This is a title I've been watching for a long time and was excited to get into the beta.
The Good:
The zones are created dynamically, like Diablo. Unlike Diablo, however, these zones are entirely 3D, and it is impossible to tell where one 'block' of landscape ends and another begins. In short, the maps look quite nice. I played on a 7900 GS at 1680x1050 resolution, and besides the load times, the game seemed to do a good job keeping up.
Character classes are varied, and there are a lot of them. I played a Summoner, who, among other things, summons elementals to fight the forces of evil. By the time I was fourth level I had 4 little fire elementals with me (I found some pants that gave me an extra level of Summon Elemental) and these little guys would go off ahead of me, often clearing out demons before I'd even see them.
The gameplay is very, very Diablo-esque, straight down to the dynamic-created and unidentified loot. And the loot, in my opinion is the whole reason to play these games.
The Bad:
I'm going to focus on things that I'm not sure they'll be able to fix before going live. There were plenty of other problems that I"m sure they'll be able to fix and that I will not mention here.
It's necessary to zone to each map, as opposed to other action RPG's where there are no load times between 'zones'. And the load times were horrendous. It never took less than a minute to load zones.
Pay-to-Play. I'm not sure about this model. Sure, at $10 it'll be cheaper than most MMO's (though not LOTRO, which I play) but at this point I think I'm out on paying yet another monthly fee to play a game.
The Ugly:
I have 2GB system memory plus a 512MB ReadyBoost flash drive, and with nothing else running on my Vista system I got frequent messages from Windows saying that the system was low on memory. The Task Manager showed that HG:L was consuming 1.8GB. Load times between zones are atrocious.
Summary:
While I see great potential for this game, it has a long ways to go before becoming a final product. I didn't mention any of the problems that they'll absolutely need to fix before going live - and there were LOTS of them. The game is supposed to be on store shelves for Halloween, which means they need to go GM in just a couple weeks! On the other hand, I was in the Star Wars: Galaxies beta, and that somehow miraculously came together in just a couple short weeks and was quite stable at release. I'm definitely going to shell out the bucks to pick this up, as I still had a positive experience even with all of the problems. Here's hoping they can fix them all before launch!
Posted by Kevin at Monday October 01, 2007 - 8:03 AM | TrackBack (0) | Category: PC Games | © 2007 Gaming Signal
Kevin, you might want to start turning off all of the Vista services you do not need for gameplay. That might free up enough resources to stop the error.
A definitive guide can be found here: http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html
Posted by tditto on Monday October 01, 2007 at 9:53 AM
Bah, just read the above tweak guide. It has all the important stuff but doesnt explain the "why" for turning off some of those services. Here is a better guide from the nice guys at Extremetech.com.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2151345,00.asp
Posted by tditto on Monday October 01, 2007 at 10:22 AM
You might also think about turning off Vista ...
Posted by PeterY on Monday October 01, 2007 at 3:22 PM
If I turn off Vista I won't be able to run Halo 2 or Shadowrun!
Posted by Kevin on Monday October 01, 2007 at 3:28 PM
Actually you can play Halo 2 on XP - there are several patches out there to allow it.
Posted by scottsh on Tuesday October 02, 2007 at 9:08 AM
I did not know that. I played it on XBox and it got a 'meh' out of me. I don't need to play it again on the PC. Nor Halo 3 on the 360.
Posted by Kevin on Tuesday October 02, 2007 at 10:44 AM
I've given Halo 3 a pass as well. As I think we've talked about, Halo is a poor FPS compared to the best on the PC (Far Cry, Half-Life, etc.) It gets the nod for being the best FPS on a console, though.
Posted by scottsh on Wednesday October 03, 2007 at 3:25 PM
Well I was right with you guys "poo poo-ing" on Halo 3 until I learned that the Co-op functionality of Halo 3 is excellent. Campos and I are actually having a blast doing the co-op campaign on "Legendary" (highest difficulty setting) and to top it off, the legendary mode apparently has a little more story (cut scenes) to reveal than the other modes.
If anything its at least worth a rental just to play with your friends. I too was never really jazzed about Halo and Halo 2, but Halo 3 has been suprisingly quite fun. Even the multiplayer that I was not very impressed with during the beta test has become excellent as well. The "king of the hill" maps that were not in the beta being some of my favorite. The "2 man teams x 4 teams" mode is also very fun. It forces you to really work as a team.
What is up with Trent gaming predictability lately? I got a PS3, I like Halo 3. Dr. Peter Venkman would say: "Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria!"
Posted by tditto on Thursday October 04, 2007 at 9:59 AM
I am going with that you have been replaced by a pod-person. Our only hope is to club you repeatedly with a spade. Sorry bud but its for the best...
Posted by Tim on Thursday October 04, 2007 at 1:03 PM
I couldn't agree with you more. That is, I too agree that Trent should be clubbed with a spade. Maybe that will snap him out of his PS3-loving Halo-enjoying fugue.
Trent, do you know anybody else with a PS3 that you play online with?
Posted by scottsh on Thursday October 04, 2007 at 5:55 PM
No sir. I have no PS3 friends yet. But Warhawk is pretty fun online.
Posted by tditto on Friday October 05, 2007 at 11:25 AM