Hellgate London vs. Guild Wars

When it comes to reviewing Hellgate London, the natural game to compare it to is Guild Wars.  They were both made by ex-Blizzard folks, they share similar game design features, and they have some interesting differences.  A union of the best features from each game and culling the inane designs might improve both games considerably. I have both games, including all expansions for GW, and I enjoy both games quite a bit. For now, I like HGL better, but that might be just because it’s new and shiny.  The three biggest … Continue reading

Subscription Musical Chairs

The other day I played another round of subscription musical chairs.  DAoC and EVE Online missed the open slot for subscriptions and the agile newcomer, Hellgate London was able to slip onto the one available chair.  In non-metaphorical parlance, that means a I cancelled my DAoC and EVE accounts (four accounts altogether), and opened a Hellgate London account. This should reduce my monthly gaming outlay from around $50-60/mo to just $10/mo.   I won’t fool myself into thinking this is a permanent setup.  I’ve cancelled and re-opened my DAoC account so … Continue reading

Hellgate Mini-Game and other goodies

Ok, so the fact that I mentioned the mini-game in my last post has generated more traffic on my blog than anything previous, so it seem folks aren’t quite getting the hang of it, or are just searching for more information about how it works.  It’s certainly less than well documented, so here goes my attempt to help… First, I bookmarked this page that shows what the icons mean: http://hellgate.incgamers.com/wiki/Mini-game  (Edit: the pics and process descriptions are MUCH better today (Nov.5) than they were a few days ago) I tend to keep this … Continue reading

Hellgate: Afterthoughts…

Well I already had an entry called “First Thoughts..” about the demo/beta. So now that I’ve got the game in my hot, not-so-little hands, what do I think?  I still think it’s a great game.  I’ve been playing both the Single-Player and the Multi-Player games.  I do have fun playing with my friends online, but I still find the single-player experience preferable.  It seems to have better tile-sets and more interesting levels than the online counterpart.  I’m sure that will change in the future as the dust settles, but for … Continue reading

Hellgate – Demo; First Thoughts

I’ve been playing the Hellgate London Demo most of the weekend, and I must say I’m really looking forward to the release of the game.  There do seem to be a few faults, but for the most part it looks and plays great!  If you were a fan of the Diablo series of games, you won’t be let down. As for the problems, the biggest one is a carryover from the Diablo days, and that is a limited and “unintelligent” inventory system.  Like Diablo, you can always just port to … Continue reading