f13.net

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So, Hellgate: London (http://hellgatelondon.com/) is a first person dystopian/punky/fantasy spiritual successor to Diablo from Flagship Studios. Which basically is the Diablo team. I want some.

IGN preview here (http://pc.ign.com/articles/607/607334p1.html).

Yea, read that earlier. I figured one sentence saying it was fps and diablo was more concise than 4 pages of "The Buzz."

Do the zombies drop rings that make that fantastic "ping" sound?

Just mentioning that ping sound made me drool.

Pavlov's phat loot indeed.

*shakes fist*

There goes another two years of my life.

So Blizzard North split up and is making
1: Guildwars
2: This
3: ???
?

I won't have any sparetime left soon.

Dammit, GuildWars hit today and already I'm ready for the next drug.  I now realize the great flaw in GW: lack of zombies.

Kristal Ball says: Zombies will be content in an upcoming GW expansion.

Ummm...





...first person?  Why not some classic clicky-move action?

I'm apprehensive despite my total desire to play anything they make.

Because Roper and his team have been doing NOTHING BUT clicky-move since 1995. They finished D1 and went straight into D2. I bet they left because Blizzard expected them to start work on D3.

edit: Also, we've got another FPS game that is NOT Serious Sam that's built for co-op play. I look forward to this. Now maybe STALKER can do coop and I'll be set for a year or so between the three games. (Serious Sam 2 is the third)

More than likely they left because the frogs at Vivendi started croaking louder and in a more demanding tone.  Besides, aren't they essentially doing "DIABLO!!!  IN THE FUTURE!!!  IN FIRST-PERSON!!!  RANDOMIZED MAPS!!!"?  Plus, I happen to like that they have stuck with their tried-and-true, because it is simply damned awesome.

Already done (http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/589788.asp).
But not that.

Brotherhood of Steel was NOT Diablo in the future. Jesus, don't even say things like that.

Terrible terrible game. Didn't even feel very futuristic. Or Diabloish. Just meh.

Awesome, I get to buy GW again to get zombies. =)

iD software should just curl up and die now. Someone finally is producing a worthwhile Doom/Quake. And gosh darn if it ain't using the Unreal engine (I'm assumiing) which IMO has and always will kick what ever engine iD develops. Unreal 1 kicked Quake 1 and 2 (at least in level design capability) if not in the multiplayer area. Never liked the original Unreal multi but still hold UT and it's decendants as the best MP action to be had. The original Doom was the last good game iD made IMO. They've been resting on their laurels ever since.

I'm going to duck now as I know horrible things are even now being aiimed at my head.

It's not:

As well it should have given it was released a year after Quake II and a year before Quake III. The Unreal games have also had the advantage that none of their texture artists graduated from the Adrian Carmack school of texture design where they teach that the only acceptable texture palette colors are dark brown and dark green.

Thanks for the clear-up. I was skimming again and missed the part about Havok being the only license. I have a tendancy to do that.

So I can look forward to fighting off the legions of hell with stuff like, [The Wrangler's Shotgun of the Monkey]?

What about [The Doom Guy's Shotgun][/b]?

Some more info on the game from GameSpot:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/hellgatelondon/preview_6123193.html

The fanboy in me is hoping it's like System Shock. 

Quiet, you.  If I get my hopes up, I might be disappointed.

As a totally unrelated gripe with the screenshots, why do people in games always have to be right-handed?  If it wasn't for Link, we've get no love...

Tons of FPS' let you switch hands. Don't be a noobler.

While I actually agree its only a problem in rpg's of all the genre's.  In almost any fps for forever you can switch which hand you hold your weapons in.  But in a game where you customize your face, pick a class, and are the same person for months on end swords can ONLY be used when held with one's right hand.


So quick querry on Hellgate, its not really fps at all right?  Guns = Spells.  So its just going to be DiabloIII where we can have 64 players in a game at once with gun/spells and a bit of RE/Doom/Quake aspect with the demons and the first person perspective.  Right?  Wrong?  I'm trying not to hype about things so far removed from an actual purchase choice, so I've only skimmed some info.

Counter example...

CoH Katana wielders, left handed.

Also, couldn't you pick which hand held a weapon in Kotor?

Lefthanded people are strange anyway, we probably shouldn't encourage them.

Or anger them. Ph3@r my left-handed 1337-n3$$.

I too prefer my left hand when dealing out pain, or writing letters.

Yes that is what it sounds like:

So like Deus Ex, except less shooty?

I don't think anything could be less shooty then Deus Ex 1. You could, conceivably go through the whole game firing very few rounds. I'd say more like Diablo, less clicky. I'm just hoping to holy god that, given the above quote, combat isn't first person MMOG style. That's the last thing I want. An fps where you can't dodge <insert projectile here>.

Dodging worked in AC.

Yeah I still am confused as to how the fuck the combat will work, but seriously isn't there something wrong with the genre when a dev says: "with just a little player skill thrown in" like its a great thing.

Amen.

And lo, the lord gaveth us Planetside, and it was (pretty) good.

It's not twitch.

Just read it. So sorry.

So So So So Sorry.

Won't stop me from playing and loving every minute of it though.

The way I read it, sounded like twitch with lots of autoaim, and behind the scenes factors for to-hit.

Like that's not confusing.

No Twitch. Zero. None. It's FPDiablo.

Didn't they say there was twitch but they wouldn't let it be effected?  By making all the weapons AoE, or inaccurate as hell, or homing or lock-on?

I dont get it still...  So its fps but you can't aim???  ARG!@!!

I don't mind. If it plays like Diablo from a first-person view, I'll probably play it for a good 4 years. I just wish there was a way to drop into third person. Half the fun was seeing your toon get awesomer and....awesomer...

Here's hoping it won't mess up your index finger like Diablo did.

I went through 4 mice with Diablo 1 & 2. They broke shortly after the entire area's color got warn off and reshined to a nice glistening gray. All said, Diablo cost me over $400. 3 copies of the game - which I kept losing til I started keeping game boxes. One of the battle chests, 2 mouse pads and 4 mice. Yeeee ha.

Impressive! I think I went through one or two mouses before picking up a Logitech Mouseman ( the ugly white and purple version with 4 buttons and no mousewheel ), that thing was undestroyable I tell ya. I dropped it on the floor, I almost broke my hand punching it, and my dog would sometimes attack it. Still have it, and far as I know it still works.

The no twitch thing scares me, it better not sport some lameass lock-on feature. It'd be torture in first person.

If it is that good of a game, someone will mod it to fix it to be the game it should be.

Or so I can hope.

Wait, semi-interactive? Twitch skill not needed?

Count me out.

Are you sure you read the article?

You go 3rd person pretty often to weild melee.

Incase your fanbois meter hadn't been fully pegged out yet..

http://www.hellgatelondon.com/downloads.html

I seriously recommend the extra-large trailer.

/tilt

Having played Hellgate, I'd say that it does have some twitch.  It plays like any other FPS (with third-person mode for melee weapons a la Bloodlines), but the bad guys don't move very quickly, so little to no aiming skill is needed to get your crosshairs over them.  Many of the guns also fire in "cones", which makes it even easier.  There might have been some autoaim in there too, but I didn't really notice it.

Basically, it feels like an FPS on super-duper-easy mode.

Does that mean that people with greater skill will wtfpwn ?

When the FPS aspect is that easy, greater skill becomes irrelevant very quickly - it doesn't matter that you can hit a dime from a mile away with an AWP and your opponent can't if you're both using guns with a 90-degree arc of fire and/or autoaim.

Good point.

Looks interesting - But I'm not seeing any sort of release date in the next 6-8 months.

Yeah, I doubt if we will see it before 2006 which sucks because there are only 3 or 4 things I got interested in this E³ and they are all looking like 2006 at the earliest.

Yeah but at least I get the satisfaction of "Feeling" like I'm aiming...

Oh and if you can dodge return fire its all good, I want to use akimbo deagles with +60-70 poison dmg and a dot and a chain lightning effect that can hit up to 5 nearby targets for 33-99 oh and modified with big drum clips so I can fire 35 rounds before I need to reload.  Perhaps a single shot missile launcher slung underneath wouldn't be a bad idea either...

Most singleplayer demos at E3 are easy so I wouldn't hold that against the game.  They don't want you to start the demo and immediately die and frankly they often care more about demo'ing to press, potential investors and corporate types, i.e. not hardcore gamers, and so they have little reason to setup really intense or difficult gaming experiences.  This game is also still a ways out (both guys I talked to said not this year for sure and said that surely enough that I wouldn't be surprised if we're waiting more than a year more for this).

There are splash and auto-aiming capable weapons but not all weapons are like this.  Most of the weapons I used required aiming.  The most extreme example being a grenade launcher where you actually had to aim up above your target quite a bit in order to arc the grenade up and get any distance on it.  Once the grenade lands it deals splash damage .... but there is still a goodly amount of skill to aiming it.

Also, they are not stressing PvP action.  That's an important part of all this.  The primary multiplayer component will apparently be supporting a team in a co-op mode or doing things like killing monsters the fastest in a competitive PvE mode.  So a lot of the "skill" discussions relevant to PvP aren't necessarily relevant (it wouldn't surprise if they do end up putting PvP in but I don't think they intend to really spend a ton of time balancing it -- one programmer alluded to Diablo 2 saying, "yeah we just put PvP in at the end and it kind worked but it wasn't really supposed to be that well balanced").  I do think it will be skill-based but a lot of that skill may be in how you setup your abilities (see my E3 thread for how that works) and being an efficient, effective PvE'er.

Gabe.

Necro!

1up posted a recent video interview with Bill Roper:

http://www.1up.com/do/download?cId=3139172

The interview's not all that interesting but it does show some more up-to-date gameplay footage and shows how some of the "autoaiming"/autotracking weaponary will work.

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Altered Beasts ruled.

For once, you win.

That was a fucking kickass game.