[Stormkeeper]

Flagship Studios is officially dead. Seems like thier IP is getting divided up to two different companies who financed the development of the Flagship's two projects, the infamous Hellgate London, and the WIP Mythos.

[Ransom]

This is a shame, but they really did drop the ball on Hellgate. Even ignoring all the problems with the game itself, they royally messed up the world with all that ridiculous humour they tried to inject into it.

[Stormkeeper]

The only funny part I found was the quest which left the Techsmith with a demon humping his face.

[Ransom]

The game's full of silly dialogue and inappropriately goofy characters. Techsmith 314 is merely the most egregious example of it. I can accept having some light-heartedness here and there, but basing an entire act around a quest full of out-of-place humour - a quest that would actually have been a pretty horrifying story had it been in the hands of someone competent - is just an embarrassment.

[Stormkeeper]

The humor seems pretty out of place for such a desperate situation that HGL is set in. I think it was the main reason why it failed. That and its incomplete state.

[Galemp]

Hellgate London seemed really promising in the previews I read. What's wrong with it?
"Inappropriate humour..." such as?

[phatosealpha]

Innappropriate humor such as an entire chapter dealing with an unfortunate techsmith who's attached to a complete nutcase, involving such things as having a demon attached to his face the whole time, then getting the demon off by shoving his entire head into hellfire.


Aside from that, there were balance issues for a while there.  For a while, the only class really worth playing was marksman, simply because they had a stupidly effective combo.  Which actually made them kind of fun to play.  They nixed it of course - not grindy enough for the genre.

Mostly it just comes down to that it's Diablo, with less varied environments and enemies, and a smaller number of little carrots to keep you grinding away.  As a result, the game gets boring fast.

[Stormkeeper]

Most of the humor is lame. Really really lame. Like a merchant who keeps going "Is that a heavy weapon in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"

[Ransom]

The setting of the game is constantly at odds with the characters that inhabit it. Most of the dialogue is just trash. The developers couldn't decide if they wanted to make an atmospheric RPG or a light-hearted one, so as a result we get a game that seems like it should be atmospheric, but all the characters keep saying things like 'An apple a day keeps the doctor away! So go ahead and eat anything that looks like an apple,' and areas with names like Chocolate Park. If they'd gone all the way and made it some kind of surreal parody that would've been fine - but they didn't, so it's not. It feels like a game filled with placeholder dialogue.

On top of that, as phatosealpha said, the game just isn't very good. Despite being made by some of the guys who created Diablo, Flagship seem to have made a game which includes none of the things that were good about that series. The skill tree is a hopeless mess, there's a billion mundane quests rather than a handful of quality ones, and the randomisation of the areas is a joke. Even ignoring its atmospheric failures, the game needed at least a year or so more development than it got.

[Stormkeeper]

I just finished the normal difficulty. After defeating Dia-- I mean, Sydonai, you can't pick up his drops. Because the game immediately pushes you into a cinematic and then ends the game. And there was a unique item in the hoard too!