I'm looking at it over someones shoulder now. Gameplay, UI, and overall feel looks to be effectively identical to Diablo with the option to switch to a simple first-person mode added in. There are even references to Diablo in amongst the quests. Difficult to say whether it lives up to its predecessor without actually trying it, but it looks better than some of the other clones at least.
Yikes, wow...I just played a little bit of the demo. I can't remember the last time I was this bored playing a game. I'll try it some more when I get off work. The one boss I fought was decent although fighting him was pretty much mash the mouse buttons and pop a health pack every now and then. The filler enemies are boring as hell to fight. Run up to one, slash, it's dead. Next one slash, it's dead. Oh no! One finally took notice of me and is running towards me, slash, it's dead. :P Also, I've never seen such slow moving fireballs. They're slower than the energy balls in portal.
Yeah, the enemys are much to easy, but they are zombies, they have to be stupid and slow. Its also very easy to play with the marksman anyhow the gameplay of WoW is much more boring then this game.
Probably not worth adding to my crowded list of games to play this busy season. The early trailers (cg movies) looked amazing. What I saw of the friends and family beta looked decent for the ranged weapon classes. But recent gameplay videos seem very boring and disappointing. Perhaps it's the lack of AI.
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Yeah, the enemys are much to easy, but they are zombies, they have to be stupid and slow. Its also very easy to play with the marksman anyhow the gameplay of WoW is much more boring then this game.
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Yes but they only come at you 1 at a time. The scary thing about zombies is hordes of them coming at you at once. These zombies and demons barely notice you're there.
Also, I didn't notice there being much difference between the special attacks and the default attack. Most things died in 1 hit anyway to the default. I played as a blademaster.
This feels like a budget title from a year ago. It looks and feels terrible. Hard to think this is the same great concept we were hanging on years ago. In fact there is a Budget Diablo clone called Restricted Area that blows this away.
Anyone notice the little boys quest reward is Warts Peg Leg. An ingredient in the Diablo 2 cow level portal no?
Yeah. I was playing this and thinking "I wonder if other polycounters think this game sucks as much as I do".
It obviously had a pretty big budget too, as Blur did the cinematics and I've seen it advertised for ages. Looks like somebody is going to lose a bundle!
It's a shame it seems to be such a let down, the trailers looked a little odd too, but we shall see the reviews for the final product. Furthers solidifies that I'll be going for Mass Effect to get some RPG goodness this year.
Yeah...the demo was quite a sleeper. Of Course I gave it a go right after playing the unreal 3 demo for an hour, which of course made the hellgate demo seem even more blah.
I don't understand how a game can be in beta 2 weeks before it 's supposed to hit stores. They should be in the CD making process by now to be ready for store release.
Either the beta testing/demo is a total lie and they just want to increase awareness for the game.
Or it's going to be delayed.
The idea behind the game itself is quite cool. I just think the execution is poor.
The demo kind of sucked, but after playing the beta a fair amount I'm finding it to be a hell of a fun game.
Soul - Dunno why it's still in "beta". It did already go gold, they announced that a few weeks back now. I assume the beta was more for server stress testing than it was for the game though.
Besides that, it being an online PC game patches are to be expected, so technically the thing being in beta this close to release is nothing. You should know that, working at Blizzard and all.
this isnt going to be a subscribtion pay per month online game like world of warcraft is it? Im not gonna waste money on any game that chages per month.
It will, sort of. You'll be able to play online for free but with limited content. To have access to everything you have to pay a monthly subscription that I think is $10/month.
Soul - Dunno why it's still in "beta". It did already go gold, they announced that a few weeks back now. I assume the beta was more for server stress testing than it was for the game though.
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Supposedly the beta is not in sync with the dev builds, so they weren't testing up-to-date code. People have constantly been saying the beta was very buggy but from what I can tell Flagship's response has always been "yeah we're running fixed builds here, just trust us and don't worry about it".
Is that bullshit? Probably to some extent.
The demo really, really should have shown later sections. The beginning is so terrible. Once I got a grenade launcher it started getting more fun, since it played like an FPS then. I can imagine multiple people going nuts against big crowds being pretty fun, but we don't get to see that...
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The demo really, really should have shown later sections. The beginning is so terrible.
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Yeah that is kind of like the Conan demo on Xbox Live right now. It's supposed to be a really deep fighting system with a massive ammount of moves that you can purchase and learn, but the demo doesn't give you enough credits to buy anything. So your left with default moves and no real reason to keep playing. Kill guy, free slave, hit switch, repeat. I was really looking forward to a Frazetta inspired Conan, but after the demo I think I'll stay away.
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The demo really, really should have shown later sections. The beginning is so terrible. Once I got a grenade launcher it started getting more fun, since it played like an FPS then. I can imagine multiple people going nuts against big crowds being pretty fun, but we don't get to see that...
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IMO the demo is a pretty good outlook on what to expect on later levels.
so you basically pay $10 ( £5) a month to play the game as an elite member and get some nice bonuses. I dont see any great reasons to be an elite member but then again Im not a really hardcore gamer.
Still I object to this kind of marketing strategy. I really dont think any game should award players in game abilities or items for money. Doesnt matter how small the fee is, just on principle people should be awarded for good gameplay not large bank accounts.
Don't waste your time on this crap. I bought it, and it stuttered at low settings on an 8800gts. Mind you I can play Crysis on Very High around 35fps. I patched it and the stuttering got better, but it's still there. It takes 10 seconds to open the inventory screen, and when walking into a new area you can see blank models and the textures being drawn onto them one model at a time, as you are being attacked and moving at 4fps. Quests are bugged to the point you can't turn them in, I cant even abandon them to retry them. Skills are bugged for several classes. I played an engineer and the one of the bots you make and equip with guns, eats the guns when you quit wasting items and money. And as far as I can tell i can't unlearn that skill tree.
The animations are not fixed, they look like a 20$ mocap package, maybe mr bones supplied it. After playing for 20 hours I have run into maybe 3 different levels (tile sets?). They are all copies. The "randomness" is really just 5 or 6 rooms moved around, but they always look the same, ugly subway stations or street levels. The hell concept is straight stolen from oblivion, you go into a portal, clear a small room and click something to close it. The enemies are ugly and are never explained, nor are any NPC's very rememberable. There is no relevant voice acting, it's a one line greeting when you click, then all the dialog is terrible, and the story is non-existent.
The art is atrocious, and looks nothing like the conceptual pictures or Blur cinematic. This is budget beta untested software. Go buy Fate if you want a diablo-like game for 20 bucks.
Worst game purchase I've ever made. People have paid 150 bucks for the lifetime online membership, and are complaining that no one is on and no one ever groups. The whole game is solo able with a lvl 50 cap.
I love the use of just diffuse walls next to walls with normal, spec, and diffuse materials. I'm sorry but the game looks like ass major ass. Either use normal maps and spec maps for the whole game or just don't use them. Did they just not have an art director on this game? The quality bar on this game changes so much that it seems every ten feet was done by a different person. Sadly the quality bar in all its movement never even reaches decent. I was expecting titan quest quality from this game but ended up with bargain bin. Sad, just sad.
Wow, all that hype, all that production time and outsourcing to awesome studios like Massive Black, all the promised goodness by the ex-Blizzard team, and now... it sucks balls?
God damn, the wait for a Diablo II replacement continues.
well at least I didn't care for it back then and I still don't now, and seeing the outcome result makes me not regret about it at all it's only hyped because of the former blizzard staff association, because as everyone knows, if it's blizzard it's fucking GAME OF THE <u>DECADE</u>
Yeah, I guess when you buy a game with the word London in the title, you'd expect to at least see a level set in the hanging gardens of Babylon every once in a while.
Your comments about performance perfectly illustrates just how hard it is to develop pc product. 'cos guess what? This thing runs smooth as butter for me, and Crysis runs like a fucking dogs dinner.
"the Art is atrocious"
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This
a·tro·cious /əˈtroʊʃəs/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[uh-troh-shuhs] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
adjective
1. extremely or shockingly wicked, cruel, or brutal: an atrocious crime.
2. shockingly bad or tasteless; dreadful; abominable: an atrocious painting; atrocious manners.
If you think the Art in this game is shockingly bad, you must be one incredible talent. You need to play more games, seriously. A LOT more games. I can name you a ton of games with shockingly bad Art in them, and this isn't one of them.
TGZ: "Either use normal maps and spec maps for the whole game or just don't use them".
I have never heard so much bollocks in all my career. Would you normal map a pane of fucking glass? No, so clearly there isn't an absolute requirement for every surface in a game to be normal mapped. The player doesn't care about nor see that shit. Does 100% normal mapping an entire game guarantee that it will look good? You need to look at the bigger picture If you have any remote aspirations to Art direct yourself one day, because having one surface normal mapped and another not, sure as shit doth not in the grand scheme of things define how good or bad a game looks. You have no clue how hard it is to Art direct a game, and make sure that every single asset of thousands looks like it was made by the same person. Take a step back from making fucking brick textures all day.
I don't know If it's fun yet, but I have no idea what crack you people are smoking If you think your own efforts are SOOooooo superior to this. Comparing the quality of the Art to the industry average and describing it as atrocious or major ass is just plain and simply, blatantly incorrect. Just crazy.
I guess i didn't make my self clear. I was talking about areas where they use the same diffuse on both walls but one wall had the normal maps and spec maps on it. Basically a "next gen" version of the material and a "last gen" version. I get having both for slower systems but not why they were used together in a scene.
I'm sticking to what i said you don't just use normal maps and spec maps on one material and not on something else that could use it just as much. Its an all or nothing thing to me.
Yeah somethings don't need some a normal map or a spec map. Normally things that are flat need a spec map and things that don't need a spec map are normally bumpy and need a normal map.
"Sadly the quality bar in all its movement never even reaches decent."
I will correct this statement, it does have some areas where the quality bar gets up to a AA title level. But when its surrounded with things that are not it pretty much negates it. Very bargain bin look to it.
I dunno man, I think most of the words said in that image were out of context. The weapon is all lit up crazy like that probably because the character just got hit by something, or just blew up something.
Now that you have been mentioning it, I have seen sections that don't seem to have any spec/normal mapping applied to them. Some of those look like they just haven't turned it on for that particular piece, though.
The gameplay is fine as far as I can tell. Very much in the spirit of Diablo. The art however does have its problems. There is definitely consistency issues between the different assets in the game. Probably a result of outsourcing so much of the art. There are some weapons that look really nice, and then you might pick one up that looks like it got dropped into the garbage disposal for a quick dip.
I don't think it looks awesome, it definitely has a dated look, and there are definite inconsistencies. But atrocious art and ass major ass? Maybe I just worked at EA so long, that I saw more truly atrocious Art than anyone here can shake a stick at, I don't know. But Im pretty sure I could take a crappy screenshot of most games.
badly lit rendered versions of the 3d models as inventory icons, quite big, and expands even bigger when you pick them up to move them around, the UI is like in diablo, static and takes up the whole screen, the game itself flows at high fps on my 8800gts rig, but when moving around in the UI there's a noticable mouselag.
The UI is noisly transparent and it can be a small eyestrain to seperate the UI from the background when looking at inventory.
I guess I'm spoiled by pretty pixelated icons and easily navigateable UI's from wow, the witcher, and such games.
The graphics aren't great, but they're not as bad as everyone here is saying. Nor is the UI. Both are fairly average, not great, not horrible. You guys really need to hop off them high horses for a bit.
I'm really enjoying the game itself, though there are a fair bit of problems. It's just a lot of good ol' hack n slash fun. It is very nostalgic of D2 though, so I have a feeling that I'm a bit biased towards it.
Replies
Yeah, the enemys are much to easy, but they are zombies, they have to be stupid and slow. Its also very easy to play with the marksman anyhow the gameplay of WoW is much more boring then this game.
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Yes but they only come at you 1 at a time. The scary thing about zombies is hordes of them coming at you at once. These zombies and demons barely notice you're there.
Also, I didn't notice there being much difference between the special attacks and the default attack. Most things died in 1 hit anyway to the default. I played as a blademaster.
Anyone notice the little boys quest reward is Warts Peg Leg. An ingredient in the Diablo 2 cow level portal no?
It obviously had a pretty big budget too, as Blur did the cinematics and I've seen it advertised for ages. Looks like somebody is going to lose a bundle!
I'll give it another go and try to get further on later.
It obviously had a pretty big budget too, as Blur did the cinematics...
[/ QUOTE ]
BloodRayne, BloodRayne 2, and Aeon Flux had Blur cinematics, and we didn't have a huge budget at all.
Either the beta testing/demo is a total lie and they just want to increase awareness for the game.
Or it's going to be delayed.
The idea behind the game itself is quite cool. I just think the execution is poor.
Soul - Dunno why it's still in "beta". It did already go gold, they announced that a few weeks back now. I assume the beta was more for server stress testing than it was for the game though.
Besides that, it being an online PC game patches are to be expected, so technically the thing being in beta this close to release is nothing. You should know that, working at Blizzard and all.
Soul - Dunno why it's still in "beta". It did already go gold, they announced that a few weeks back now. I assume the beta was more for server stress testing than it was for the game though.
[/ QUOTE ]
Supposedly the beta is not in sync with the dev builds, so they weren't testing up-to-date code. People have constantly been saying the beta was very buggy but from what I can tell Flagship's response has always been "yeah we're running fixed builds here, just trust us and don't worry about it".
Is that bullshit? Probably to some extent.
The demo really, really should have shown later sections. The beginning is so terrible. Once I got a grenade launcher it started getting more fun, since it played like an FPS then. I can imagine multiple people going nuts against big crowds being pretty fun, but we don't get to see that...
The demo really, really should have shown later sections. The beginning is so terrible.
[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah that is kind of like the Conan demo on Xbox Live right now. It's supposed to be a really deep fighting system with a massive ammount of moves that you can purchase and learn, but the demo doesn't give you enough credits to buy anything. So your left with default moves and no real reason to keep playing. Kill guy, free slave, hit switch, repeat. I was really looking forward to a Frazetta inspired Conan, but after the demo I think I'll stay away.
The demo really, really should have shown later sections. The beginning is so terrible. Once I got a grenade launcher it started getting more fun, since it played like an FPS then. I can imagine multiple people going nuts against big crowds being pretty fun, but we don't get to see that...
[/ QUOTE ]
IMO the demo is a pretty good outlook on what to expect on later levels.
so you basically pay $10 ( £5) a month to play the game as an elite member and get some nice bonuses. I dont see any great reasons to be an elite member but then again Im not a really hardcore gamer.
Still I object to this kind of marketing strategy. I really dont think any game should award players in game abilities or items for money. Doesnt matter how small the fee is, just on principle people should be awarded for good gameplay not large bank accounts.
The animations are not fixed, they look like a 20$ mocap package, maybe mr bones supplied it. After playing for 20 hours I have run into maybe 3 different levels (tile sets?). They are all copies. The "randomness" is really just 5 or 6 rooms moved around, but they always look the same, ugly subway stations or street levels. The hell concept is straight stolen from oblivion, you go into a portal, clear a small room and click something to close it. The enemies are ugly and are never explained, nor are any NPC's very rememberable. There is no relevant voice acting, it's a one line greeting when you click, then all the dialog is terrible, and the story is non-existent.
The art is atrocious, and looks nothing like the conceptual pictures or Blur cinematic. This is budget beta untested software. Go buy Fate if you want a diablo-like game for 20 bucks.
Worst game purchase I've ever made. People have paid 150 bucks for the lifetime online membership, and are complaining that no one is on and no one ever groups. The whole game is solo able with a lvl 50 cap.
God damn, the wait for a Diablo II replacement continues.
ugly subway stations or street levels
[/ QUOTE ]
Yeah, I guess when you buy a game with the word London in the title, you'd expect to at least see a level set in the hanging gardens of Babylon every once in a while.
Your comments about performance perfectly illustrates just how hard it is to develop pc product. 'cos guess what? This thing runs smooth as butter for me, and Crysis runs like a fucking dogs dinner.
"the Art is atrocious"
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This
a·tro·cious /əˈtroʊʃəs/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[uh-troh-shuhs] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
adjective
1. extremely or shockingly wicked, cruel, or brutal: an atrocious crime.
2. shockingly bad or tasteless; dreadful; abominable: an atrocious painting; atrocious manners.
If you think the Art in this game is shockingly bad, you must be one incredible talent. You need to play more games, seriously. A LOT more games. I can name you a ton of games with shockingly bad Art in them, and this isn't one of them.
TGZ: "Either use normal maps and spec maps for the whole game or just don't use them".
I have never heard so much bollocks in all my career. Would you normal map a pane of fucking glass? No, so clearly there isn't an absolute requirement for every surface in a game to be normal mapped. The player doesn't care about nor see that shit. Does 100% normal mapping an entire game guarantee that it will look good? You need to look at the bigger picture If you have any remote aspirations to Art direct yourself one day, because having one surface normal mapped and another not, sure as shit doth not in the grand scheme of things define how good or bad a game looks. You have no clue how hard it is to Art direct a game, and make sure that every single asset of thousands looks like it was made by the same person. Take a step back from making fucking brick textures all day.
I don't know If it's fun yet, but I have no idea what crack you people are smoking If you think your own efforts are SOOooooo superior to this. Comparing the quality of the Art to the industry average and describing it as atrocious or major ass is just plain and simply, blatantly incorrect. Just crazy.
I'm sticking to what i said you don't just use normal maps and spec maps on one material and not on something else that could use it just as much. Its an all or nothing thing to me.
Yeah somethings don't need some a normal map or a spec map. Normally things that are flat need a spec map and things that don't need a spec map are normally bumpy and need a normal map.
"Sadly the quality bar in all its movement never even reaches decent."
I will correct this statement, it does have some areas where the quality bar gets up to a AA title level. But when its surrounded with things that are not it pretty much negates it. Very bargain bin look to it.
which is that, the gameplay should feel fun, look fun, and I just couldn't feel any of that.
the game for me could've been great if it was all done right.
I'll wait for people to play the game through and see what they think of the whole package.
I dunno man, I think most of the words said in that image were out of context. The weapon is all lit up crazy like that probably because the character just got hit by something, or just blew up something.
Now that you have been mentioning it, I have seen sections that don't seem to have any spec/normal mapping applied to them. Some of those look like they just haven't turned it on for that particular piece, though.
The gameplay is fine as far as I can tell. Very much in the spirit of Diablo. The art however does have its problems. There is definitely consistency issues between the different assets in the game. Probably a result of outsourcing so much of the art. There are some weapons that look really nice, and then you might pick one up that looks like it got dropped into the garbage disposal for a quick dip.
Apart from the UI, and the sliver of red lava, there is ZERO color in that last screenshot.
if 1024x1280 is the native res for the UI, I'll need the double to make the UI more pleasingly small.
oh, and ui mouselag
hopefully I can play this like nethack and ignore the visuals completely, and I'll find the gameplay underneath all this.
The UI is noisly transparent and it can be a small eyestrain to seperate the UI from the background when looking at inventory.
I guess I'm spoiled by pretty pixelated icons and easily navigateable UI's from wow, the witcher, and such games.
then added bloom for automatic 'next generation game validation of genuine advantage from the gaming press'
I'm really enjoying the game itself, though there are a fair bit of problems. It's just a lot of good ol' hack n slash fun. It is very nostalgic of D2 though, so I have a feeling that I'm a bit biased towards it.