Hellgate: London

"I always thought Hell would be more impressive."

Before I say anything else, it's important that I mention exactly what kind of game this is. From the screenshots you might think it is anything from a action-RPG to some kind of First Person Shooter. In actuality it is a hack-and-slash fest in the style of Diablo or Titan Quest. Kill a huge number of weak opponents mixed in with several "rare" versions that are powered-up versions of the base type of monster - think uniques from Diablo or hero monsters from Titan Quest. All the while you'll be collecting a whole lot of randomly generated loot that you can sell, break into components to upgrade your other gear, or equip. It follows the hack-and-slash formula pretty closely. That's not a bad thing in my opinion, I'm always up for killing more evil hordes. It's just that they didn't follow the formula well, and the new things they added are either unremarkable or of questionable use.

Sound - 8/10

Only a couple of memorable tracks here, but they are pretty good. It's nice to have a hack-and-slash game with an exciting soundtrack for one. Most I've played had "ambient" soundtracks, which is a nice way of saying that they'd be good music to go to sleep to. Not bad for the right occasion, but I don't consider slaughtering hordes of demons to be the right occasion for calming music. In any case, Hellgate finally got this right - when you're dodging fireballs and maybe throwing some of your own back, we get some fast-paced music with it. The music itself is only alright, but it fits the style of the game very well. As for sound effects... things sound pretty much how they should sound. Demons gibber, rockets explode, etc.

Visuals - 4/10

The graphics themselves are sort of okay. But I hope you like what you see in the screenshots, because you'll be seeing the same thing for the whole damn game. Both the monsters and, even worse, the environments are recycled ad naseum. When you get up close to an object you will also likely be disappointed at how low resolution they seem up close.

Ambience - 3/10

What a letdown. Post-apocalyptic London seems like a great place to find some great ambience, but there's nothing interesting here. Exploring a deserted city in this game is pretty dull. There are no notes from survivors, no bodies, no signs of a great struggle, nothing but a bunch of broken stuff and evil monsters. It also really doesn't help that the levels are all randomly generated. Randomly generated levels have some benefits, but it's pretty clear here that the reason random levels were chosen was because it meant less work for the developers. "A new experience every playthrough"? Alright, sounds good, but I'd rather have one great game world of solid level design, with monsters and levels laid out in a logical and interesting way, than an infinite number of random low-quality levels spewed out by a random number generator.

Gameplay - 6/10

So here's the important part. Hellgate is actually sort of fun to play for a while despite it's many flaws. The experience seems to change depending on your class, and while I didn't feel that melee classes offered anything new to the genre, the ranged classes did offer one very interesting and quite enjoyable change - the ability to play in first-person mode. Doesn't sound like a huge deal, but it really is. Playing a game with the mechanics of Diablo, but in the style of Doom is a really worthwile experience for anybody who even sort of enjoys the two styles of games. As for how the game works in a more general sense, it is a classic hack-and-slash as I have said before. Go to a "town" (stations, in this game), get some quests, and mow down hundreds of monsters by clicking on them. It's just that instead of your character automatically attacking when you click, they either swing their weapon (not much of a change) or shoot their gun (a bigger chance, especially since you can shoot and run at the same time). You have skills that you can activate to give your character various bonuses or do nasty things to the enemy monsters. Kill enough and you level up, getting one skill point and five attribute points to spend to enhance your character. Oh, but make sure you know exactly what you're doing before you ever spend your first skill point - you can't change your character's allocation of skill or stat points ever, no matter what. A really lame move by the developers, in my opinion - it's be nice to experiment with the various skills without permanently crippling your character by spending several points on a skill line that turns out to be useless (of which there are many in this game).

Story - 3/10

Very poor even by hack-and-slash standards. Pretty much every character with a personality falls into one of these two categories - crazy or stupid. I don't want to ruin the plotline for anybody, so let me just say that there really isn't much of a plotline to ruin. Nothing interesting ever happens, and while characters like the insane Lord Lucius and his impenetrable cardboard box are good for a bit of fun and save this game from a 1/10, but I'd really like something a bit more from a modern game.

Production Values - 2/10

Ugh. It's very clear that this game was either extremely rushed or never intended to be a good product in the first place. If you examine basically any feature of the game you'll notice at least one moderately important bug. With my first playthrough as a Marksman, for example, I noticed that accuracy didn't properly adjust your weapon's spread of fire until you unequipped and re-equipped it, tactical stance didn't actually make you get hit much less despite putting your character in a prone position, the Overshield ability doesn't work right at all, the rapid fire line of skills sometimes activate and hold your character in place while doing the fire animation for your weapon without actually firing, the grenades have very questionable physics, and so on. Nothing game-breaking, but when basically nothing works right it really detracts from the flow of the game.

Overall - 4/10

Maybe worth it if you find it in the bargain bin for $15. Until then, either stay away or check this game out at a friend's house.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 11/07/07

Game Release: Hellgate: London (US, 10/31/07)