Hellgate: London (PC DVD)

I bought this game without hesitation - if the creators of Diablo2 were releasing a game along similar lines, well it's a must have.

I've been playing Hellgate (single player) for 6 or 7 hours in total up to now - and in all, I like it - its good fun: good graphics, (not the absolute best but then playability is more important than graphics), great setting, interesting characters to choose from, lots of skills and character upgrades and the ability to modify/upgrade almost all equipment you find.

So why then am I not raving about this game as the best ever, rather than just saying its 'good fun'? I think the fundamental problem is that it has lost something in 'translation' from a 3rd person hack and slash to what is essentially a 1st person shooter. One of the main reasons people liked, (and continue to like), Diablo2 was that in addition to the character generation and loot grabbing, it has a coherent linear story, real plot development and excellent NPC characters.

Hellgate, in comparison doesn't have any of these. For example, it has some of the worst NPC characters ever - they sound like village idiots! Why did Flagship not just have them read out their quests instead of having them make stupid random outbursts? - I actually think that removing their voices altogether would be preferrable to what we have now.

Plot is another area which suffers - you don't really get the feeling you are progressing in the game as it seems to be just one long monster-shoot for no particular purpose. Even with the character upgrades to keep you interested, I think this will get a bit boring after time.

Fundamentally, this game is a halfway house trying to please both RPG Diablo/NWN fans and 1st person shooter Halo/Bioshock fans: unfortunately you can't please all of the people all of the time and I don't think it really represent a classic of either genre. While it is good, and I would recommend it, I don't think that this game will stand the test of time as well as Diablo has...pity really.

I usually open my reviews with a brief paragraph about what the game is, and what it's accomplished. It usually takes a full paragraph to convey to people what to expect. But I think I can do this one with a sentence: Hellgate London is a successful successor to Diablo 2.

I don't think I need to go into too much detail about what Diablo 2 was. We all know, right? Well, anyway. Diablo 2 is a hugely popular hack n slash RPG developed by a former Blizzard team now known as Flagship Studios. While Flagship couldn't take the Diablo name with them, they did take the unique style and gameplay mechanics that made D2 such a classic. And they're all fully present in Hellgate, plus a few extras to boot.

Hellgate is set in the near future, in London. A gateway to some nightmarish alternate realm has been torn open and through poured Hell's fury. Most of mankind was destroyed but, as the narrator says, it's only then that the story can truly begin. You'll pick one of six classes who each fall into the Cabalist, Templar or Hunter archetype class and take up the fight to destroy the Hellgate.

Each class has a fairly unique feel, as you may expect. The Templar classes are all about getting into the thick of the action, tearing daemons apart with your swords. The Cabalist classes are spellcasters, using either daemonic pets summoned from the ether or devastating spells to aid them, or the Hunter. The Hunter is a pretty unique addition to the hack n slash genre, in that they are ideally played in first person mode. That's right. You can play Hellgate as a FPSRPG. It still feels like a roleplaying game as you run through the corridors. You have no ammo to manage, there's no reloading, and you mostly just back away from enemies who come at you, dodge their ranged attacks or circle strafe around them. But it's neat that it's there, and this is a great introduction for FPS players who always wanted to get into RPG, but didn't know where to start.

Character development is almost exactly the same as D2. There are tons and tons of items dropping, but instead of magic we have technology. This is a science fiction game to be sure, but there are elements of fantasy. If you've ever experienced Warhammer 40K, it actually feels a little like that. Gothic Science Fantasy. You'll build a character by collecting items and weapons, as well as trinkets while also spending points on statistics and skills, earned with every level up. You can also augment items with special plug-ins that improve your items in the same way gems and jewels did in Diablo 2, which gives for plenty of different directions you can take your character.

One of the biggest differences in style between Diablo 2 and Hellgate is that D2 was all about the grinding, there was very little to give it context. Hellgate has tons and tons of quests - these are nothing complex, just things like kill x number of enemy y in location z. But they give context to the grinding. Still, experience grinding has just been replaced by quest grinding. If the word `grind' makes you shudder, Hellgate probably isn't the game for you.

As with Diablo 2 - the only place to play this game is online. It can be played single player, of course, but there's really no reason to unless you're a masochist. This game is infinitely more fun with other people, and really, since the point is to develop a character, you need frames of reference to judge your character's quality. Competing with other players online just makes it all worthwhile. Hellgate is free to play online, but there's also a "premium" subscriber option, which costs money, but which is probably worth it. For a small monthly fee, you get additional classes, enemies, spells, items, themed events and raid zones, plus those all important extra difficulty levels that gave D2 such crazy long lifespan. It essentially turns Hellgate into a miniature MMORPG, which works out nicely, since the fee is smaller than a typical MMORPG fee.

Visually, the game is pretty great. It's all 3D, and it's all third or first person. It's hardly up to the standard of the finest this year has to offer, but then, this is a hack n slash RPG. Hellgate is easily the best looking the genre has ever seen, and when you have fifteen daemons onscreen at once, you'll probably be happy it doesn't look any better than it does, for the sake of your framerate. The soundwork is mostly what you'd expect, and is mostly decent. But there's some utterly dire voice work in there. Really, it seems like flagship tried to make English people seem as stupid and dopey as possible, whether it's characters with IQs just shy of room temperature or characters with very, very bizarre fetishes. Pretty annoying.

Luckily, there's very little voicework - you get soundbytes when starting and ending conversations (which is pretty poor by modern standards, but given the dire quality of what little there is, we may be thankful for it), the rest is written dialogue. Which is also utterly terrible. Within five minutes you'll stop reading it and just click next over and over, then accept, then check your quest log for a summary of what you just skipped. There's also pretty much no story to speak of; understandable given that this is a hack n slash RPG, but it would not have hurt the game to make it a little more engaging than it is.

Flaws aside, most of which are minor, Hellgate offers plenty of daemonic carnage, lots of great character development choices and tons of awesome multiplayer. If you've been looking for a game to live up to Diablo 2, this isn't quite it. But it's close. If you like D2, you should definitely check out Hellgate.

First of all let me explain that I played Diablo 2 briefly, although not online, and got bored very quickly (clearly I missed the best bit!!) however, this meant I had no pre-emptive thoughts with what I thought this game should be. Therefore, I write this review with untainted clarity.

Having played World of Warcraft for the best part of 2 years I thought I would rest my Trolls, orcs and Scourge to meddle with some gun-touting Humans against the forces of hell. I did absolutely no research into buying this and bought the game purely on impulse.
So far i have only totted up around 8 hours and have managed to hit level 11! The first thing to note is it IS FUN... no matter about anything else, I do enjoy blowing some mutant scum back to the portal from which it came! The second thing to hit you is it isn't perfect. There are loads and loads of flaws and the mouse movement is very annoying. I play with a pro-gaming mouse & mouse mat and it still annoys you with its dragging-like movement.
Having played tons of games over the years from beta stages and onwards I would say the first major patch will fix many of the annoying flaws in this game but until then be prepared to be a little frustrated at times and bare in mind it has only just been released for the EU.

Now down to the game:
The customisation involved is heroic! Lots and lots to do and seems it will be almost endless with the amount of different character structures & builds. Its very addictive and the fact that money is not such a struggle to obtain makes it very fun.
The graphics are fine and although they are not ground-breaking, they enable people who don't have the most UBER computer to play the game which will increase community numbers.
As mentioned in forums around the world the voices of the NPC's are...well... you wanna turn em off!

After a quick read through the manual and checking the official site you soon realise that you are going to have to self-learn the game basically from scratch. There are very few things that help you learn how to play the game and even now I sit here realising I have made some fundamental flaws in my characters optimisation. Unless you are a Diablo2 player (which I presume is very similar) then you constantly find yourself guessing what the best combination of gear, weapons etc are while wasting resources in the process! I'm sure I will hit level 15 and then start again as I still seem to be learning new things every 10minutes and regretting what I had done beforehand.

A point which has barely been touched on is this game is fully playable in single-player mode. I would definately recommend this, until you hit the online scene if that is your plan.

Having said all that the game stinks of fun and I'm sure swarm-guns will keep lots of us entertained as minions run around trying in vain to escape your pesky little friends. xD

Overall I think I would give it a 3 and a half out of 5 but hopefully with a few patches, many of the teething problems should be ironed out and attract the masses and start hitting 5/5.