Ross's Game Dungeon: Hellgate London

how little men know yup [Music] hey welcome to the halloween episode of the game dungeon yeah tonight we're looking at hellgate london you know hell is always an easy sell for a halloween episode but i wasn't sure if i felt up to going to hell again so this year hell is coming to us perfect and it kicks things off with a big budget seven-minute cgi intro okay the first part is just a book and you'd think i'm talking over important backstory but it really is just there was light and then there was darkness but then the darkness got powerful but the people of earth are holding out seriously a six-year-old could have written this part believe me i am hungry for some hell lore so i'll let you know if there's something juicy well it's not all narrative written on the back of a napkin we get a convoy rushing through some ruins and a templar is telling his passengers that he and his other templars have to assault the hell gate as a diversion so the refugees can get to the hideout and this lady's like no don't do it but i have to yeah i've seen this sort of thing a thousand times and i can't get over how much this templar looks like an actor i've seen in a bunch of movies but i had to look up his name bruce mcgill yeah he looks like a more fit version of bruce mcgill that's not his voice though plus he's american this is hell gate london we've got to get somebody british and the demon attacks now they're making a big deal about his granddaughter jessica like she's more important than everyone else here no idea why i feel like i'm missing a chunk of the story here but we'll keep watching okay there's an occult chick the demons attack ah and the girl gets to safety gotta have some heroic sacrifices then flash forward and now she's a templar and that's it okay i realize the game hasn't even started but there's something bugging me already mainly we're getting almost no story now an opening cinematic can sometimes be just to look cool well what if we start a new game spoiler nothing no intro or anything fine well what about the manual that's it two paragraphs well it's 2038 that's good to know and the rest are shown in the intro now not every game needs a story but we're getting this lush expensive seven minute long cinematic that might have taken millions to produce and then you're giving me table scraps for story it's already primed my brain to expect more i mean if the game doesn't want to have a story fine but then why spend so much money and effort making me think it has what oh this was published by ea okay now there might be more of a story but i can't find it although there's something interesting if we go online to a wiki this game takes place in 2038 and it's been a war that's been going on for 18 years can you do the math it's already october that means hell on earth is due any day now wow this is perfect i didn't plan for this at all now there's actually more bugging me but let's get started oh and it's worth mentioning i need to specify which version of hellgate london i'm playing this was released in 2007 the multiplayer died in 2009 but the single player still works and since then i honestly don't know what happened thankfully a volunteer helped sort this out for me or tried to i still don't understand it but here you go this is a zombie of a game that keeps dying and coming back to life now i was considering playing one of the newer ones that came out with hellgate tokyo but there were a lot of comments on how the game locks up and is unplayable with a one frame per second bug oh hell no so i'm going with the original and now it's time for the most important decision of my life i mean the game what class do i play as now full disclosure i have played this game before but i didn't finish it i played the marksman because i thought i'll shoot stuff bang bang now i did get to shoot things but uh things happened i'll talk about that later so i never got out of hell maybe i never left maybe i'm in hell right now well if i have to go back into hell this time i want some help so that means i'm going in as a summoner make hell work for me so let's do it sammy the summoner go and here we are okay a tutorial incoming video transmission oh video message and air quotes huh you know it's kind of distracting having big text flashing in the center of the screen while they want you to read another message at the same time okay this guy studied the demon world come find him yeah yeah let's go you know i thought i might need a tutorial since i've forgotten a lot but this just doesn't quit yeah a lot of this is common sense stuff i think this was a mistake is there an option to turn this off oh my god it's showing up on top of the options menu no i don't think i can turn it off wow on another note i'm not necessarily blaming the game for this it could be on my end but the mouse tracking is really bad now i'm usually pretty forgiving about that sort of thing i know some people will flip if tracking has a 0.1 acceleration or something but this is definitely noticeable it feels like the sensor is dirty and is stuttering on my movements like you notice how it sort of jumps a little bit i'm moving my mouse steadily the entire time it seems to work fine in the actual menu i have no idea what's happening but it feels like i have sand in my mouth i guess it's just as well i'm playing a summoner my minions can do the aiming for me okay i found the guy and the tutorial is still going yeah everybody loves reading two things at once right this is relentless i really can't turn this off it's been going for four or five minutes now okay screw it new character sammy the summoner is dead long live sammy the summoner yeah this time we're turning that off oh no no i turned that off are you serious wow what a great start to the game maybe it'll eventually play itself out well visually i'd say we have a good first impression otherwise i mean normally modern ruins are pretty ugly but the fog lava pustules and demons roaming around keep it interesting yeah i like the statue there the more little touches the better okay here's the end of the first zone i've made it to the end of the level and the tutorial is still going maybe it'll stop in the next one wow it's staying on top of the loading screen okay uncle i'll open the skills window oh no the tutorial is not appeased i can't turn it off okay this is a competitive field but this might be the worst tutorial i've ever seen oh good the location text overrode the tutorial text and it faded we did it guys we got through the tutorial well i talked to murmur here he says a lot of nothing and it's one line at a time and i have to keep pressing the button no voice acting for the actual dialogue i realize that's the standard of world of warcraft but we can't have spoken text in a big ea published game like this a single player one guess not okay i talked to this guy this is kind of distracting have whoa did you see that his animation finished but there was no transition he instantly goes back to the start of the animation as someone who's done a lot of animation work before this is the last thing i want to see it's just so jarring actually murmur was doing it too i just didn't notice because i was so relieved the tutorial was over plus this is driving me crazy a little bit because the game wants me to focus here so let's have a guy taking up most of the damn screen waving his arms around and twitching into place here not a good impression guys it doesn't help that the writing's feeling a bit i'm not sure how to explain it let's just say it's not great we'll see we're given some quests and it's very mmo-ish get eight capacitors kill 10 zombies yeah whatever i will adequately equip you for your adventures let's just go okay goodbye so the first real level looks like just maintenance rooms and hallways to a building this is way less impressive than the ruins we saw earlier this honestly feels like filler and we just started demons are kicking my ass but i'm level one so i can't really complain aha level two the tables have turned yeah it's kind of slow going but part of many rpgs is building a more powerful character so we'll hang with it at least some people online were saying positive things about the summoners so we're fueled by hope now it's worth mentioning these levels are mostly procedurally generated like diablo see check it out if we start a new game it's a little different each time in fact i've heard many of the developers of diablo 1 and 2 worked on this though i didn't bother tracking down exactly who this is certainly cool as a concept but this environment feels like a waste for it oh and it's worth mentioning that this game came out for both directx 9 and 10. now there used to be a good article showing a comparison between the two for this game but it's vanished off the internet seriously the screenshots aren't even on the internet archive so i'm not sure what we're missing i did a quick check and i noticed everything is darker for some reason the smoke doesn't clip against the wall intend but it also looks like cotton candy and the directx 10 version takes about 30 seconds to start whereas 9 loads instantly go figure well i pick up my capacitors kill every enemy walk to the end of the corridors and that's it it just sort of ends i guess i'm walking back out now you can warp out with devices but we've just started gotta conserve our palladium actually palladium's insanely expensive at the time of this video one ounce is over two thousand dollars and that's before our economy completely collapses so really our character is already old world rich but that doesn't mean much in 2038 so we better keep looting i turn my capacitors in he says thanks i get some money and experience and that's pretty much it this is super mmo boilerplate questing you know i'm not against this but i guess i'm a bit jaded and this sort of thing doesn't inspire me at all this might be heresy to some but i've never really liked the standard npc quest format where you talk to them they tell you to do something you do it then come back then they give you something it just feels so robotic and rigid it's all about context like if i came back with my eight capacitors and he started shouting then people stopped what they were doing then a small crowd gathered around me thanking me and cheering it would be different i kind of want to feel like if i'm doing a quest for someone they give a damn and on that note time to go kill 10 zombies this one is outside and looks a lot better man look at how many hits this bastard takes we've barely started this could be a long game the creature design is awesome though there's a lot of good art direction in this hey i've seen some hells on earth in my time and i feel like this one is doing it justice hell yeah well i returned to get my reward and he has another quest for me now he wants me to kill three blood zombies fine but wait wait wait he wants me to do that in the hole-borne access shafts that's where i just was the maintenance hallways and when i played that i cleared out every last enemy i saw it all now of course there are enemies there now because this game likes to respawn enemies after you let the zone reset but what the hell the game let me choose whether i take the left tunnel or the right tunnel and i admissions for both i thought it was all the same but now i'm seeing if i had taken the left tunnel first then the right tunnel could have done double duty on the quest that means there was an intended order but they didn't tell me that i may have seen this before but it's rare designing a game that gives you freedom of choice even though there's an intended path that benefits you but then not tell the player there's an intended path i mean i guess clans kind of did that but that was just there to kill you this feels more like bad design well i'm passing on this quest i did not find the maintenance hall so riveting i feel excited to do them all over again let's keep going well i have some loot but it's honestly so exotic i don't know where it goes not here not here huh clicking on its description doesn't really help it gives me a quote from einstein which doesn't really seem related in fact i'm learning all my items of quotes including other great minds such as britney spears from here i head into the subway i'm getting more and more minions this is good i like the direction this is heading i am kind of hating my weapon though it's slow to fire and has a delayed charge and the mouse aiming in this game doesn't help i'm hoping to buff up my minions more so they can pick up the slack we make it to a new hub and lots of people to talk to okay i think i see more of what the writing is doing it's not simple but it's all kind of bad see i'm at a disadvantage where i recognize some of what i'm seeing but i'm not fully conscious of or have the background to really spell it all out i think someone like an english literature teacher or a book reviewer might be able to tear this writing apart like a ravenous wolf but you're stuck with me so i'll try and fumble through this okay first we have the painfully dry writing look here's murmur the demonology expert we rescued off the streets who just magically shows up in this hub also what words of wisdom do you have to convey upon us now that we've had our first track across hell ravaged london we made it next now we just have to deliver the message yeah we knew that next we know this information is vital yeah we knew that next we also know the guy who gave it to us wanted us to deliver it before he died yeah we knew that he told us next so let's do it the end here's a guard you won't find trouble here trouble us you trouble the guy in charge nobody crosses him more than once here's techsmith 22. i feel bad for the people at the last station they're barely hanging on hanging on until they don't better them than me i'm glad i'm a techsmith here and here's the big cheese himself the guy in charge of these particular tunnels and he throws a dot dot dot response at me that is so weak guys and look at this animation he looks like he's picking something out of my hair over and over and here's a medic for some reason she's the only person who doesn't say anything and we just get a raw character description like these are script notes or something now there's more bad writing there's more of it but i can only take so much at a time it's like they're cardboard cutouts just stop it's just messing with my head moving on okay the next level is wait these are the maintenance hallways we already did this seriously these are exactly the same it's just a procedurally generated remix they were so good the first time we're bringing them back by popular demand huh okay well i have a new gun that's actually more fun to use though i should enjoy it while it lasts because my stats probably won't keep up to use a gun like this and buff my minions there's a bunch of quests waiting for me back at base go kill 16 imp troopers yeah hello hi there welcome my p it goes in like nine directions so this game has voice actors and they sound decent they just gave them three lines that didn't read any dialogue yes yes you're a man wonderful a man math is hard let's shop what back out on the streets again i'm pretty sure this is another repeat although that's okay because i kind of wanted to see more of the streets i have two weapons now they really just feel like the blaster from quake too you know your starter weapon that you immediately want to switch from they're not satisfying to use at all but then i picked the wrong class for satisfying weapons gonna need my minions to step up to the plate i freaking love this the weird floating hell blimp monster things are they benign what do they eat i would not mind learning some hell biology i hope we get to ride one by the end of the game whoa did you see that the jumper just straight up disappeared on me boy i'm glad i came up with that term gamer dementia it feels like i needed every episode now if it wasn't on video i might have thought i imagined it oh here we go hell riff time this is what i signed on for whoa yes this is good this is just what i want to see going through a hell rift blood red sky more of the floating things i guess the presence of demons is undercut by the fact that they've invaded earth but this is solid oh my god look at how little damage i'm doing to this guy this is gonna take a while indeed it does he killed all my minions and it's coming for me back through the rift he doesn't follow me time to recharge oh yeah i have to point this out i noticed this earlier when you summon your main attack minion it takes three seconds and locks you into place completely vulnerable that's an understandable trade-off now after you spawn them there's 20 seconds before you can spawn him again that's also reasonable but if he dies or if you dismiss him you also have to wait another 20 seconds before you can spawn him again so say he's low on health you can't just respawn you have to dismiss him wait 20 seconds then respawn it's a double cooldown so you really want to keep him alive when you can this might be the first action rpg i've seen handle minions this way okay back to hell damn he takes a while killed all my fire minions and almost killed my demon again nice check out the skull engravings on the tiles huh we have kind of a gaelic pentagram going on here or maybe those are snakes see i wasn't kidding i want my hell lore who or what built this why did they build this just because it looks rad maybe okay as much as i would like to believe otherwise i think the story just doesn't matter it's mostly dry instructions off-hand references to things that aren't explained weak drama it feels like a bad tv show on the sci-fi channel but that would be if we had good presentation but we're not even getting that i'm getting dolls whose lips don't move twitching in place i guess if the developers didn't care why bother with talking to all these npcs at all then it just drags the game down if i saw all this in some unknown indie game this would be a huge turn off and i would be praying the game has some redeeming value like amazing gameplay well let's have some more of that next up is a sewer level of course there's a sewer level and my new weapon keeps freaking out look at it twitching god it resets if i shoot it but it keeps happening and yeah it's a sewer level it goes on and on and on oh i see these were just the upper sewers yeah more sewers wow i think we got our fill back at base yeah these are upgrades i like to see okay honestly i don't like having to fiddle with gear that has borderline better stats but yeah 8 shields compared to 53 that's the kind of jump i like to see i'd rather see almost no loot but when i do find it have it really count for something like this oh my god the maintenance tunnels again going for three huh guys since it was so good the other two times around this reeks of padding but this is a long game why pad a long game but back to loot i noticed this in diablo 2 and thought it was terrible okay in diablo 1 you had your basic character class but any class could use any item if they had the stats for it so a wizard with an x yeah why not but in diablo 2 you would specifically come across items that were for another class now i understand that for multiplayer but for single player this got kind of irritating the game knows what class you're playing there's no reason to drop stuff you literally cannot use well we're getting that here too and yeah yeah you can share it between stashes but it just increases the busy work i hated that getting a little tired of these maintenance tunnels too you have performed adequately the threat to our experiments has been neutralized and your advancement has been secured oh they did it again look he's given me a quest for an area i already cleared i picked the wrong order again this is just stupid oh sure i'd love to go back and check out the maintenance tunnels again have any excuses for me to go back there me and my big mouth yeah what you're looking at now are not the same maintenance tunnels from before this is a completely different set of maintenance tunnels this is no good i mean part of me appreciates the abstract image of maintenance tunnels that never end but we've had enough you can stop now oh god a new level thank you it's the museum this is actually kind of a basic map but i'm just so happy to have something new and i'm amazed these statues are not coming to life because that seems like exactly something they would do well since we're in the museum getting cultured let's talk about the music it's often buried under the sound of the game itself but i would describe it as half generic movie soundtrack and have more interesting ideas like this is pretty forgettable [Music] okay now this has something going on but then they cheapen it with the orchestra and now it's weak again [Music] i think some of the strongest material are the quiet parts of some tracks where they're not afraid to break away from the orchestra and you have these moments of reflection [Music] overall the music works but kind of like the game i'm seeing more potential here than what we got hell rift time oh yeah oh this looks exactly like the other one there's barely any changes at all i'm starting to get a bad feeling oh there's a flesh mouth thing that's new ah it activated the bomb run oh now they come to life yeah i mean come on down with emperor gold car emperor of uh oh what's this speak with the sage clever coming to me yes yes i can see why what stars fell and i wept the void returned and i wept midnight spread and i wept i wept and wept yeah you get the idea this lady's talking mostly nonsense she makes her library look nice again woe is to the dark for knowledge is light and light shines still yeah some more real deep writing here cinematic to uncover nonsense is frustrating yes it is to know to feel importance without real understanding that is maddening what and yet it was precisely then amid so much frustrated bewilderment that man first heard the fabled and near incomprehensible voice of truth you too huh okay this is all garbage you're trying to act deep you're not i'm leaving congratulations end of act one i'm not sure congratulations are in order should i even be doing these quests i forgot what i'm supposed to do with the possessed pickle jar and i just realized this guy's a reference to the mckinsey brothers but there's so much better than this this is the real sacrilege here i'm watching mannequins flop around this is not life oh good good the subway i haven't seen that one yet though my gun is pretty cool now i feel like this is one of those moments where somebody asks you where you see yourself in 10 years and if i knew the answer was in an endless subway blasting demons with the lava hose trying to keep my [ __ ] together i wouldn't have guessed that but i believe it actually i should stop using the lava hose it's going to get me killed and the subway has merged into the maintenance tunnels oh we're really spicing things up now when you're tired of maintenance tunnels you're tired of life oh round two another subway you know a subway level is fine but you've seen one subway you've kind of seen them all now the lack of lighting in a subway can make it really spooky but these are well lit which i actually appreciate but it means it feels like we're just going down a long subway now is a good time to mention the other thing that was bugging me in the intro see the problem is it was setting off my stupid meter okay hell comes to earth cool humanity has been devastated and only handfuls of survivors are left got it and we have high-tech neon templar armor and are fighting with swords okay now we have a problem because now the setting is not abiding by its own rules i mean first why the hell are we using swords when we have high caliber weapons c4 bombs artillery i mean there's a reason soldiers stop using swords because swords can't kill the enemy 500 yards away or more or take out an armored installation or battleships planes now if the game wanted to they could say okay we need swords because conventional weapons don't work on demons they have to be blessed by a priest hey warhammer 40k handles this problem by making swords a huge cultural symbol in their world not having swords will be like telling troops not to wear a uniform they're still not that practical but humanity doing things that aren't practical but carry a long cultural tradition is totally realistic so those are explanations that still make sense but not only does hellgate say nothing about that but look their gear looks like it's in pretty good shape this cutscene takes place in a month or two i guess in 2020 so when exactly do we have time to manufacture neon templar armor we wouldn't have known to make this before the invasion and our industry would have been destroyed after all we would have would be junkyard manufacturing and whatever we have left of the old world we wouldn't have all this nice new industrial produced polished gear specifically for demon fighting now i get it if a game wants an excuse to have future paladins fighting demons because it looks cool fine but then don't try to get me to take your game seriously talking about the importance of the child and the heroic sacrifice and all these key and dramatic moments it's just stupid then it's all stupid either we're having dumb fun so we don't need to explain anything or you want people to take your fantasy world seriously and have to think things through you've gotta pick one you go for both and it gets stupid and round three of the subway good god three in a row by the way we've seen this more than three times by now now i'm not against long levels in fact i'm fine with even really long levels but you've got to make them worth looking at this is just a subway tunnel i feel like i'm doing laps whoa what was that did you see that i just wore it back to the start of the level was that an enemy ability wouldn't that be a crappy mechanic let's check the slow motion i was just fighting a bunch of zombies no that seemed to come out of nowhere okay this was meant to be a multiplayer game also did i lag out of my own game in single player completely offline that's the only answer i'm coming up with wow i actually freaked out and thought it happened again later but it turns out that was just a new tunnel that looked almost exactly the same so it was just deja vu oh thank god no more subway i've had enough i've had enough but now i'm confused i thought i was gonna upgrade my weapons but i can't equip anything now you can't equip them if you don't have the stats but this wants willpower i have willpower in the next week what the hell wait am i missing my hand is that on purpose all right i restarted the whole game and that did the trick it works now well this game was made for windows more garbage quest shut up i hate you back on the streets again i've seen this already it's the same damn thing though you know what it's not a maintenance tunnel or subway but touching back on my weapons earlier the game actually has loads of crafting options for it and then floods my inventory with all this esoteric crap to change my item stats a little bit there are blueprints for assembling other weapons which so far are worse than my current ones and an upgrade station which costs a crapload to perform i'm not really incentivized to use this though because one this takes up a lot of time and inventory to put up with and two i'm playing through the campaign this is a problem with a lot of action rpgs where say you're at level 15 and craft a super duper weapon well if you just keep playing you're probably going to find an average weapon at level 20 that outperforms your super duper weapon at level 15. so rather than spend your time crafting it pays off more to just play the game and take what it gives you and you come out ahead at least that's been the case for me in other games like this and once we get past the streets we get more streets but we also get a sort of unique area it's still the streets but has an opening meant to represent piccadilly circus i've never been to the real one but this is a little different than the usual procedurally generated grayness also we have a bookstore that's new i'm hungry for any scraps of something i haven't seen already hell rift is this gonna be what yep it's exactly the same as the others well there's a bone arch in the center i guess that's new oh a portal within a portal now you're speaking my language oh this is new now we're in painkiller hell temple territory i approve and big demons now we're getting somewhere you have me worried there for a minute hellgate good i feel like i'm getting my hell fixed again this is still a pretty simple level and like the others it just sort of ends but i feel like i'm seeing things i mean what's the point of going to hell if you don't see anything and clearing out this temple and the hell rift takes me so long that by the time i get back piccadilly circus has already respawned enemies ah that's my signal time to go back at base we get a major plot point for this game anyway i need to summon the oracle to learn the truth yeah you remember the truth the fabled and near incomprehensible voice of truth well the leader sends me to a crazy hobo who knows all about the oracle when he's not crazy and we start this long long chain of dialogue where he says something kooky does something abusive to his assistant who just takes it but verbally protests oh where's my hammer i used to hit you in the face oh gee i accidentally destroyed it it's a weak joke that gets replayed over a series of hours maybe 20 times total it's awful see this is another flavor of the bad writing a crazy hobo trying to kill you sure that's funny a crazy hobo trying to kill you over and over and each time all you do is say oh i wish he would stop doing that how i hate him and we'll attempt to make some sly remark that expresses this that's not funny that's unnatural and staged it's the sort of thing i would expect from a middle schooler who doesn't know anything but they're trying anyway so please game please give me this joke over and over and over ah well thank god i have exotic levels to keep me going like the sewers and a new mini hub set inside the sewers which connects to you got it more sewers why well at least we have a hell rift exactly like all the others and some more streets even though they're dark this time i guess that is a little different another hell rift oh god this is getting to me well thankfully the game gives me something to take my mind off of that which is my fire elementals are not keeping up with the game even a little bit see my demon dog or whatever gets stronger it has some abilities to buff him make him tougher he's holding his own but these fire elementals are snapping like twigs i can barely keep them alive before i have to re-summon them again and there are no abilities to make them stronger i can burn a whole skill point to make them do five percent more damage well you can't do much damage if you're dead i can sacrifice my own health to restore minions well that might be useful if i knew if they were low plus their health pool is next to nothing as it is enemies are one-shotting them okay i've hit level 10 and that's a big deal because it unlocks more skills but i'm desperate for help so if i choose the wrong one i might be screwed well i did a cheat here and backed up my save file so i could experiment with new skills let's try the witch doctor he's supposed to heal my minions that's what i need he's not healing them enough this is bad plus he replaces my demon dog minion and doesn't do any damage himself so that means all those points i dumped into him were worthless if i go with the witch doctor if i was gonna do that i should have gone all in on the elementals but it's too late now and even then it might not work at least the demon dog works yeah i checked there's no way to respect your skills either you either do it the right way or you're screwed and throw out what six hours of gameplay oopsies except you don't know what the right way is i still don't this [ __ ] is just evil well i reloaded my backed up save and went with the spectral elemental it's not great but it's another minion and it lasts longer than the fire elementals not that that means much back off the street it's into the subways again no but now the subways are dark who needs new levels when you can just make things dark instead well the game decides that's so good it gives me a second portion okay this monster does look pretty rad yeah the monsters are staying fresh but the levels my god oh and did i say my fire elementals are fragile like twigs no excuse me they're paper now they're little paper figurines like that guy was dropping in blade runner if you step on them they die if an enemy sneezes they die if i turn to look at something they die that's all they do i guess they do some damage in their three second lifespan but these are becoming worthless i've prioritized any armor that makes my minions stronger even if it makes me weaker but that's not cutting it i think this might have been a trap why do this to me designers why the park sweet mercy a new level it took so long to get here but we're seeing something new i mean it's kind of a basic park but it's something different yeah here we're still doing this stupid quest line with the oracle where the crazy guy assembled the demon to rape his assistant's face and now he wants to burn him alive in a pit of fire the assistant finally gets scared and runs away so we have to chase him so he can bring him back to be tortured yeah real hero stuff oh something i wanted to add from earlier even though the kill 10 zombies quests are lame that doesn't mean the opposite is good either i will take kill 10 zombies any day over annoyingly complex quests that break the flow of the game where you have to find a specific brick wait one minute for the ghost to appear then look up online what you're supposed to say to him so a complex quest isn't inherently good it's all about context and motivation ironically the last episode is doing a better job of that huh i'm in a chocolate fog i don't know if that's a good or bad thing well i hope you enjoyed the park because from here it's more sewers the same hell rift the same hell rift temple oh a secret area that leads to a sewer level but it's a small sewer level what is this game doing this led to a thought that was building of okay i should stop trying to play this like a normal game and start speed running it the game is giving me every incentive to skip through the levels because i've already seen them i've already seen everything nope that didn't work there's no shortcuts to be had more streets more streets and more streets the streets are the best part but i've seen them this is hell gate london why not have more london locales this really makes me think about procedural generation of levels i think it's good as a crutch but this is just abuse i think procedural generation is best for situations where you want to peek around the corner of an area you already like so if there's a level i love and i'm dying to see more sure give me some procedural generation i think it's best used as a topping but this is the main course and it's not a good taste that said ai is getting better and better so i hope procedurally generated areas feeling stale because you recognize all the patterns goes away in the future but for now it's here well we do get a new zone a giant quarry which i mean this is so so but it is something different i'm gasping for air here more streets more streets and oh my god are my fire elementals worthless okay now this is different sort of we reach our destination and they give you a tactics minigame though calling this tactics is generous you don't have individual control over the players you just give general instructions well it goes okay at first but then i have to hold the position then bam look at that dead yeah now everybody's dead try again similar story they can't stop the exploiters in time dead i have unlimited troops though i tried damaging the boss but it's not even close he calls in never-ending reinforcements and we die and die and die i try running past him doesn't help apparently you're supposed to kill the main boss fine focus fire okay that did something now do it again and again yeah this seems to be what you're supposed to do send wave after wave at him now i'm no stranger to strategy games that require heavy casualties on your part but even in those you do it in a smart way 20 soldiers all at once do a lot more damage than five waves of four each i finally get them but it's not satisfying we sacrifice men for nothing well the plot line has finally come to a boil and even though the crazy guy has raped and tortured the assistant he's still human so we have to enter a portal inside his brain to destroy his identity wow that's a cool portal effect at first i'm so happy for a change of scenery but then i realized it's the same thing it's just a tunnel then a fork a tunnel then a fork tunnel then a fork why well i finally find this guy's identity first i have to destroy his psyche then his id ego and superego just to be sure we really erase his identity then it's this thing again draw from them more nonsense talk oh good i'm on page two now this is worthless it's all worthless the story guy says he doesn't know what they're doing no get me out of here it's the subway again how is this happening i'm just going to run try and run through them oh yeah okay this is sort of working but no they got me let me try again i think running is faster but they're good at blocking me i'm starting to panic i'm never gonna get out of here no more subway more subway more subway it just doesn't end it's the subway okay this is different sort of this is a new zone but look at what we're getting it just looks like some empty storage warehouse this is what passes for something new now i'm in hell okay a new hub more [ __ ] dialogue we're going how about some maintenance tunnels you haven't seen those have you what about the other path oh my god it's the same thing they're just dark maintenance tunnels my fire elementals are beyond useless no i think i know the problem at level 15 i get to access force elementals which supposedly have more hit points but i need those so badly now but i think the real problem is this zone is for level 16 and i'm under level despite grinding through everything except that last subway i'm still under level so that can only mean the game wants me to go back and grind even more through those levels that have repeated 10 times already i'm in hell this is hell oh no what am i what am i gonna do oh what's the matter ross you don't like hell you said you wanted to see hell didn't you you see it wasn't enough to simply see how no you needed to experience it you needed to go deeper then deeper still until you were finally here now you understand you understand that these levels are just going to repeat forever you understand that your minions are going to become infinitely weaker you understand the false hope of better gear you understand that your only companions to provide you comfort are these mannequin looking [ __ ] that say things like you would expect from an ai welcome to hell okay okay i have an idea i need to embrace the dark side i found a trainer for the game but it doesn't work with the 64-bit copy like i've been playing but i can install the 32-bit copy on a virtual machine copy over the files then it should work with the 32-bit copy if there was ever a game that deserves cheating it's this one oh no you're going to cheat how can i stop you now all right running the cheat activated the invincibility cheat works but it doesn't work on my minions it also causes a weird effect where it shows all enemies as having full health but they really do lose health you just can't see it until they're dead the experience sheet does not work i'm still going to have to grind what's a similar to deal with no minions okay plan b time to dust off dante here's my marksman i originally stopped playing him because my weapons were getting weaker and weaker and every enemy felt like i was chopping down a tree oh wow i stopped here with him too that's a bad sign let's see how he does with the cheat dante you're up oh no it's working but look at how long it takes to destroy the enemies and this is what the best weapon i could find if i go invincible i'm just getting mobbed in the dark i'm never gonna make it what's the matter ross having some trouble you think you're the first person to try and cheat hell yeah take that monster don't worry you'll kill him eventually i'm glad you're enjoying hellgate london it's not so often we get visitors and now that you're here there's no leaving you're going to stay here forever you're doomed ross dude well that's a good jumping off point yeah this episode took an unexpected turn for me since it turns out i may be trapped in hell forever i wasn't ready for that this is going to take me some time to figure out so uh awards time first award can you guess it you can guess it does it respect your time i played this game five years ago and i knew coming back was gonna be tedious but i thought maybe i picked the wrong class or wasn't bringing my a game i thought i could just power through it with minions for the video and see what was at the end i didn't realize how severely i underestimated what i was going up against second award want to love can't this is sort of the opposite of the sonic episode where in that one i didn't have the hate in this one i don't have the love this type of game gets under my skin more than any other the potential is there i was liking the first impressions of the hell-torn streets the weird hell ecosystem the first hell rift and temple what i didn't realize was those were glimpses of light in the darkness those moments with a colorful bulb on the end of an anglerfish waiting to swallow me if i didn't get so weak i might have stuck with it it was actually fun for about an hour or two but then it really eases you into the pain and it doesn't stop it's just a solid gradual slope downward i really wanted to see what was at the end but the game was forcing me to face what i was willing to sacrifice to achieve that at some point my self-preservation instincts kick in in fact to show you how much it's not worth it i made a map showing the areas that the game repeats versus unique ones i only made it a third of the way but look at that ratio i'm sure it can get worse than this but this may be the most padding i've ever seen for a big budget title what were they trying to do to people as a kid you more or less accept what games hand to you as an adult you've seen more so bad games start making you question what a game is asking of you versus what it's delivering hell gate london failed that ratio so spectacularly for me yet i still wanted to make it work which brings me to the final award actually is hell what i didn't realize until the very end is this game may have a hidden or simply accidental genius to it out of all the games in hell that i've played this is the only one that's actually given me the experience of hell why thank you the sisyphean tunnels the increasing helplessness of my character the god-awful npcs and teasing you with something new and interesting in the smallest of quantities even the credits have this flickering light which drives me crazy to look at and even now abandoning this game bothers me but some knowledge isn't worth the price like that guy in the vanishing trying to find his missing wife and wanting to know what happened to her only to find out that some psycho buried her alive yeah that wasn't worth the cost of finding out this game is the exact same thing i simultaneously want to see the rest of it and never want to look at it again it's one of the most evil games i've played i feel like i've left a small part of my soul behind in this game i don't regret playing this well not completely after all it's not every day you get to see the face of true evil but i've seen enough i only have so much time on earth whereas i have all of eternity to explore hell gotta do some time management here and that's the halloween episode wow this one was a journey for me i hope most of you only watched this one stay tuned for the hallow wait no the post halloween episode yeah i had something planned for that it's the one about the medieval detective who kills himself to solve crimes you know the game i'm talking about oh yeah [Music] [Applause] [Music] wait it's not as bad as i thought i did it after all i found the source of all evil i just needed to click on it there it's done it's over

Channel: Accursed Farms

Views: 136,425

Rating: 4.9017859 out of 5

Keywords: Hellgate: London (videogame), Videogames, Hellgate

Id: ynQGAifYRF0

Length: 52min 13sec (3133 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 30 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/People_Flavor]

Cool look back on Hellgate! I played this for about a while when it first came out and just couldn't bring myself to keep playing. A first person Diablo-esque game seemed right up my wheelhouse but it couldn't compete with WoW or whatever I had going on back then.

The Hellgate re-release on Steam was such a disappointment. I believe they did two updates and then abandoned it. I don't know anyone who didn't get the 1 fps bug. It's such a shame, because there is significant content in it that you could only get from the Korean release (Hellgate Resurrection, I believe).

For anyone interested, London 2038 (shown in his chart at the beginning) will be launching its beta in about 11 hours from now. All it requires is a copy of the old game. It's a fan project with some balance changes, graphical touch ups, and things of that nature. No Tokyo or other content seen in the Korean release.

[u/masonicone]

For those of you who never played Hellgate London... I like to think that Hellgate London was somewhat ahead of it's time. Sorta what we would get down the road with Borderlands, Destiny and The Division.

Alright first things first? This game had a huge push before it came out. Dark Horse Comics would be doing a number of comics for the game. They had a line of books planned out. Two or three of the women characters got nude spreads in Playboy along with Blood Rayne. Add in the Flagship Studio's had a number of former Blizzard people on board who worked on Diablo and WoW. Really at the time? There was some pretty big hype about the game.

And it came out and was just super buggy and had a number of flaws/faults with it. Also some pretty bad timing as well.

I picked up a copy as my 360 at the time decided it was finally time to go about doing a wonderful RRD, so no Halo 3 for me for a month. And yep, Hellgate came out just a month after Halo 3. The first Witcher came out in that timeframe and oh yeah Call of Duty: Modern Warfare came out like a week later.

Storywise? Well Ross is pretty on point, in game you really didn't get any real story. If you wanted that you had to pick up the Hellgate London Dark Horse comic. The novels they had come out sorta filled in some blanks, not really a bad read I mean I've seen worse.

Gameplay wise? It wasn't too bad. Templar characters had some ranged but mostly ran in and beat things to death with a sword. Hunters had Turrets or went with sniping or the 'more dakka' idea of dealing with things. Cabalists had pets or nuked things. I'll admit I played a Hunter so 95% of my gameplay was running backwards while unloading round after round from my Assault Rifle that never ran out of ammo into things.

Still for me it was a FPS Diablo if you will. Go into an area, kill everything, loot, level, repeat. The stat and gear system was a little borked in my eyes. And good god the game loved crashing more so after I killed some boss and saw a ton of loot that I would never get thanks to it crashing.

Then there was the fact that they decided to throw a sub fee into the game.

Okay the idea was this, for $10 bucks a month or a lifetime sub? You got extra stash space, and you would get to par-take in special 'events' for awesome event gear. You also had armor dyes you could get and with the sub you could get some that did give you extra stat points.

But lets talk the 'events' as there was really only one. Guy Fawkes Day, where you could go into 'special' areas that are on fire (and killed the frame rate) for recipes for stuff you would never use. And a flaming skull helmet so you too can look like Ghost Rider in Hellgate London.

I pretty much gave up after that, and to be fair by that point I had the 360 back and a copy of Modern Warfare. It did get a handful of fixes before a Korean company decided to buy it out.

I'll admit I did pick up Hellgate when it was re-released on Steam two years ago and well... It's awful. It still has a fair amount of bugs. That quest text? Well my understand is they translated it to Korean, then decided to re-translate it back to English. So yeah you do get "A Winner Is You!" text now.

Over all? If you like looter/shooters? Stick to Borderlands, Destiny, Division. They have their flaws but nowhere near the flaws Hellgate London had. Still it was kind of a shame as the game really did have a pretty cool idea for a story, and the gameplay really wasn't bad.

[u/ntdars]

About time someone did a review for this. I asked Mandalore to do it 3 years or so ago now but this is the next best thing. This game had SO MUCH POTENTIAL and had some fucking amazing lore and world building, just really fell short on gameplay.

[u/Heimdahl]

Oh boy, the quality of the writing is outstanding!

I especially loved the trader at ~17min in where it had the quote: "math is hard. let's trade"

Apparently no one noticed that this game is supposed to be set in London. In the UK. Where it's called "maths", plural.

Ridiculous pedantric nitpicking, I know, but it's just a nice little part of the problem.

[u/BeardyDuck]

Hellgate London is one of those games where I'd much rather recommend people play one of the overhaul mods available (London 2038, Nagahaku, Unofficial Revival, Lost London) as they are MAGNITUDES better than the base game. They crank up the gameplay by adding more mobs, more items, faster movespeed, redesigned skilltrees, etc.

[u/cheesedoodleempire]

I want a remake of Hellgate London (or anything in the same universe) so badly. Destiny style, single-player Borderlands-like, I don't care. I don't even know who owns the rights to the game anymore at this point though.

Remnant was good, but it didn't have the randomized loot mechanic and once you were done with the first level, the setting drastically changes.

[u/LolaRuns]

Wow, that was almost kind of a twist that he got so frustrated with it that he didn't finish it. Especially considering some of the incredibly awful retro games he did bother to finish.

[u/Novaova]

True story: once every year or two I still install my original DVD version of this, patch it with the last official patch, and play it through.

https://i.imgur.com/yzAqkHw.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/fBad6sc.jpg

[u/MetaKnightsNightmare]

I fucking loved this game.

Did anyone else read the novels that accompanied it? Man they were good! Setting up the whole Templar/Hunter/Occultist world in such vivid detail.

Combined with those cinematics? Get out of here.

I bought the collector's edition after playing the beta and even subscribed for a while through the Fawke's Day event and that first new area with the giant boss and whatnot. I really had such hope.

I will never forget the rude fucking merchant in the last area or the seductress much earlier on.. Before they neutered their voice lines and left them as boring merchants.

For all the great games that drew direct or indirect inspiration from this title like Destiny and Borderlands, there has never been another one that gave me the thrills of being a summoner of an impressive demon army.

Or hell, Melee! The guardian's melee was great, swing into third or first person, smash shit up with that lightning mace.

Oh and the weapons. Electric Eel gun? Thank you very much.

I miss what this game was, I only tried it a single time once the assets were sold to whatever company replaced all the models.

I will always hold my memories dearly.

In the meantime, Remnant: From the Ashes DEFINITELY gives me the same vibes, I adored my playthrough as a summoner, small my army may have been, but man those flying skulls rock.