Hellgate: London Reviews

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Written by BuckGB on November 3rd, 2007

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The horrible news is that players have to manage seven tons of inventory in the pseudo-Tetris bag o'boxes that ensures they'll be spending way too much time shuffling old items around to make room for new ones. Would an "autosort" button have been too much to ask? And maybe some more storage space?

From a design standpoint, the demons of Hellgate: London aren't the most original depiction of Hellspawn ever created, but they get the job done with a nicely variegated zoology ranging from impish flyers to floating half-women trailing glowing tentacles, skulls plopped onto gorilla-like bodies that shoot explosive spiked balls, razorbacked beasts that leap into combat, a few very impressive boss monsters and much more. Their combat capabilities are equally varied. Demons will crawl at the player and then leap at his or her face, others charge straight into melee combat while still others stand back and snipe or offer protections and buffs to other monsters. True, their AI is mostly of the "run at the player and hit until one of us is dead" variety, but that doesn't really matter with this many creatures flying, flopping and shooting at the player and when their randomized composition makes every battle a brand-new challenge.

What utterly ruins the illusion is that even the most terrifying creatures have absolutely no intelligence. A minion's idea of a good time is to run toward you, sword drawn, until dead. His superior has the same problem. It's something you can exploit. All that really matters is how much health they have, if they have any special attacks such as mystic fireballs or toxic plumes, and how they play in packs. Some demons cast shields on others. So kill them first. One breed of zombie will spawn infinite waves of his kind. So make him your primary target. Boss fights are a chore: just walk backward, firing, until death. Yours or theirs.

Online shows Hellgate at its best and worse. While having other players with you, the crowds of zombies become giant herds, and the subtle underpinning of the classes becomes clear. As the melee characters dash in, marksmen and casters hold back. Exploring London becomes a shared experience, and better for it. But with few tools to track down online partners, and crowded chat channels, finding groups can be a real pain. There's no Looking for Group tool - you'll have to rely on buddy lists or spamming chat channels. It's a far cry from dedicated MMO games like World of Warcraft.

Loot is Hellgate's strong point. It's what turns it from a middling action shooter into an obsession. When absolutely every chestplate, every pair of pants, anything you wear or hold can be customised, when you're assigning skill points every few minutes, when you're weighing up point assignments with the requirements of lust-worthy armour, the choices come quick and fast. For every ten minutes of constant shooting, at least a tenth of that is spent on management - deconstructing drops, balancing and rebalancing your inventory.

At the same time, the game lacks critical features, such as being able to transfer items from one character to another. Players must rely on the "buddy system" and hand over legendary class items to friends to hold onto while they exit and log back in. Since there's no in-game market or auction system, the only other choice for incompatible gear is to either sell it to a non-player character or dismantle it for crafting materials.

Just like in the old Diablo days, combat areas are randomly generated. Maps, loot and creature locations are never the same twice, which is a remarkable feat since many areas tend to be a bit short. Picking up special quests, like hunting a boss creature, inserts those encounters when the game generates the area. Unfortunately, there's no way to manually reset them except by exiting the game and reloading it or by traveling from one base to another. This is especially bothersome when players have a simple quest, like collecting three more demon hearts from an area, but can't because all the demons are dead. In addition, even though randomly generated areas theoretically create "limitless replay value," there's rarely a compelling reason to revisit an area except for loot farming.

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