Hellgate: London Reviews

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Written by BuckGB on November 2nd, 2007

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As it stands, Hellgate is merely an average effort. It's one of those games that will undoubtedly receive a handful of half-hearted 8s, like when your first girlfriend in 9th grade asked you for an honest appraisal, but you just didn't have the scones to tell her the truth. Though it may be unfair to judge a game based on expectations, clearly this project had plenty of talent behind it, and the potential to be the stand-out product we all had hoped for. And in truth, the foundation of Hellgate is a strong one. It's just missing a coat of paint or two. And a second floor.

Luckily for Flagship, when it comes to persistent online games--which Hellgate qualifies as, despite also containing a separate offline mode--"patch" isn't always a dirty word. Bug fixes, interface overhauls, system tweaks and content expansions could be the shot to the heart it needs in order to live up to its potential. Down the road, the company's first major effort could very well turn into the flagship title it was meant to be. But it will be one rocky road in the meantime.

Ship now, patch later.

Besides the simple fact that no map generation program is ever going to be as good as a human designer, the random maps introduce some other problems too. Hellgate's map generator has come on a long way since old randomly generated maps, which were very blatantly made up of repeating tiles. For the first few hours, in fact, you might not even notice that environments are repeating themselves more than you might like - but by the time you've opened up a few tube station bases (which serve as hub levels for a handful of dungeons), it will start to grate a bit.

That same room layout, that same pair of tunnels, repeated over and over in slightly different configurations... We don't doubt that Underground tunnels really are quite monotonous, but there's no need to inflict that on us in a videogame. It's bad enough having to go through them in packed train carriages, frankly.

Within minutes, I'd had sexual advances from a besotted Techsmith, although he'd probably have said the same sycophantic ear-scratch to a female character. An hour later, I bumped into a shy tribute to Morrissey who refused to meet my eye (nice touch), but bellowed a randomly-selected pick of his stock phrases with the thick shout of a Cornish bumpkin (not such a nice touch).

The roughly 25 per cent amusing, 75 per cent mortifying script and voice acting is one of the most immediate barriers to enjoying Hellgate, a game which is otherwise immediately very

You might get sucked into the online world of competing slayers and level grinding for a while, but the tedium will kill you far quicker than any member of Hell's vast.

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