Game Stooge

REVIEW: Hellgate: London (PC)

• Scribbled on November 2nd, 2007 by Jonah Falcon
• Filed in MMO, PC, RPG, Reviews

The state of roleplaying games for the PC are dire, especially for single player experiences. The biggest releases of the year in the genre have either been MMORPGs (The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of Angmar) or expansions (The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles) or a combination of the two (World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade). Single player RPGs on the PC have been almost non-existant, the only releases being minor, drab ones. Hellgate: London was supposed to be the big RPG for PCs this year, bridging a Diablo-like single player experience with an MMORPG-lite multiplayer. The game certainly had the right pedigree, beng developed by Bill Roper’s Flagship Studio, with the original Diablo under their belt.

Unfortunately, Hellgate: London is one big mess.

The game takes place in 2038, in a Hell-ravaged London, though, honestly, save for a few locations, it could be anywhere in the Northern hemisphere. The locales are about as bland as they come - honestly, if you’ve seen one bombed-out street, you’ve seen them all. The sewers/train tunnels all look the same. The train stations all look the same. The Oblivion-ripoff Hell-ternate reality levels all look the same - yes, I know Hellgate: London was probably developed without foreknowledge of The Elder Scrolls IV, but it’s out there, and comparisons will be made. Granted, Hellgate isn’t supposed to be a graphic marvel, but Diablo II proved you don’t have to look boring, even in 800×600.

The beastiary is varied, and attack in different ways, but the endless combat, while entertaining in the aforementioned Diablo games, feel like a chore here. If that weren’t enough, the townspeople are over-the-top goofy, which spoils the mood of this sort of game. Worse, the voice acting makes you want to punch your monitor.

There are six classes, and while all of them play differently, levelling is singularly unexciting. For instance, the Marksman gets grenades he can’t control and are useless, set-up shots in which he kneels to fire further, and so forth. Yawn. While it’s cool that every class plays differently - the Marksman is FPS-like, the Guardian is Diablo-lite, etc. - there’s only six of them with limited range.

If that weren’t enough, multiplayer is completely broken. For starters, there’s no LAN play. None at all, which is deadly for a Diablo-type game; people are going to want to play this with friends without having to log onto the internet, let alone public servers - and it doesn’t help when the servers are frequently down. It also doesn’t help that it’s a chore to get into groups, and since the game is easily solo’ed, there’s no motivation to even form groups. If that wasn’t bad enough, the game is full of bugs, causing to-desktop crashes, drop outs and major visual glitches.

If there’s a comparison to be made, Hellgate: London is Diablo, but 11 years later, when Diablo II was issued and expanded what could be done with the Moria/Rogue type game. Compared to Diablo II, Hellgate seems tight and constrained. As Gertrude Stein might say, “There’s no ‘there’ there.” Which is a pity, since there’s a lot of promise to Hellgate; the character equipping is fun, since everything you buy and do appears on your avatar, and made to match so there’s no Patchwork Doll look to them. Even the mods on your weapon are visible. Unfortunately, the piss-poor inventory system and sheer amount of useless doodads turn even this cool aspect into a chore of micromanagement.

In short, Hellgate: London feels like an unfinished game that should have been released in 2003 or 2004 - it’s broken and dated.