This is something I've been wanting to get off my chest for a while. 2007 was one big gaming disappointment for me despite everyone else on the planet thinking that 2007 was some bastion of gaming glory sent by the gods themselves. Of course, anything better than bad will look amazing when compared to a few years of trash.
In reality, only maybe two games in 2007 were actually worth looking into. Everything was either a "safe buy" or terrible. Please note, though, that safe buys don't make a game any good... they simply mean that you've probably already payed for the game before but don't mind paying $50 for a few extra polys.
For me, two games in 2007 sold me before they came out. Vanguard and Hellgate: London. Oddly enough, both were over hyped bore-fests filled with the same content from beginning to end game with very little in the means of making me wanting to continue on. Both of these games came from the wombs of two separate, but very respectable (at the time) figures in the gaming world. One had created the world of Everquest, or at least the good parts of it (Kunark and Velious) and the other had created Diablo 2. How could I go wrong? I mean, I played both of those games up to their spiritual successors release.
Well, they both did. However, something about Hellgate really struck a bad chord with me. The only thing really wrong with Vanguard was that it simply wasn't finished. Given enough time to fully flesh out the ideas he wanted and to actually finish the game, we may have seen the EQ2 killer that everyone expected to see. So what went wrong with Hellgate?
Everything, but I'll start from my first experience with the game, which was the beta. Oddly enough, the beta is what sold me on the game. So what was right about the beta? I think a list would do.
1. A new world.
2. Fast combat, new combat.
3. A nice mix of RPG and Action.
So I bought it. In fact, one of my cousins bought the game as well as the game was, indeed, worth a buy.
How wrong I was...
Story: The story is incredibly painful to follow and I can't really reveal anything without spoiling it. The surprise of the ending is something you start to see about halfway through the game and is painfully similar to that of Bioshock... except you see this coming in the exact way you'd expect.
The game tried to sport a sort of MMORPG quality to it's story and character development... that is to say that there really isn't much of one. You're essentially a dude in either pointy, metal, or leather armor going around with swords, guns, or magicks, fighting the same zombies, Serious Sam skeleton dogs, harpies, and typically assorted bad guys that we've either seen from Diablo 2, Serious Sam, or Halo.
The plot of the game has you going around the London railroad fighting your way through slogs of creatures and yadda yadda... the plot isn't really very important. The core of the game falls into the gameplay.
Graphics: The graphics look fine, that is, until you run around the exact same scenery through out the entire game. The places you fight are divided into about three places. Sewers, subway, city, and dungeon. This doesn't sound that bad, those locales are pretty vastly different in regards to lay out, scenery, textures, objects, etc. The problem lies in the fact that all of these places have a 'random' layout.
Random, in the world of Hellgate, consists of three types of rooms connected by three different types of halls. It's really not very random. This can be a real problem as you tediously start the eventual grind to be able to kill things in the next area. In other games this isn't a problem as the colors don't consist of grey, light grey, dark grey, slightly brown grey, slightly brown light grey, slightly dark brown dark grey...
Other games with grinding tend to not use two colors for its palette. Of course, you can't do much with a theme like "End of the world in the Sewers", however, they could have done so much more. Things growing on walls, paths that look like a hole in the wall was blown out, secret underground areas filled with trees... you get the idea.
All in all, this is the second biggest disappointment in the game. Graphics usually don't mean much to a game, at least for me, however, because of the poor execution of random, and the lack of any sort of color besides a modified grey... it's just bad.
Game play: This is where the game sucks, and hard. You spend your time, depending on one of the three classes you pick (despite what they want you to think, there are only really three classes... melee, ranged with guns, and ranged with spells), killing the same enemies that don't pose a threat unless you enter an area you aren't supposed to enter until you are a certain level. Sadly, the difference between easy and impossible is usually one or two character levels. Player skill has very little to do with anything. You pick whatever weapon or spell you are most comfortable with and then spam it until you get bored and never play the game again.
This is what separates it from other games of similar genre... it's painfully simple. As a melee character, you'll only need one skill... the one that kills the enemies instantly. As a ranged gun user, any sort of FPS skills required in every other FPS out there is tossed out the window as accuracy is completely irrelevant. Point in the direction of the enemy, hit fire, they all die. Or, you can press the key you have bound to the skill that, most surely, kills all enemies at once. As a caster, you usually pick two skills and keep with it. Unlike Diablo 2, you don't really get any sort of satisfaction from the spells. They are all versions of guns you can find but cost mana instead. They're also vastly unimpressive looking to boot.
The game play is dreadfully dull, unimpressive, and simple. They took all of the bads of Diablo 2 and combined it with other terrible ideas and, all in all, have created one of the more unimpressive games ever made. All in all, if there was a way for me to get my money back from this game, I would. I could try to sell it, but nobody would want to buy it.
Now, all of these problems would go away, partly, if this game had some sort of LAN function to it. Even further, if the game was customizable, or if the new content they added didn't require you to pay $15 a month just to access the things that should be free... it wouldn't be so bad. However, everything that they learned from Diablo 2 was tossed out the window.
In reality, only maybe two games in 2007 were actually worth looking into. Everything was either a "safe buy" or terrible. Please note, though, that safe buys don't make a game any good... they simply mean that you've probably already payed for the game before but don't mind paying $50 for a few extra polys.
For me, two games in 2007 sold me before they came out. Vanguard and Hellgate: London. Oddly enough, both were over hyped bore-fests filled with the same content from beginning to end game with very little in the means of making me wanting to continue on. Both of these games came from the wombs of two separate, but very respectable (at the time) figures in the gaming world. One had created the world of Everquest, or at least the good parts of it (Kunark and Velious) and the other had created Diablo 2. How could I go wrong? I mean, I played both of those games up to their spiritual successors release.
Well, they both did. However, something about Hellgate really struck a bad chord with me. The only thing really wrong with Vanguard was that it simply wasn't finished. Given enough time to fully flesh out the ideas he wanted and to actually finish the game, we may have seen the EQ2 killer that everyone expected to see. So what went wrong with Hellgate?
Everything, but I'll start from my first experience with the game, which was the beta. Oddly enough, the beta is what sold me on the game. So what was right about the beta? I think a list would do.
1. A new world.
2. Fast combat, new combat.
3. A nice mix of RPG and Action.
So I bought it. In fact, one of my cousins bought the game as well as the game was, indeed, worth a buy.
How wrong I was...
Story: The story is incredibly painful to follow and I can't really reveal anything without spoiling it. The surprise of the ending is something you start to see about halfway through the game and is painfully similar to that of Bioshock... except you see this coming in the exact way you'd expect.
The game tried to sport a sort of MMORPG quality to it's story and character development... that is to say that there really isn't much of one. You're essentially a dude in either pointy, metal, or leather armor going around with swords, guns, or magicks, fighting the same zombies, Serious Sam skeleton dogs, harpies, and typically assorted bad guys that we've either seen from Diablo 2, Serious Sam, or Halo.
The plot of the game has you going around the London railroad fighting your way through slogs of creatures and yadda yadda... the plot isn't really very important. The core of the game falls into the gameplay.
Graphics: The graphics look fine, that is, until you run around the exact same scenery through out the entire game. The places you fight are divided into about three places. Sewers, subway, city, and dungeon. This doesn't sound that bad, those locales are pretty vastly different in regards to lay out, scenery, textures, objects, etc. The problem lies in the fact that all of these places have a 'random' layout.
Random, in the world of Hellgate, consists of three types of rooms connected by three different types of halls. It's really not very random. This can be a real problem as you tediously start the eventual grind to be able to kill things in the next area. In other games this isn't a problem as the colors don't consist of grey, light grey, dark grey, slightly brown grey, slightly brown light grey, slightly dark brown dark grey...
Other games with grinding tend to not use two colors for its palette. Of course, you can't do much with a theme like "End of the world in the Sewers", however, they could have done so much more. Things growing on walls, paths that look like a hole in the wall was blown out, secret underground areas filled with trees... you get the idea.
All in all, this is the second biggest disappointment in the game. Graphics usually don't mean much to a game, at least for me, however, because of the poor execution of random, and the lack of any sort of color besides a modified grey... it's just bad.
Game play: This is where the game sucks, and hard. You spend your time, depending on one of the three classes you pick (despite what they want you to think, there are only really three classes... melee, ranged with guns, and ranged with spells), killing the same enemies that don't pose a threat unless you enter an area you aren't supposed to enter until you are a certain level. Sadly, the difference between easy and impossible is usually one or two character levels. Player skill has very little to do with anything. You pick whatever weapon or spell you are most comfortable with and then spam it until you get bored and never play the game again.
This is what separates it from other games of similar genre... it's painfully simple. As a melee character, you'll only need one skill... the one that kills the enemies instantly. As a ranged gun user, any sort of FPS skills required in every other FPS out there is tossed out the window as accuracy is completely irrelevant. Point in the direction of the enemy, hit fire, they all die. Or, you can press the key you have bound to the skill that, most surely, kills all enemies at once. As a caster, you usually pick two skills and keep with it. Unlike Diablo 2, you don't really get any sort of satisfaction from the spells. They are all versions of guns you can find but cost mana instead. They're also vastly unimpressive looking to boot.
The game play is dreadfully dull, unimpressive, and simple. They took all of the bads of Diablo 2 and combined it with other terrible ideas and, all in all, have created one of the more unimpressive games ever made. All in all, if there was a way for me to get my money back from this game, I would. I could try to sell it, but nobody would want to buy it.
Now, all of these problems would go away, partly, if this game had some sort of LAN function to it. Even further, if the game was customizable, or if the new content they added didn't require you to pay $15 a month just to access the things that should be free... it wouldn't be so bad. However, everything that they learned from Diablo 2 was tossed out the window.
