cost you 5 palladium when you end up selling it because it only jumped up in 20 palladium selling price: Stupid

Chapter 8: Someone's poisoned the water hole!

2008-03-14T12:18:00.011-04:00

Ooh boy, have I had fun or what? I mean, seriously. For once I'm not joking about this! I've actually found humor in finding so many faults with the game that it has become like a sort of fun little hobby. The name of the game? "How many faults can you spot within an hour?" Let's start, shall we?

While my night did start off slow in the department of trying to find the last damn flesh sample from a foul seraphim in Upper Ground, I did find myself making my way, for the second time, running through the same zone just to get to that blasted zone. Of course, along my way, I enjoy a good skip and hop. I mean, there is debris all over the place on the empty river bed. What sort of fun could I conjure up by hopping onto a still-intact boat? Of course, nothing can be as frustrating as pressing the jump key and just having your character just sit there idly.

As I was waiting for the next area to respawn with monsters, I drilled my character to understand that when I press the jump button I do, in fact, expect him to jump.

Yes yes, not such a lively topic I understand, but there are just some of the smallest things that do crawl under my skin. For instance, like not being able to key bind the control and shift keys because they are predisposed to act as permanent in-game buttons for on-the-fly hotkeys. As a lefty my keyboard setting in FPS games has always had me bind the right control key as jump. Of course, I found that impossible as the control keys (both of them) are reserved for on-the-fly boosters (such as fire retardant potions or adrenaline pills). Of course, why there isn't an option to turn off such a stupid feature (No, I do not want to use a fire retardant in the middle of a fight with spectral enemies. Sorry.) especially when you rarely carry any such items is beyond me as well. So, right now, the jump key, for the very first time in a game that offers me to jump, is set to num 0. I guess the upside is that my pinky is now finally getting a workout.

After spending some fun time jumping in place for a few minutes, I decided to walk on through to Upper Ground. Remember, I'm still trying to keep on the line of completing EVERY single quest, no matter how menial or repetitive it may seem. In case you have forgotten why, it's more due to the fact that I 'm trying to see if Flagship Studios tries to vary it up a bit or not in the department of side quests. So, I go along my merry way in Upper Ground killing seraphim left and right, just like I did the last time. Amazingly enough, I clear out the area of seraphim again and not a single one drops the required (and last) item for the quest. Not a SINGLE one. And I know, because I spent the next ten minutes going through the area from top to bottom three times just to make sure the item didn't elude me.

While I didn't find the last flesh sample in my third stint in searching the area, I did find one elusive seraphim that some how got himself stuck inside a building with no roof. Oh, and no, just for kicks, he didn't drop a flesh sample either.

Oh well. Maybe I'll just have three times the fun by restarting the instances once again. At least I'm getting plenty of opportunities to build up my experience and collect loot, right? I mean, considering how crazy I must be to continue this quest and do it over a third time I need to focus on the very little positivity I can find out here. After all, I did find a piece of armor that made me want to chuck my dye kit down the fiery inferno (I'm getting really sick and tired at looking at my 98% black 2% yellow armored guy). And hey, there's always Tetris as well!

Doo doo dee doo doo dee doo doo dee doo doo dee doo dee doo dee doo doo doo...

Eh, who the hell am I kidding. I think at this point in time I was looking for something very sharp to stab myself in the foot with. Perhaps if I was in physical agony it would take away my anguish from having to go through the area a third time. But hey, I'm a trooper. I have a right to bitch. I did pay $60 for this product after all. Don't like it? Don't read it. Pretty simple. But let's move on to a lighter subject, shall we? How about some sight-seeing?

You know you're a smash in the art department when you cook up an in-game advertisement for a store selling clothing for tall people and you have to jump on a dumpster and pan the third person camera up to see what the store is about.

So I decided maybe I'd press my luck and just go to the next area after Upper Ground. You know, just to see what I'd come across. Maybe get some good loot or get some more experience. That way instead of just restarting the instance all over again I'd spend ten or fifteen minutes exploring Barge House while the seraphim respawned in Upper Ground. Of course, it didn't take very long for me to find a lovely graphical glitch. Of course, while people are of the opinion that unless you're not a programmer or a game developer yourself that you can't actually point out something as a glitch because you have no "credentials" to do so, I'm still of the opinion that us low-brow folks can spot trouble here and there. I'll just let the pictures do the talking.

Now you see it...

Now you don't!

Yeah, you could imagine my surprise when I turned a bit and found that the whole area but the ground texture had disappeared. Good times. The fun didn't end there in Barge House as well.

I'm no expert here, but this appears to be a glitch.

So after spending another 10 or 15 minutes trying to look for some more of these glitches (DISCLAIMER: I am not a programmer so my opinion obviously does not matter) in Barge House, I gave up on just two big glaring ones and decided to go back to Upper Ground. Lo and behold the place had respawned quite nicely, which gave me the opportunity to clean out the whole area once more of foul seraphim (which were in plenty in supply). So here I am, once again, clearing out the place. I'm heading down the very end of the last alley way looking and hoping that there is still one last seraphim that would be happy enough to drop a damn flesh sample. So I round the corner, found out that I had missed one that was stuck also in another building with no roof and coaxed him to come on out and play. And would you know it, the bastard dropped a flesh sample. Well, at least I've proven you can get your way in Hellgate--as long as you try about fifteen times over and over again.

Repeativity never tasted so sweet.

Chapter 7: Thanks for Standing Still

2008-03-08T07:06:00.012-05:00

Sorry for the lack of updates, folks. Considering my progress through the game has been tedious and menial so far, I decided that not bothering it for a few weeks means I wouldn't have missed much. Besides, I hear they're too busy working with the Asian market to get them patched up first instead of the people they released a half-finished game to first. But hey, I'm no economic expert. Anyways.

Today I'll divulge a bit on enemy tactics, or the lack thereof. More specifically, why exactly do some of the enemies turn so suddenly retarded and would rather stand there looking at you in the face while you pump led full of them then would they want to try and go around the obstacle blocking their path? Ah, well, that may be the problem there. You know all this great coding in this game doesn't make me surprised why some of the enemies just decide to chill every now and then and let themselves take a beating. It turns an easy game into "shooting fish in a barrel" easy.

This Bruiser did start to go up the stairs once I tossed a grenade at his buddies, but it seems like he might have got his foot caught because he decided to chill right here for me to kill him.

Moving right along, going through the same process of dodge, shoot, loot, and continuing my progress, I didn't think much in doing something that mirrored a tedious day job. That is, until I magically fell through the map. Yep. That was definitely a fun experience. I was fighting some Gremlins in a subway when, all of the sudden, I side-stepped, fell through the map, and was magically teleported back to the beginning. At first I thought it was just a glitch. I mean, hey, it definitely wouldn't be the first. But then I found out, after dodging the Gremlins again, that it was very repeatable indeed.

In the general vicinity of the spot I'm shooting at is where I would magically "fall" and be teleported back to the beginning of the level.

Back to enemy tactics. I can remember quite clearly back in alpha/beta bringing up the issue of how demon troopers' sword reach was too far. And I don't mean I was complaining about how much reach it had, I was complaining about how a demon trooper can and would swing its sword nearly five or six feet away from me but magically land a hit. Perhaps if I show you what I mean we can be on the same page here.

Swing batta batta...SWING AND A MI--Oh.

Yep. I'm just so glad to see that's still here. I mean, yes, let's go ahead and make a compromise. Let's make a world that makes little sense as it is now, considering its design, and then let's try and "balance" things out so the melee attackers aren't a complete lack of a threat to ranged players. Yes, rather then have these enemies have alternate ranged weapons to be just as equally effective, we should only give them one set of preset weapons and just do what every other game has been doing for nearly the past 20 years in FPS shooters. Then again, I'm sure something like that would've been way too complicated to do, so I guess I'm just asking for too much here.

Well, I decided to go back to fiddling around with the main quest. More specifically, I decided to take my time on a quest that I happened to enjoy the most, considering it was completely dark and you had to rely on a headpiece flashlight to shine your way. Yes, I'm talking about The Infection, or better known as, "What more than half the game's environments should be like." I always found that quite interesting, really. Every single area you ever go to the entire place is well-lit. Ducts, subways, streets, etc. For some reason the lights are still on. Never mind the fact that the world is clearly ravaged and war torn. No no, stop with the logic questions. Those aren't allowed here you intelligent person. Dumb it down a few notches and you'll do just fine.

This was full of win--probably more the reason why we see this environment only once.

I mean, I remember the first trailer quite well. The labeling of the game as a horror genre looking to earn more then its fair share as a M-rated title. The two Templar only being in the general vicinity of two poorly-lit power-generated lights and then walking out of the station and onto the pitch-black streets, where flares and the ambient light of hell peaking out from below lit their way. I was expecting a dark and dreary landscape that gave the impression that it wasn't safe to go out alone. Instead our characters are one-men armies traveling down the Home Depot light fixtures aisle. But I digress.

Speaking further on the environment, I would like to bring up the talking point of how random items you find on the street are, well, random. And I mean they're not even bothered to be conveniently placed or logically explained. No, why the hell would you question something in which there was a severe lack of developer effort in? You bad, bad consumer! Asking all those naughty questions.

Inconspicuous. Adj. "Not readily noticeable."

And furthering the point of the environment, or the lack thereof, I think it would also be a good time to bring up what exactly are the requirements to play this game. Before I moved over to my new system, I was running with an AMD 4200+, an X1600XT and 2GB of RAM. Nothing fancy or special, but you know what? It ran Oblivion, and it ran Oblivion quite well. But, hell, fire up Hellgate here and it stutters (this had to do more so with the fact that they didn't have dual core support for the longest time). So besides being piss-poor implemented, it took a toll on my system for what reason exactly? Here, let me break it down to you now. I'm now running a system with an Intel Core Duo E6550, an 8800GT, and 4GB of RAM. The system runs Crysis flawlessly at 1280x1024, 4xAA, and all high graphic settings at DX9, yet when I fired up Hellgate back in December to see the difference in performance I was still getting stutter performance issues.

Perhaps for the uneducated out there I can break it down for you, but even though now that they have patched what ever reason as to why the game stuttered on people's rigs that blew the system requirements out of the South China Sea is beyond me as to why it was even a problem in the first place. While I am now running Hellgate in 1280x1024, 4xAA, and all high graphic settings in DX9 as well, it looks like I'm parading around Deus Ex textures in this game.

Wow, that is a great ground texture there. I mean, look at it. Completely flat and all, but offering 3D perspective. Well, maybe if we just throw in a few poorly-textured rocks around it and a pillar going straight down into the rubble without anything bumping up against it it won't look like we spent about 15 minutes in Windows Paint doing our textures.

I mean, what the hell happened here folks? Halo for the PC looks better than this, and Halo for the PC came out in 2001. What ever happened to the promises of this, this, this, this, this, this, or this? I mean, the graphics look so dated that it's a wonder why they didn't bother to just revamp the whole game and make everything all fluffy and happy, because everything is already well-lit with happy colors. I don't ever feel like I'm in a ravaged city that has been well been taken over by demons. As a matter of fact, I don't ever get the feeling of "being alone" because all I ever have to do is run back to a station and find 20 or 30 people there, or, in some instances, I would find a group of 15 or 20 Templar romping around. I mean, I thought the human survivors were supposed to be few. What ever sort of immersion they try to establish is immediately destroyed when the support under it is pulled by the very people that were supposed to make it sturdy enough to hold the weight of what they were saying they were delivering. Perhaps next time we shall have deeds and not words.

Perhaps.

"Yes, yes, I know my men and I are just standing around not shooting back at the enemy. Why do you think we are losing this war in the first place?"

Chapter 6: Mr. Roper, Tear Down This Wall!

2008-02-13T13:50:00.010-05:00

Ah, time for one of my all-time favorite quests: The Wall. Of course, when I mean favorite, I mean favorite for being such a disaster. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. First off I'd just like to take the time to talk a bit about enemy AI once again. Yes, it always seems that just once you think the enemies can't get any dumber, they up and surprise the heck out of you.

Considering himself unpopular with London survivors, Lord Sloranas was first reluctant to join the party he was invited to. Of course, once he arrived and found he was too fat to fit through the door, he became the source of many great party jokes as he stood outside crying.

I mean, I don't get it. Why even put enemies in an area in which you can just run into a building and they won't be able to get at you? What's even more is that these buildings seem to be much more frequent in the street levels, being found in the middle of the area so you can quickly run up the stairs and laugh at the enemies that can't get at you below. If I wanted to exploit the enemy, I'd use a trainer, not have it spoon-fed to me in gameplay mechanics.

And this is just one of the many experiences I had on my run to the helpless Fist. I mean, not only was it more of a joke that I killed a legendary enemy without him ever being able to touch him, but a rare gremlin trooper also happened to surprise me with his "tactics" in battle as well.

Someone didn't have their Wheaties this morning.

Though the picture might not translate what exactly is happening, I'll gladly elaborate. You see, this fellow here decided that it would be infinitely better if he walked the entire way in his line of attack. Now, I know my inhibitor bots don't stop enemies from charging at me, which is what gremlins are supposed to do, but apparently this guy didn't get the memo. What's more is that he's a rare enemy--one that should be a challenge to bring down because he's liable to drop some good loot. So either he's giving peace a chance or someone messed up in core game design. Hmm, I wonder what it might be!

Besides the AI however, I found myself taking a gander at the rag doll physics of dead enemies. Now small enemies really have no trouble at all at falling down and dying, especially with some of the zombies, who might've been gymnasts when they were still alive. However, the bigger the enemy gets, the more clumsy his rag doll physics seem to be once he dies. This becomes more apparent with bulky enemies, who just can't seem to figure out that gravity weighs things down. However, in some cases, to over come floating corpses, sometimes you just have to do the opposite and clip through the ground.

"Ugh, I am never partying with those London survivors again." "Yeah, you said it Jimmy, I meaAAHH! MY LEGS! I GOT NO LEGS! I GOT NO LEGS JIMMY! AHHHH!"

I ask, once again (at I'm sure many times in the future as well); what exactly is so hard about doing things that other people in the industry of video games have ZERO trouble of doing? Why am I still finding stuff that I was looking at in alpha/beta? But my biggest question definitely has to be as to why this sort of garbage is still happening? Then again, those are apparently the same questions the droves of disappointed fans have asked the developers since release. Funny how there hasn't been much of any sort of real response other than, "We're working on it."

Anyways, I finally found myself at good ol' Embankment Redoubt. Of course, not to my surprise, there still doesn't seem to be any sort of fortification to be found. Maybe the Fist, in their infinite idiocy to be helpless whelps, were in charge of building it? All the more reason as to why the "redoubt" seems to be a few chest-high barricades. Yeah, that's going to stop something. Maybe my grandmother. Considering they are retreating, however, something tells me granny is the least of their worries.

Like good ol' alpha/beta days, I decided the best method to go about the mission is to run pass the nitwits as per the car "blocking" your way out. Yes, I know that you're supposed to control the Fist and get them to a portal that just happens to be on the other side of town, but hey, I'm no idiot. Considering how every other thing has only went from bad to worse in my experience so far, something also tells me that the AI for the Fist are just going to be as idiotic as they were back in August. Of course, to my surprise, the way is actually blocked this time around, as I cannot magically clip through the van at the doorway any more. Bummer. And I enjoyed so much being able to beat this mission and getting the drops as well.

So I sigh, run up the stairs, and find our good and trust-worthy Hobbit friend Rob Someone. My, what an imaginative name! Still as inconspicuous, however, he doesn't bother to say a word to you. You, however, are to click on a magical rectangle thingy over-looking the Fist. Once you do you are transported to a static camera with a top down view centered around four Fist members. And, like good times, this is where things just get ridiculous.

The Fist AKA Why We're Losing this War

Yes, it's nice that Flagship Studios, in their infinite scrounging around to try and break the mold, try and add an aspect into an action RPG game that already has FPS elements by mixing some old fashioned RTS into the mix. However, if you're going to mix things up, you might actually want to get your priorities straight. Or, you know, maybe do this more than once to give the impression that it wasn't lost content on the floor that was picked up and scotch-taped to the game to add play time.

You see, not only are the four bumbling baboons you control adept at sucking at doing damage to enemies, but they are also adept at standing still and being sadomasochists while they get pummeled by enemies. To add more insult to injury, Flagship almost seemed to know this, so they added an AOE bomb that you could call in and the ability to heal all members magically. However, the real magic to this mission was to what exactly transpired. Usually the main big bad ten-times-too-big fellbore Beezlebub is the main source of the problem, as he's also adept to calling in AOE flame strikes (to which the Fist will not run out of unless you hold their hand and guide them to another direction). So what it ends up becoming is about a five minute battle of spamming air strikes and heals, all the while the Fist run around like a bunch of idiots, usually hitting walls and cars more often then the enemies you even tell them to shoot at. Of course, Beezlebub did eventually die, but not before spawning four kamikaze fellbores, to which I tried to single out in attack with the Fist, but, like the good guys they are, they just sat their like idiots shooting walls and barrels. Amazingly enough, however, as the four kamikaze fellbores rushed in, I quickly tapped the heal key after the first explosion. After things had subsided, only one Fist was left alive, hanging by about 40 health. That's also when the portal decided to open, at which point I immediately rushed the last man in through before he was over run by the enemies surrounding him.

And the worst thing is is that this isn't really gameplay at all. It's more like torture. Whereas we were once given the option to make the run and clear the way for the retarded Fist, we are now stuck playing commander while being heavily handicapped. It's like being a casual gamer and trying to play Microsoft Flight Simulator. You're going to crash and burn because the learning curve is higher than Mt. Everest. And that's how it is with this little section of gameplay. You aren't actually told how to play or what to do, and you also aren't told that you're going to be leading idiots who can't tie their own shoelaces to fight an overwhelming number of enemies that the air strike command will be doing most of the killing. I mean, if I wanted to stab myself in the eye, I should at least be given the option to. With Flagship Studios, however, they just shake your hand, jam the knife in their selves, and pat you on the back like nothing ever happened.

Flagship Studios offers a friendly reminder that you could be playing a better game for free.

Chapter 5: One Step at a Time

2008-02-13T10:36:00.007-05:00

I was just going on my merry way to Millennium Battle when I suddenly realized, after trying to find the tube to the next area, that as far as the music goes for this game, it doesn't actually "go" any where. For one, I've heard maybe, what, four or five different tracks? And it's not like an act has its specific tracks. What I find more interesting is the "random" appeal to how frequently a track may play, and, more so, what sort of track would play.

I had some lovely ooshin'-dooshin' techno boss soundtrack blaring into my headphones suddenly when all I was doing was taking a nice, quiet stroll.

Of course, what even makes me shake my head even more is that with the numerous complaints that people did make in alpha/beta, the music was one of the few in which a developer actually responded like a human being to. "Yeah, we plan on getting a lot more music to you guys." So when do you guys plan on doing that? 2009? 2010? Next expansion?

But rather remain dreary of the same old random music, I decided to turn it off and make the best of it. So I alt + tab'ed and tried to imagine music that would fit into the genre that is Hellgate. Of course, the Quake 2 soundtrack was the first thing that came to mind, and it certainly fit in perfectly well. So that's the music I'm now listening to when I play the game. Not only does it fit in better then what the game has to offer, but it's also a constant play through of music that will get your adrenaline pumping.

Speaking of things developers touch-based on in changing in games happened to be some of the quest objective items that were given to you with side quests in which you had to activate items in an area. I'll just dig up an old alpha photo to show you what I mean:

Of course, people figured this sort of stuff would've disappeared in the finished content. I mean, items like this would have a more convenient and sensible location, right? Wrong.

Hmm...Two random computer terminal stations in the middle of a ravaged world, and yet they remained untouched. Of course, there's still the question of how in the hell did those things get there in the first place, but asking such a question would require a train of thought--something we're none too keen on in Hellgate.

All I ask is: Why? I mean, why in the hell would you just bend over, let what ever comes out from your bum plop right down, and then use that in the game as "finished content?" I'm still more befuddled at how Flagship Studios has tried to remain oblivious to what has transpired with their game. I mean, sure, if they publicly admit how unfinished their game is subscribers would drop like flies, but at least you would have some dignity. Instead they seem to be much more adept to breaking promises.

Speaking of which, let's go back to the basics, shall we? I can remember quite fondly of how enemies always had the knack to clip through solid objects, alive or dead, and can also remember the many pleas of defense of, "It's only alpha/beta." Then again, I guess I really shouldn't be all that surprised when I come across the same experience three months later.

Contrary to popular belief, the laws of gravity do not apply in the Hellgate world. Ever.

So I just shrugged and went on my merry way, as I've always been trying to do so far in this game without saying, "I quit." Nope, I'm not going to let continuous buggy and shoddy content turn me away from finishing this game, because I'd rather have mounting field work explain first hand of what the many complaints in this game actually look like first-hand. So I just completed the quest I needed to do out there and, lo and behold, some luck came across to me with some very nice pants. So I recall myself back to the station and identify the pants, only to find that they are infinitely better then the ones I'm wearing now, but the only problem is that they require my character level to be one level higher. No biggie. I'll just drop the item in my stash and wait it out in the grind. Of course there's nothing more frustrating then trying to look at yourself at your stash/at the shop merchant when there's a throng of people in the way. Oh well, hopefully it's not as crowded in the later levels.

Mmf! Rrf! Oof! Hey, no shovin'! Oi, what's that feelin' against me leg!?

Chapter 4: Redundant, Redundant

2008-02-12T17:16:00.000-05:00

As I said earlier before, I am, in fact, completing all quests that are available to me. Now since I'm still in the mode of just trying to get past Act 3, because that's all we were limited to in alpha/beta, I decided to take my time while turning in a quest to see the rewards being offered. When I actually took a good look, I was surprised.

Oh, you mean of the three items you can offer me, all I can take is the rifle? Hmm, well, ok. Oh, how about that. It's infinitely inferior to the one I have now. Well, you don't leave me with much choice. I'll just take the palladium. Wait, you're only giving me 120 palladium? Oh...ok...Do you have any more equally rewarding quests you want to offer me? You do? Splendid!

Yeah, apparently the majority of the rewards I've been getting on these side quests (which you're always stuck with only one item because the other two are for the other two factions, which you can't use as they aren't class compatible) have actually been completely worthless. To add insult to injury, the palladium they offer as a reward wasn't even half of what I recovered when I embarked on the journey to get what they asked for. So, in the end, the only thing you're really working on when you do these side quests are reputation runs. Of course, what's even better is that reputation actually does squat for you as well (I maxed out the reputation at Covent Garden Station and prices haven't dropped at the shop--Heck, I didn't even get a pat on the back).

So basically the side quests are there to fool you into thinking you're embarking on something the developers actually spent considerable amount of time setting up for you to do when all they've done is add one of the item graphics already in use for the game, preset it to a specific enemy in a specific area, and then added a drop table for how frequent those items drop before you decide to drop dead of exhaustion of doing the same thing over and over again. I mean, if Flagship Studios is talking about bringing in new quests, I hope they aren't anything like this, because, so far, of all the quest reward items I've gotten, I haven't bothered to keep a single one.

Speaking of that lovely rifle I have, it's always good to know that the mods that I have equipped to the gun help it considerably to continue to be useful to me even at higher levels. For instance, if I didn't have three scope mods attached to it, it wouldn't look as ridiculous as it does now.

Well, the scope on the right is fer' seein' stuff, the one on the top is a kaleidoscope, and the one on the left is fer' lookin' at nekkid demon chicks.

I've seen a few players with three ammo clips to one rifle as well. It looks God-awful ridiculous. I mean, wouldn't it just be easier to keep the gun at its main texture preset instead of having it littered with mods? I mean, sure, some of the clips do add some fancy aesthetical value to some weapons, but some designs look down-right ridiculous (including that scope that is more of a broken iron sight). When I see something like this the word "redundant" definitely comes to mind. Speaking of which, let's touch up on some of the loading screens, shall we?

Now that is some insightful information I did not know.

I believe the example above really hits home with what I'm saying. Honestly, I think it would be much better if nothing was said at all during loading screens, as they don't actually offer any sort of real tips that isn't already common knowledge. I mean, really. I wonder how a LV50 player feels when he sees, "Press I to open your inventory" when he's doing a boss run of some sort. "Oh, geez, is that how you do it? And all this time I've been using the same equipment! Thanks for the heads up!"

And it's not like this is the only bit of copy and paste tactics. For instance, if there is one thing you can count on on any level you are on, you're always going to find a legendary enemy. Of course, legendary enemies are just regular enemies on steroids. It's not like they look any different from their counterpart of what their standard MO is. But you would think the "unique" names would at least try and give that sort of feeling. However, when the majority of the "unique" names are just adjectives of what the enemy does, it's not like it's any sort of legendary at all.

C'mon boys and girls...come a little closer...I'm the Reanimator...

What's worse is that this is still a repeating pattern and I fear it will continue to be as much until the very end of the game. Where's the variety? Where's the change of things? A simple recolor of an enemy doesn't make him new and the same thing goes for weapons as well. When they are still performing the same actions, emitting the same sounds, and not doing anything new, then it just becomes a copy and paste game through and through.

You and me both, bub.

Chapter 3: Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

2008-02-12T12:03:00.000-05:00

Following the ravings of a mad man, otherwise known as Lucius Aldwin, led me back to a familiar place known as Green Park Station. Of course, Green Park Station has always been a favorite of mine simply because it is one of the few "towns" in which it is under fire. However, what makes the experience even more limited is how it is instanced for your character, whereas all the other "towns" are open to all players. Oh, and then there's that little bit in which Lucius Aldwin tells us how he spread out the pieces of the infamous Oracle in three inconspicuous places: Death's Sewers, Death's Tunnels, and Death's City. Wow, someone did a number in the naming department, huh?

Anyways, this next segment in Act 2 might be one of the most repetitive in the whole game. You see, in these three places, we're going to kill a specific enemy, find the altar, grab a piece of the oracle, and return it back to Lucius. It's more of a smash-n-grab sort of thing--you know, something you would expect out of a menial side quest. Amazing, however, how it comes to play in the main game.

Going on then we find that these three distinct locations are not your run-of-the-mill copy and paste tile sets. No, you see, this time you'll get to experience what the game should've probably felt like if Flagship Studios was going for any sort of immersion. In these levels the fog distance is much shorter, in which the fog color is also black, giving the impression that it's very dark.

This is what areas should have looked like. We get to taste it in only three different levels.

Now, even though this is just a simple matter of messing around with fog settings, it just goes to show you how much of a difference it makes the game. The very first trailer banked heavily on a dark, dreary setting of loneliness and inevitability. When those two Templar step out of the station and onto the streets, only to see darkness, one of them fires flares to lighten up the place. That was the setting that made sense. I mean, in a world in which hell has taken over, we have nice, bright and blue skies, and there's plenty of light even during the night levels.

Continuing on, however, I make the point that just decreasing the fog distance doesn't necessarily fix the game either. For instance, spawned area lighting is limited to some actions, not all, and probably the biggest insult to injury is how area-of-affect fire doesn't do anything but try and look pretty.

Contrary to popular belief, fire apparently does not emit a light source.

It's really just another thing that you can see and wonder why developers didn't spend more time on something like this. I mean, what would've been so hard to add flashlights to helmets, or have our glowy armor emit a light radius around the player? It's actually surprising that this was something they didn't do, given that they did both in Diablo 1 and Diablo 2. Either way, it's just insulting to have these options stare at you in the face and, instead, Flagship Studios chose to opt for a more kiddy-like environment of full lighting. Tell me why this game is rated M again?

Anyways. I bring back all the pieces for Lucius Aldwin to piece back together the Oracle, after which I am told to activate it. Now, in the back of my mind, I clearly remembered one of the most popular bugs in alpha/beta, which was once you activated the Oracle, he would clearly jump on the counter behind Lucius, jump on Techsmith 314's face, and then, miraculously, leave a copy of himself on 314's face, but then jump onto some sandbags to the left. And, sure as rain, when I activated the 1/10 scale Zombie Summoner, he did exactly that.

The Oracle proves to us that he can indeed be in two different places at the same time.

At such a point and time, I took a moment to see if other things from alpha/beta were still in Green Park Station, such as in-game advertisements in posters, which was a popular concern of grief back in the testing days. Given that EA has a wonderful reputation of fitting in some advertisements into the games they publish in such noticeable ways that they affect game immersion, people were afraid that Hellgate would be plagued by such marketing schemes. Of course many defenders of Flagship Studios claimed that the advertisements were only there for alpha/beta. I only needed to turn around to see how wrong those people were.

Hellgate: London Weta Workshop collectibles, only $225 each! Get all four for the low, low price of $900!

However, perhaps the most interesting poster I found in Green Park Station was something that wasn't an advertisement at all. I'll end this chapter and just let the picture speak for itself.

Now that's what I call a recipe for disaster.

Chapter 2: The Same Old Same Old

2008-02-11T11:35:00.000-05:00

Ah, Covent Garden Station. You've changed a bit. Well that's certainly nice. Too bad you can't make up for the entire game. Oh well. Everything can't be perfect, but you can at least try to improve it. Apparently Flagship Studios didn't get the memo.

Anyways, I continued to press onward, this time assuring myself that I would complete all quests that were presented to my character at any given time. This means those lovely kill enemy x, fed ex, and grind quests would fill up most of my time. But, hey, if you really want to get the full experience, then you have to try out what is being offered to you. So I make my first turn to the Kingsway Sewers to complete the menial quests set before me and, wouldn't you know it, that's when it hit me. The lovely loading screen of death. Ah, such fond memories I had of thee back in alpha. I'm glad to see you made it to the finished product old chum!

I waited a full six minutes before I decided that it was time to run the melody of ctrl + alt + delete, just to make sure that it just wasn't "lag."

Ah, well, we can try that again, shall we? So I spin up the client once more and go through the same portal once again, this time crossing my fingers. Success! This time the client decided to work like a finished product and loaded the other area. One must really wonder, however, how such problems still exist when Flagship Studios keeps claiming to have "fixed the bugs."

Anyways, after completing said menial quests, I decided to pursue the main quest story line. I was teeming with excitement; now I was about to get some real action with our old pal Shulgoth, who was victim to many runs in alpha/beta (I hear he's still quite popular today). However, on my way to meet my old friend, I happened to come across the little leaper doggie guys. As an Engineer, my long ranged rifle made short work of them, most particularly when they provided perfect practice when they jumped into the air and I simply side-stepped away. However, I was surprised to learn that this little fellows had developed the wonderful ability to levitate after death!

And now the Amazing Swamini will perform his levitation act after his death!

Yes, it seemed that leaper enemies that I killed when they were airborne seemed to drop down to an invisible wall that was a few feet off the ground. It was a magical feat, one which I decided to take a moment to ponder and reflect on and wonder why in the world the game even allows rag dolls to do such thing. But then I remembered I probably was doing something productive when I was at work when others clearly weren't. Oh well. What a big surprise.

Speaking of floating corpses, this might also bring up a good time to mention how flying enemies are just as reluctant to not actually drop to the ground when they are killed as well. Of course for them they seem more keen in just freezing the last animation they were performing before they met their untimely end.

Hey, we're just going to hang up here for a while if that's cool with you.

Yes, it seems like as if enemies have a knack of just sitting in the middle of the air once they are dead. What a lovely habit. What's even more interesting is that I can't remember a single time in alpha, or beta, when something like this happened. So I lied when I said I haven't seen anything new. Flagship Studios, in their finite attempt to fix things, seemed to had the wanton feeling to add a few more bugs in the mix to throw us off.

But hey, those aren't the only things enemies can do. No sir, they seem to also be inclined to actually do nothing at all at times. Yep, it looks like a few that were molded out of the sulfur forgot to pick up their brains on the way out of the hell that they spawned from.

I took down both Vortex Goliaths from this distance while they did nothing but stand around.

While for some players they might find it enjoyable that all they have to do is sit in front of an enemy and press the fire button, I find it rather insulting. If I wanted a one-clicker game, I'd play Solitaire, and that came with the computer for free. However, I paid $60 for a game in which I was expecting content and developer effort to that of the equivalent of what the industry's standard is. I mean, unless, of course, Flagship Studios was trying to set an all-time low to break the mold of the standard and take it down a few notches. I suppose that would make sense as to why they do what they do.

For instance, let's take a time to examine the reflections of this game. Now, for some bizarre reason, the streets are tore up, cars are blown up, and the landscape is littered with hot spots sprouting out of buildings and the ground, yet, magically, all of these windows on buildings seem to be quite intact. So I happened to take a gander of what reflection these windows might have to offer, only to find myself staring at a phony backdrop reflection image that mirrors off on all windows. The only problem? It doesn't actually reflect the image behind you. As a matter of fact, if you look at one window to your left and then one to your right, they will show the very same image. There isn't any actual reflection at all; it's just something to pull a blanket over your face to think you're looking at something fancy when you're looking at something you'd find in a pre-1999 game.

While it appears I am standing in front of the same window, I'm actually standing in front of the window on the left in the picture on the left and standing in front of the window on the right in the picture to the right--both of which "reflect" the same image.

But people probably don't even take the time to even reflect on their surroundings when they're probably too busy trying to find the last gathering item needed for a quest. At first these quests seemed easy enough, especially when the enemies that dropped the said items needed were plenty in supply. However, as I have a fear that it will become a recurring theme in quests, the last x of y items always seems to be the hardest to spawn from the enemy, even if you've killed about 30 of them. As a matter of fact, the tickers I was supposed to take from downed Imp Troopers from Piccadilly Circus were no where to be found, mostly because there weren't any Imp Troopers in Piccadilly Circus to begin with. However, there was a hellgate, which I reluctantly stepped through and found my lovely slew of Imp Troopers. As such, after cleaning out the place, I found myself with 9 of the 10 items needed, but now with zero Imp Troopers left. Well, what a predicament I found myself to be in. So I descended into Hell in the hopeful attempt to find Imp Troopers there but with no such luck. Ten minutes later I arise back to the staging area of the hellgate, but nothing had respawned. So I decided to return to Piccadilly Circus and clear out the place there, also hopeful for Imp Trooper respawns. No such luck. Another ten minutes pass by and I return into the hellgate, where I found a few dozen respawned Imp Troopers. So I rubbed my hands together greedily, slew them all, and not a single one dropped a ticker.

30 minutes into searching for one more damn ticker and I'm still turning up empty.

So instead of just getting frustrated and dropping the quest, I decided to pursue the matter. Hell, if waiting a half hour didn't cure the problem, then I'm sure just logging out and logging back in would. So I did exactly that. And so here I was, once again, back in Charring Cross Station. Out I went onto Piccadilly Approach and then to Piccadilly Circus. Surprise surprise! No Imp Troopers in Piccadilly Circus. However, there still was a hellgate, and down I went into it. And after I had decimated the whole place of all Imp Troopers, there still wasn't a ticker to be found.

Now I was pissed.

So I storm out of the hellgate, deciding that I'll just recall back, drop the quest, and then try and do something rude to the NPC that gave me the quest, only to find that as soon as I stepped through the portal, there was an Imp Trooper staring me down. I immediately shot him in the face just for the sport and the trouble he had caused me and, wouldn't you know it, the bastard drops a ticker. I sighed heavily, picked up the item, and was glad the client didn't crash in the process.

So back I went to Charring Cross Station, slowly regulating my breathing, telling myself that it's just a game and that it's not worth getting worked up over, but you know what? It just kills me when this sort of garbage is presented to you in a product that you spend your hard-earned money on. I bought this game to have fun, not to get frustrated over some discrepancy that shouldn't have happened in the first place. Hell, I get that at my job, and I get paid for being unhappy. In Hellgate all I get is some quest text that laughs at me and a half hour of wasted time for one quest. Oh well. Maybe things will lighten up next time.

Maybe.

Sometimes Hellgate players just need a hug--and sharper player textures.

Chapter 1: I Know this Music

2008-02-11T09:49:00.001-05:00

Hoping that things had changed from the very beginning, I deleted my old character and started a new one. Not to my surprise, however, my character still happens to "start out" at the end of an inconspicuous alley with no explanation how he got there or why he is outside.

Hmm, this looks like a good place to magically appear from.

And still, equally not as surprising, the first message I receive is from the mysterious Murmur, who claims to need my help. He too is just hanging around in the alley for no particular reason as well.

Hello. I'm not a suspicious fellow because I'm the only person in the entire game who doesn't carry a weapon when I go to the surface.

And also not to much of my surprise, I click on Murmur only to find that the UI is still just as horrible, making it a click-fest just to read menial text in quests. Whereas developers were probably trying to go for a conversational piece in which you can only handle one sentence at a time, it doesn't mean much when you don't have voice actors for the quest text itself. Instead you get something to this effect:

Oh.

*CLICK*

Hello.

*CLICK*

How are you?

*CLICK*

Good.

*CLICK*

Well.

*CLICK*

I want you to go kill 12 demons for me.

*CLICK*

Yes.

*CLICK*

Free of charge.

*CLICK*

Oh, alright.

*CLICK*

I'll give you some palladium.

*CLICK*

Maybe.

*CLICK*

And an item too.

*CLICK*

But don't expect anything riveting.

*CLICK*

Right then.

*CLICK*

Off you go.

*ACCEPT QUEST*

So what this really ends up doing is just making questing in general just so damn annoying. I mean, everyone in alpha said it, everyone in beta said it, and people today are still saying it. Fix the damn UI. But apparently such things over at Flagship Studios are too hard to accomplish. And yet I'm sure so are many other things that I will find along this game are as well too, especially when you can't fix the same old garbage that was in your alpha client. Oh well. I guess we all can't be logical.

Anyways, I take Murmur along with me to a clearing where six or seven dead Templar lay strewn everywhere with one hanging by a thread. Strangely enough, there only seems to be about four or five LV1 zombies in the vicinity that my LV1 bolters make short work of. Hmm. Yeah. So let's recap so far. Apparently the elite of the elite demon killers--a group of seven no less--were slaughtered by about five zombies. More so, they even managed to leave one alive to give you some important quest item, all the while this Murmur character, who was only standing in an alleyway 50 feet away, acts oblivious to the whole thing. Oh, and don't forget the part where my character also was in that alleyway too.

Oh, hmm. Haven't I seen you before? Yes, weren't you just slaughtering my comrades? Oh, no, that wasn't you? Oh, sorry then. Well, I won't bother to mention it again then.

I mean, c'mon, does Flagship expect us to have been dropped on our heads? Not only does this farcical plot make zero sense so far, it's also been solved within the first five minutes of gameplay. Oooh, Murmur is a bad guy. BIG SURPRISE. Ugh. Maybe I'll at least have better luck in my gameplay experience.

Sorry Joey, but due to cut back in development time, we're just going to have to give you a peg leg. Don't worry, half of the game is getting replacement textures as well.

Introduction

2008-02-11T00:24:00.000-05:00

It was a genuine shock when the creators of Diablo, otherwise known as Blizzard North (or Condor before Blizzard purchased the company six months before Diablo's release), announced their departure from Blizzard Entertainment back in November 2005. To many, however, opportunity was a high probability for these guys to do something brilliant on their own. When the majority of them formed Flagship Studios some months later and announced a project that they promised would be something new, there were few who even cared to pay attention. However, from their newly-born company to the days of when that project was given a name, I was there, waiting, watching, and teeming with excitement for what they would have to offer. Those were the days when Hellgate: London was on the top of my "looking forward to" list. Notice how I speak in past tense.

Joy could not have come at a better time when I was whisked in to the alpha in August. Like a little girl on Christmas morning, I squealed in delight at the opportunity to get a first-hand taste of what Hellgate had to offer. However, by the end of beta, that taste had turned sour. Despite the numerous lists of criticisms numerous alpha and beta testers posted on the official forums for suggestions to fixing the game, nothing was said or done. Instead, suggestions fell on deaf ears as developers continued to act like nothing was wrong. A great number of people, including me, told the doomsayers that "Oh, it's only alpha/beta content. There is surely more to the full game."

Now I know better.

That fateful day came on October 30th when my collector's edition pre-order came early. I was reluctant to take out the CD and install the game for the fear that my horrors may be confirmed. Instead, I took advantage of the comic book and the commentary DVD that came along to calm my nerves and to get a thorough grounding in the developmental process of the game. And then came the next day where I installed the game and thought I was still playing on the alpha client.

People were in an upheaval. Subscribers were getting empty promises, with founders and elite members publicly vowing to never to return to this game and regretting the decisions they made. Critics followed. There wasn't a single review that didn't have more bad things to say about Hellgate: London than good things. And so after reaching level 9 on my Marksman and getting tired of doing what I did in alpha/beta about 12 different times with 12 different characters, I decided that I would set down the game and come back in a week or two when a patch had been brought up to speed.

That patch didn't come in a week. It didn't come in two. It didn't come until December 19, 2007, and it was only labeled as 0.7, a foreshadowing of the amount of time and effort Flagship Studios put into trying to fix their game. I watched as the posts for the bugs board piled up to an insurmountable number. I watched as numerous fan sites dropped their support with only Hellgate Guru sticking in the thick of things. I watched as numerous unsatisfied customers blasted away at the game, warning others of the product. I watched how the fans of the game went from the majority to the minority.

And now here we are, three months later. It is, after all, my grace period to give a game its last chance to make an impression on me. Despite the fact that the criticism clearly outweighs what ever positive light this game might have, especially with sites such as flagshipped.com becoming increasing popular, or how the term "flagshipped" is synonymous with "pranked." So here I am, about to embark on a journey that I may indeed regret taking.