Hellgate: London

"An example in "How not to make a video game""

After the success of Diablo 2, Blizzard North was shut down. Bill Roper, the CEO, decided to bring with him most of Blizzard North and start his own company, Flagship Studios. In the four years since they started, they have been working on Hellgate: London, a first person / third person 3D adaptation of Diablo 2. Sadly, since November, Flagship has done very little to improve the game besides fixing major bugs. I've decided to update this review to warn others about the mess called Hellgate: London.


Controls and Interface: 5/10

Many people complain that you cannot bind certain buttons, but I never had a problem with it. The controls are smooth and responsive baring all of the lag and such. The UI is like WoW only more cumbersome, and you can customize it with skills and spells. The problem is that MP options and menus are lackluster. Many do not even group due to the chat panel being hard to look at, not to mention it goes away every time you access another menu. For a while, FSS did not even fix the chat menu, which was not opaque and didn't move.


Graphics: 3/10

It seems that they did not optimize this game whatsoever. Half of the models / textures look all right, while the other half literally look like they're from N64, no joke. Some people who try to use ‘very high' settings reported many crashes, and that's on top of the already existing crashes. This was recently discovered to be a certain important feature missing from the game's code…an icon library that would load up the items in your inventory at a more reasonable size. Since it is missing, the game is forced to load the entire texture, full size, thus bogging down any system. This is why there were memory leaks.

Sound: 2/10

Non-existent music, generic sounds for all the demons and weapons, and absolutely no voice acting. When the music does play, it's usually too soon or too late, making it random. The mere fact that almost none of the levels have any ambiance or music in it really drag the game down (of course this is only one of the many things that do so).


Online and Subscription: 1/10

Horrible describes it nicely. So what they tried to do is…get this…a subscription system for $10 a month, but it is also playable online for free, or if you got a founders, you paid $150 extra for a lifetime sub and empty promises of extra perks. Why they chose to do this is beyond me. They tried to mix Diablo 2's free online service with Wow's per month fee. Even worse, if you do decide to get a sub, all you get is an extra area much like all the others. I won't even go into detail about Stonehenge, but let me tell you, most people hated it for it's grinding and re-used content. Anyway, the servers are okay, unless you were unfortunate enough to be on the SEA server, which by the way is still in patch 0.7 (at the time of writing, the main game is up to patch 1.3b) That particular fan base is pretty much done for at about 50 or so people playing at any given time. What's even worse is that Bill Roper / Flagship decided to ignore Single player entirely. So if you were meaning to play a fun Single Player game, avoid this one at all costs.

Story and Atmosphere: 1/10

Disgusting. You start in an alley with no introduction, no characters besides Murmur, and a bunch of zombies who literally do not attack you. As the game goes on…actually, that's it. The story from there is so inane, pointless, flat humor ridden mess that most would not want to read if they didn't have to scroll through every…single…sentence. A lot of the dialogue is mood breaking. You'd think there would be a lot of action and people being scared and sad. Nope, many of them act as if you were in the mental ward, some even talking gibberish. There are barely any memorable or important NPCs. Oh, and of course there is the obligatory cliche ‘Prophecy of the truth' or something like that. To be honest, it makes no sense at all, so any chance at understanding it is completely useless.

The atmosphere is also completely missing. Forget about the invasion, because there isn't one. Just a slightly empty London making it seem like they had rebuilt it and it is up to you to clean up after the true heroes. The final boss comes out of nowhere and is never explained in game. Supposedly, the big baddy is one of the leaders of the invasion and that's it. He's just in your way…a loot pinata if you will. And this leads to…


Gameplay: 2/10

The core of any good game. However, in Hellgate's case, the gameplay is just as bad as the story. Basically, they tried to tie in Diablo 2's quick hack and slash action, WoW's MMO aspects, Half-Life 2's FPS elements, and so on. They tried to do far too much. One major flaw right off the bat is just how badly the game is optimized. Most of the bugs are gone now, but it took them months to sort the many problems out (blue screens, memory leaks, lag, etc)…and this was after it hit retail. So for many, playing the game at release was a no go.

By far, the second worst part of the game is the level design. They fell back on a random level generator to spew out the same four or so areas for the entire game, no joke. All you will ever see besides a very few rare instances are: Generic street, subway, sewer, and then some sort of warehouse consisting mostly of the most basic rooms you'll most likely ever see. I mean really, it's just a bunch of plain, bare rooms linked together! And forget about it being London, the only landmarks (or resemblance to London in general) are the London Tower, British Museum, Piccadilly Circus, Chocolate Park, and the Thames, most of them occur in the beginning of the game. Even worse, most are seen again later on…some are repeated many, many times. And the boss areas repeat too! I mean come on!

I started to notice early on that they decided not to tell you how much damage your weapon does. How convenient eh? It doesn't stop there either. The skill descriptions are so bad that most don't even tell you what they do! For example, the summoner has a skill called “Summon Toxic Elemental: Conjures an elemental creature of plague to fight for the summoner. Reduces summoner's power pool by 25.” I kid you not, that's it. Let's not forget the mini game that, when completed, gives you loot. I love how they never told you what the icons meant in the manual or in game.

The gear is all right…of it weren't for the awful feed system that ruins any possible fun to be had. It forces you to use up your stat points like energy and most items later on have unbelievable reqs. So many people have to meticulously plan their characters to a tee. The classes themselves are basic, and most are way off balance. The melee classes are very difficult to use due to the flying / long range mobs taking up a good portion of the game. The marksmen classes are decent, but lacking in interesting skills. Lastly, the evoker class is, from what I remember, very weak. Most of the skills are not useful and unimpressive. For example, one skill is called Brom's Curse, and all that happens is a tiny stick like pixel flies out of your abdomen. Nothing colorful, nothing artsy, just boring, unimaginative skills.

There are some options for customization with your weapons…via an Augmentrix. What this does is it allows you to add magic properties to your gear. The problem is that most of the time all you'll get is some stat your class can't even use. Therefore, it ends up being a waste of money. You can also upgrade your weapons. It used to be an unlimited usage, but FSS decided to only allow players to use it five times. Even worse, before you could just destroy any weapons or armor you picked up along the way for materials and it would be easy enough…now you need nano shards, which are incredibly hard to get. There is also a feature to take out any mods on your weapons for a price…this was actually a good idea and it works.

There is very little in the way of mods for your weapons. Many of the cool stats like ‘indestructible' ‘ethereal' ‘pushback' ‘leech' and so on are missing from a game you would expect to find them in. Coming from the people who made Diablo 2,this is very disappointing. Most of the unique weapons have no unique model, or even a reskin or recolor…just different stats.

The monsters are pretty bad too. Most of the interesting mobs are only seen every so often, all you'll be fighting 90% of the time is zombies and cthulu rip-offs. As far as the uniques and rares go…they are just harder mobs with a different colored name. Nothing unique about their model or titles either. Some mobs are like mini versions of the enemies…sound weird to you? When everything is said and done, it is one of the most repetitive, boring game I've ever played.

Replay value: 1/10

Very little, I know I will never play it again, but it's decent for a one time use.

Final score: 1/10

At one point, I gave this game a 6/10, as I had some fun with it and it had a lot of potential. Then patch 1.0 came out, the first major content patch, and totally changed my opinion of both the game and the company. It seems as if they have no intention of fixing the game, or even supporting its customers. Many people are angry, many sites gave it very low scores, and it even won a couple “Worst game of the year” awards.

To be honest, it's all right the first time, but it's not worth the money. Too many things are incomplete or missing, and it feels like the game is only about 25% complete. I warned many of my friends about this ‘game' and this ‘company'. They are very deceitful, and many interviews have them saying things like “SP users should just go play online” and “Supporting SP is not in our business interest”.

Avoid this game at all costs, because they are falling apart, and it seems like it isn't going to last much longer.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 11/15/07, Updated 05/19/08

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