Hellgate London

Buy it here!

 

Poor HG:L, I think it’s very misunderstood. Ya’see, the team from Diablo/Diablo 2 wanted to make a new game, only in a sci-fi setting. When it became time to market their game they took a look at the landscape and decided all on-line rpgs were MMOs. Then they decided that they’d offer free play (ala the Diablos, NWN/2, etc) and a subscription service.

 

 

First, you don’t have to pay a monthly fee to play this game. It’s not an MMO. That’s a made up classification from their marketing department. This game – in terms of game mechanics- is essentially Diablo 3. If you choose to subscribe they give you some cookies, but the game is a-o-k without paying anything else.

 

 

The subscriber benefits are pretty limited right now. You would get access to some extra storage space, higher difficulties and special “holiday” quests. Flagship has promised surprises for subscribers in future, but has not left much of a clue as to what that might be.

 

 

Some of the characters are meant to be played as FPS (my first character is one of them) but at it’s not really a FPS in traditional terms. The characters, the environments, and the equipment are all randomly generated. The graphics engine required to do it had to be written from the ground up (unless they wanted to gank Phantasy Star’s), and for a first iteration of a new engine I’d say the graphics are decent, and certainly nothing to be ashamed of. I don’t think you’re going to be sings songs about how beautiful the game is, but there are much worse out there.

 

 

Now to the meat: the game-play. Random dungeons have been done before. It’s very difficult to find a game that does it well. This one does a great job of it however. The first time I exited a tight hall into a huge room filled with enemies I started to fall back; then some monsters teleported in trapping me in the hall. With demons on both sides of me I threw a grenade into the large room and sat on the trigger of my assault rifle to clear the small wave. After they were dead I turned my attention to mopping up whatever the grenade didn’t kill. After wiping out three demons, four zombies, and a handful of strange reptiles without having more than 5 feet of breathing room I felt like a total bad ass, and I don’t think it would have felt as cool if it were scripted.

 

 

Your equipment is randomly generated as well, which lends to the game-play as well as replay factor. I’m not very far into the game because I keep going back to dungeons I’ve already cleared hoping for better drops. However I have learned that the best drops come from named monsters.

 

 

This paragraph may contain spoilers for some people.

 

 

Atmosphere: This game is about as scary as the Diablo’s were. You travel back and forth to Hell in a fashion similar to Oblivion. However I found Oblivion to be legitimately scary, while my first trip to hell was just barely above laughable. In fact, if there weren’t a huge demon bullet-sponge right at the entrance my first reaction might have been a giggle. The single platform you find in hell is static and pretty dull. However you’ll encounter a random number of demons with random grouping patterns.

 

 

Music/Sound: The music is a mix of the Resident Evil soundtrack and 28 Days Later, however it comes in at odd times. For example, I just cleared a large room of hellspawn including one “rare” monster using a lot of explosions. It was a very tense experience, and when it was over some grinding music started. I thought I had triggered a boss fight or something, but there were no enemies left. I guess music’s queued randomly too? The ambient noise and enemy sounds are fairly satisfying, slightly above serviceable. However the ricochet noise is super corny, especially for the frequency I seem to trigger it.

 

 

There are still a lot of bugs, however Flagship seems pretty dedicated to fixing them. There have been 7 patches in less than two months. They’ve also been working on adding new tile sets to the random dungeons, so hopefully the handful of drab environments with predictable structures will be switched up a bit.

 

 

Overall I think this is a great game. Unfortunately I’m sure it’ll get lost in the shuffle this holiday season. I think this is a perfect game for a February/March release, as its staying power is something that would easily last through the summer drought.

 

 

Skip it: You won’t be missing a whole lot if you do.

 

 

Play it at a friend’s: If you liked Diablo and can over look muddy graphics, it’s worth a spin, but if you have no investment into your character it’s hard to care about these games.

 

 

Buy it: For hardcore Diablo fans, almost exclusively. This game might be something worth buying as a budget title for the rest of you, but I’d ask a player how the bug fixes are coming along before you spend money on it.