Hellgate: London - Chefelf.com Night Life

I know, what did I expect? But still. I'm not going to complain about the repetitive 'gameplay' and the like. That's all expected. But I am going to complain about everything else.

First, the documentation. The manual is even less useful then the manual for Morrowind. It gives no information on the setting/story. There's no information about the damage types. No information about special damage. Hell, apparantly the game has a mini-game included. There is only one mention to this in game. If you win it enough times, you get an achievement. The description for the achievement is "If you haven't figured it out by now, we're not telling you". I've won the mini-game at least 20 times, and I have no idea what it is.
Second, the plot. Where is it? I think I'm missing it or something. I'm in act 5, and I still have no idea what's really going on. Ok, so at some point in the future when we have a lot of technology, a portal to hell opened. Right. Apparently, half the population seems to belong to the not-so-secret society of Templars, and they seem to pass for a government these days. You take on the role of some nobody who happened to be walking down a demon infested street for no discernible reason, when a bloke called Murmur takes it upon himself to follow you around for the rest of your life. If we take that as read, then the rest of the (sparse) plot seems to follow through all right.
Third, the setting. It makes no sense. Humanity appears to be limited to a bunch of stations in the London Underground, whilst everywhere else is under a constant demonic plague. Travelling from one station to the next is a major effort in military force. Yet everybody else seems to have little trouble doing it. That being said, the demons strength seems to be inversely proportional to the number of humans left. Due to the very little amount of people around, one assumes that the demonic invasion did more the decimate our numbers. So they must have been strong enough to commit mass genocide. But now that they outnumber us in the range of thousands to one, they just can't quite finish us off. Hell, my personal kill count is nearing about 10K. And it makes even less sense when we take into account that the demons re-spawn when you leave an area, pretty much making all that work I just went to purifying it to waste. Which of course leads one to ask why this guy is adamant that I kill 7 zombies in a particular area, and is willing to pay me to do it. I mean, there are a lot more demons there, most of them worse then zombies. And killing them doesn't seem to slow down the demonic hoard in the slightest. It only takes a minute or two and the place will be crawling with filth again.
Fourth, the bad level design. The minor point would be the use of randomised levels. Apparently, they're supposed to increase the re playability of the game. Somehow. In practice, it means that each level is going to be a rehash of one of the four or so skins. Each skin leads to the same patterns, lending you a severe sense of de ja vu as you wonder through the same street yet again. But that's by no means the least of it. Specific levels seem to be worse then others. Every now and then in the main quest you have to do something different. This should be a good thing, but sadly the designers didn't quite think things through. The best example that comes to mind is a level where clouds of poisonous air follow you around slowly. It puts an interesting twist on the level. But then you have to talk to somebody. And it's a long conversation. And the game doesn't pause when you talk to people. So basically, you're standing around choking whilst listening to this guy. That leaves you with two options. Either you {a} skip the ~~dial~~monologue and give up what little characterisation the game offers you, or you {b}choke to death. Great. Another example was the level I just played through. I had to get three parts to fix a train, but they're too heavy to carry more then one at a time. I had to wander about the level and kill monsters until one of them randomly dropped a part. But instead of having the parts placed on three monsters when the level starts, they only place the first one. So, I fought throughout the whole level until it finally dropped in the last room. I lug it back, and get sent out for the second piece. The level has reset with monsters, so I do the same level a second time before finding it, once again, in the last room. So, I take it back and get sent out for the third. But this time the level doesn't reset. It's empty. No enemies. At all. So, after I waste five minutes running around randomly demons finally deign to appear(lets ignore the fact that the level is a closed environment for now). Fortunately, the final piece dropped only midway through the level this time. I actually killed enough enemies in this one map to go up an entire level. Of course, at least I *could* complete that mission. I've had a few "go to area x and kill y amount of enemy z" quests where area x doesn't infact contain y amount of monster z.
Finally, the bugs. The game knows just when to crash to desktop. When you exit the game, it will save. It will save which quests you have open, and what you have on you, but not your position. When you restart the game, you'll be back in the last 'town centre' area you visited. So, I had a mainline quest that involved me meeting a character in an area four stops away from a town. After fighting my way through the first three, I went to go through the final portal and the game crashed. So, I reload it. Sure enough, all my equipment and so on is fine. But I'm back in town. I now have to walk through those three levels that I just cleared again. But they're not clear any more. Oh no, due to the stupid re-spawning mechanic they're full of mosters again. And, due to the stupid random map mechanic, they're a completely new shape, so I can't even take a short cut strait to the end. Fucking great. Now let's move onto the stupid placing of the characters. I don't really know where to put this, so I'm calling it a bug. If you meet somebody, anywhere, they'll always be there. Even if they show up somewhere else later. It got to the point where one of the characters asked me to take messages to people who were about 1 metre away from him. Of course, they wouldn't accept it there. No, I had to wade out into the field to find them there and hand it over(incidentally, that was the quest where the computer crashed). But the most glaring example of this is when one of the main characters died. But he's still standing in place. What's worse is that somebody has tried to take his place. Now the two of them are standing inside each other in the middle of the room.

I should point out that this is all *after* I installed the patch. I mean really, what did the patch do that was more important than this stuff? I can only imagine that prior to the patch the game must have just refused to start up entirely. Which really, would be an overall improvement.

Oh, and if anybody's curious as to why I'm still playing it. Basically, after the Witcher I wanted something a bit 'lighter'. The game is rather addictive, so I got into it for a few days. Now I'm close enough to the end to feel that it would be a waste not to finish it, so I'm persevering to get it done.

Edit: Couple of mistakes.

This post has been edited by SimeSublime: 26 January 2008 - 11:04 PM