Hellgate: London

"This game is for all genre enthusiasts. Rock on Hellgate London!"

Lets get right into it. This game rocks. You get to blast demons back to hell and smash tons of monsters with all kinds of weapons and toys.

Lightning cannons to pelt multiple enemies with chain-lightning spells, rocket launchers with multiple warheads blasting rockets and leaving the world in flames, monsters popping out of every corner, a whole slew of spells and magic on the fly. This game has everything that action gamers love.

The combat though is geared towards the action/first person shooter and old school game fan. The technology they use to represent the combat is dated but effective. Fans that might have been expecting all kinds of new modes of play and perhaps a new engine, this is not the case.

Hellgate London takes a step back with an older style engine and even an older style of gameplay yet managed to wonderfully adapt the two into one. This game should be classified as a real-time dungeon crawler rather than a first person shooter. Yes, you can shoot, and shoot everything you will, but more than that, you could use swords, magic, summons, spells, various original weapon types and much much more. The main focus of the game is the questing which will have you often doing similar tasks as any Dungeon Crawler would. So yes, you often see familiar corridors and re-presented map areas fairly often. As your character levels, so do the monsters in each of the maps and the game gets gradually harder as you progress.

The weapon animations can be seen in and out of first person view. These views are accessible through a simple mouse wheel roll in either direction. Not many games have such a simple yet intuitive camera operation as this game does. Animations also for casters and summoners are wonderful, you will be happy to cast a multitude of spells and buffs and see them animated individually. Another good thing to notice is the first person guns and the third person guns having multiple moving parts, which is pretty rare in the dungeon crawler game type so seeing something like that gives a big sense of effort being put into the game by the animators.

Pistons will pump and cords will charge into different colors, claws will move and cringe, while guns will have recoil and chamber loading times. Hard to notice when the action is usually so heated! Gun models will actually change with modifications, giving each weapon with multiple mods a unique look. Character models are pretty decent with a wide selection of options to customize your personal look and touch. There are multiple classes that let you build up any tree you like. For example you could have a warrior type class that uses a laser-lightning sword and a shield, you could have a magical caster with a crazy claw spell arm and a rocket launching pistol. Pretty much anything your imagination could dream up is in there for a build. Each of the individual build types certainly has it's uses in combat.

Now onto the killing. You will get to kill so many things and so many monsters your brain would explode if it weren't just a video game. Monsters will appear sometimes with gold or blue names; this representing a higher level of toughness. Monsters will cast spells or use weapons on you, snipers will pop you and demons will appear in the most desolate and quiet areas you could imagine, scaring you right out of your pants. Sometimes they travel in packs and sometimes alone, but they are not as dumb as you'd think!

Monsters will follow you up stairways and around objects, some will begin casting area-of-effect spells if they can't reach you under a bridge. Some monsters will even leave a fight to go and get more monsters to chase you down and kill you. Monster models also explode though, leaving a whole world of explosively violent opportunities in your hands.

Zapping a monster with a flamethrower could set him and his buddies on fire, plowing a monster with a sniper rifle could cause the selected appendage to spontaneously explode into fleshy gobs of goop. Large monsters may sometimes desperately summon more monsters just before he dies and the never ending amount of monsters can get fairly intense. Slashing zombies may cause them to fall in half but the legs or arms may continue to move and chase you. The exploding barrels in every corner provide for a healthy quantity of massive explosions and even more kills. Maces and hammers can be used to throw multiple enemies backwards and other weapons just to make them explode into a swarm of parasitic locusts that eat away at everything.

Even with the settings turned all the way up the game almost never chugs on one of the older dual core processors. You could have hundreds of monsters firing colorful blasts of destruction, barrels exploding, heads flying off, bodies being mutilated with purple explosions and lightning smashing into all parts of the world, guns and rockets exploding all around you, but the game still operates smoothly. The game boasts a dark and evil atmosphere but it is truly a Death Metal fans' wet dream seeing the shiny black and red armor of a spellwarrior wrapping its organic self around the character models. Running down similar hallways blasting all kinds of crazy demons and spiritual monsters will always have you returning for more loot. Class restricted armor is only necessary for balance and you will find plenty of cool armors and weapons just laying around after the onslaught of enemies.

Music seems to play an important role too, most of the time just a dark ambiance in the background while more intense battles trigger more intense music and fear. Not terribly spectacular but often sets off a mood before and after each fight. Bosses get their own music most of the time and using potions and items will trigger multiple music types. Hearing the level up "ding" noise will hook you too, as it usually means you can upgrade your many skills and statistics as you want to.

Monster sounds will scare the crap out of you, and you will hear fear channeling noises like things being knocked over in the distance or a faint scream or roar. If you have a good sound setup too, you can hear things like monsters themselves creating their own ambiance. This cool effect allows you to know where monsters are and know what you are up against most of the time. Hearing the "pit-pat" of footsteps will let you know when a zombie is around you. Monsters will usually roar if they see you or shout to call other monsters nearby. Others will sneak up on you and attempt you kill you silently! Rumbles of the flames and spells will have your walls shaking with the low-pass sounds that frequent the game and machine guns scream with angry pelting and smashing into different surfaces causes a new effect to play. Dropping a fragmentation grenade and turning will let you hear it on either side of the sound pan, as well as monsters and creatures outside of your visual range. Strangely enough though, this is one of the most quiet and creepy games when there aren't monsters present. Cool little features like noise beeping on your left when your health is low and on your right when the magic pool is low will help you stay alive.

The steep graphical requirements for the game are pretty demanding which could be a staple in the side of the game sales. Especially since the engine and bugs are fairly popular in-game. Hit-detection will sometimes fail or you will fall through the environment several times in a row. These are simple things that should have been caught by testers early on. With those minor issues fixed, we would have had a perfect game here. Sadly they are not few, but also not too impending either.

The game does boast a dark beauty though, whether it be in the shiny armor of the models or cool particle effects that constantly delight your eyes. Abandoned bookstores and mansions, trash and destroyed structures that you can climb on and over and the abundance of shiny metal coins that drop every other time you destroy an object or kill a monsters. Twisted apparitions will form spells on-the-fly, shields coming off are signified by a large orb of Sephirothian text spinning in all directions. The screen will violently shake when things get to hitting you with critical hits. Dark gothic creatures populate the world. Demons will spawn from flame-written pentagrams that appear on the ground and when presented with enough damage some monsters will actually mutate into scarier larger monsters. Porting zombies come up in a flare of light, beams of purple blue and red shooting all over the place when applying buffs or fighting casters. Laser guns, slashing swords, and violent depictions of death with virtually every kill. The physics always show up whenever you destroy crates, barrels, monsters, etc. You will see a hint of rag-doll physics allowing for awesome moments because of the creative monster models.

For example: A monster will pop out of the ground and climb up through the broken earth and claw his way across you, scamper up to his feet and slashing you viciously, you dodge that, slash him with your violet laser sword across the chest, blood sprays to the east and he goes vigorously spinning around and then exploding into a white-purple blast of chunky flesh burned with blue and white surfaces.

^"No game as ever made me personally able to write a sentence that cool."

Online the game is exactly the same with the exception that other players join you in real-time with is virtually unseen in the current market. The game here at this point, does show that developers are driving us into a new age of online multi-player games. The genre needed something this fresh and this was a good move. Improvements were needed and patched right away. The community servers are updated hourly and highly populated. Just seven days after release they give out patches, and help in-game when needed. The second that the first petition came in they (developers) were on a patch. This would seem as if the developers themselves had fallen for the good graces that is the Hellgate: London.

Under it's spell (the game) you will lose many hours of daylight and many hours of thinking of ways to creatively re-arrange the seldom (sarc.) used box menus. The user interface is a very dated one used in many Dungeon Crawler games but it lends to the idea that this is designed to be a older game for the fan of the original, just plain-cool video game.

Enjoy blasting your way into hell folks! 9/10
It's spooky music and loud in here! 7/10
I get to shoot a lot of stuff! Pow Pow Pow! 10/10
Yay I get to do it again... 5/10
Stuff flies everywhere and explodes and stuff? Totally awesome! 10/10
Best story ever told? 5/10
Everything is shiny and cool but I just did this level. 7/10

Overall, Hellgate: London totally rocks. The character classes appeal to all players and the in-between-ers who like a little of both. The mass explosions and shattering flesh with fire will keep you coming back for more, if you thirst for adventure; build yourself the ultimate weapon. However you play and however you like destruction, this game is for you. 9/10

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/01/08

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