Crashgate: Houston

Mkay, so the title isn't exactly fair. I beta tested Hellgate: London for about three weeks before the October 31st release date and amazingly enough, the retail version of the game is less stable than the beta I played. I'm just a tad disappointed that the game is plagued with game-stopping crashes and video lag that can sometimes last longer than two minutes. I'm seriously not exaggerating the latter. When visiting stations, the game's video freezes without warning while my hard drive thunders for atmospheric blast-off. I've experienced this hard drive activity with other new releases and this kind of stuff almost always gets cleaned up a few weeks or, god forbid, months later.

It seems odd to me that the beta proved more playable than retail. The beta version had a ton of video glitches and stutters, but almost never crashed. At first install, the retail version crashed more than Keifer Sutherland's car and hung like a monkey from a tree. And I'm talking about the DirectX 9 version; I tried DX10, and while I could get a playable 22 fps in the beta, I couldn't get above 13 fps retail. And that's IF I could keep the game from committing binary suicide.

Playing around with the settings, I think I narrowed down the source of the video lag. The game has numerous video options I have turned off, mostly because I can't perceive a visual difference when they're on and they grant a nice fps boost when they're shunned. But two of the options, model detail and textures have both a noticeable visual and performance impact.

I have to keep model detail on high; knocking it down to medium turns the surrounding landscape drab and boring. Now that I've seen the game on high, I simply can't play it at a lower setting. But the textures have a lesser visual impact. And the performance boost they give more than compensates for the loss in eye-candy. On its highest setting, very high, I take a performance hit and I get that annoying, game stopping video stutter and lag. I'm guessing the textures take memory and all that hard drive grinding is my virtual memory trying to compensate for the inadequecies of my video card. Or for unoptimized video drivers, game code, or both (I hope it's the latter because I just bought this card and I don't think I have the scratch to get a new one). Taking textures down just one notch to high removed the hard drive grinding and video lag, gave a slight boost to fps, and only involved a slight degradation in appearance. Well worth the trade-off.

As for game-play, the game is fun as all hell. Many have compared the game-play to that of the Diablo series and there is some merit in that. But the camera angle is different in HG: L and that makes a big difference in terms of how the game plays and feels. In Diablo, the third-person isometric perspective meant you clicked where you wanted to go and clicked on mobs you wanted to kill. HG: L plays more like WoW or a shooter in that you move with your arrow keys and point to shoot or swing. The game is most like Diablo in that you're killing tons of mobs, collecting lots of loot, and constantly analysing and swapping out equipment to best optimize your killing efficiency. The game has that play-for-just-one-more-minute hook to it and I've found myself plunging into one more instance well past the time I should stop.

Subscribers currently enjoy some holiday loot that ranges from bad-ass to funny. A rare drop is a unique helm that once donned gives your toon's head a fiery Ghost Rider skull. The stats aren't all that great, but I run around wearing it anyway because it's just too much fun. I also assembled my very own zombie pet. It took me a couple of days to get twenty-four zombie blood (the two hearts and two organs were much easier to get), but once I did, I stitched together a cute little undead buddy. Whether you're idle or knee-deep in demon guts, the zombie pet frequently breaks out into dance, complete with some Michael Jackson type music reminiscent of Thriller. I was like "wtf" the first time he did it and it took me a few more dance numbers to realize the source. Like many of the pets in WoW that aren't hunter or 'lock led, this guy is purely cosmetic. He doesn't fight or buff, just busts a move.

So I do recommend the game, though most people would be well-served to wait on picking it up until Flagship Studios squashes the technical problems. I've read a lot of HG: L forum posts bitching about the payment system for the game. All I can say is, deal with it. $10 a month is a movie ticket, a small pizza, a beer at the ball game, parking for an event, etc. They're going to constantly stream new content and they want people to pay for it. Balking at the price? Then don't pay it! Show FFS your displeasure by speaking volumes with your wallet. But whining and bitching on the boards isn't going to make FFS suddenly make the entire game free to play. We can all moan and groan at these economic models, but the reality is many developers look with envy at the cash cow that is WoW and want a piece of that. I have no idea if HG: L's content is going to be worth $10 a month, but I do see what is motivating them to implement this payment model.