Hellgate: London Previews
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While running around this virtual London can be fun on your own, a big feature of the game will be the ability to battle alongside other players. With the multiplayer beta test underway, it was easy to find others online. The Underground stations are like the community centers in the game, and you'll encounter dozens of other players who are stopping by to find new quests, trade at the nearest merchant, modify weapons, or search for potential party members. To extend an invitation, you simply click and hold on a person. Then you select the invite option on the radial menu that appears and wait for a response.GameSpy put three editors on it.
Party combat in Hellgate: London is a lot more visually spectacular than solo combat because there's just so much more going on. Even with just a single teammate, you can expect a lot of graphical fireworks. Keeping tabs on each other's status is also easy because an icon and health meter appears in a list on the left side of the screen for every member of your team. That way, if you see your teammates are in trouble, you can try to aid them, either by killing any demons that are giving them trouble or by trying to heal them.
Questing so far has been what we've come to expect from MMOs: kill X foozles, find Y items, defeat a specially named NPC. What I totally dig is the fact that every quest area has been instanced: once you leave the hub area, you're in your own private questing area, and you don't have to worry about fighting fifty other noobs for spawns. Even more interesting is that the areas have some random elements to them. The entrance to an area may be in a different spot, or you'll encounter different types of mobs, and there are hellgate portals that also change location. If you're going to get on the XP treadmill, it's nice to have at least a little variety when you clear the same area for the third time.
Combat for my marksman so far has been pretty straightforward. I've got my machinegun, which has infinite ammo and never requires reloading, so all I really need to worry about is putting myself into position to keep my accuracy as high as possible. There's a tactical stance that allows me to crouch and tightens up the aim of my weapon, and I haven't really had much issue mowing down the various mobs so far. The only exception was Shulgoth, a boss lurking in one of the hellgate portals, whose health took me a while to whittle down.
