hellgate london review | Review Column

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Hellgate: London (PC)

Posted on 01 June 2008

ReviewColumn's rating :
2 stars

Hellgate: London Imagine the majestic city of London in post-apocalyptic ruin, lair to monstrosities released from the depths of Hell by the ominous Hellgate. The majority of London’s population has been massacred by the merciless creatures, their motive seemingly only to wreak havoc upon the lands. Now imagine yourself as a Knight Templar, remainders of the population that has taken to arms and sworn to die defending against the tide of darkness that has engulfed the land. This is the backdrop of Hellgate: London.

In Hellgate: London you choose from 6 classes of characters, namely Evokers, Blademasters, Engineers, Guardians, Marksmen and Summoners. Each of these has their unqiue abilities and roles in play in team combat. For example, the Guardian is a melee attacker capable of soaking up large amounts of damage in combat. Usually Guardians remain at the frontlines of group battles and remain among masses of enemies to inflict maximum damage. Meanwhile, characters like Marksman would hang behind and stay from afar to pick off enemies assailing the Guardian. Choosing your character class is one that would define the entire gameplay experience.

In single player, you will traverse through underground subway stations, completing objectives and missions, before advancing to the next stations. Basically most missions are straightforward – kill a certain number of a type of monster and return to claim your reward. After playing through several stations, I was immensely bored from the similar quests and gameplay. Killing some monsters and then going back to the person who initiated the quest for equipment. This was especially so when I was playing a Guardian, who had limited combat techniques and it was a repetition of seeing the same moves over and over again on the enemies. One good thing was that there was a huge array of monster types, ranging from zombies to leaping insect-like creatures to huge towering humanoids. Fighting with these enemies will hardly be a bore.

Graphical effects have been well-designed and the enemies are diverse in nature. The apocalyptic London environment was brilliantly sculpted to effect. Train wreckages, corpses and whatnot lie ravaged along streets while monstrosities roam the streets aimlessly. However, this does not makeup for Hellgate: London’s most significant flaw – the lack of a defining storyline. The game does not educate the player about the background (other than the opening cutscene) of the game but instead, throws the player right smack into the middle of the conflict without prior briefing. The player will be satisfied by the levels of action but the hollow feeling of not knowing enough will always be there.

Hellgate: London offers hardcore players many options in weapon choice. Apart from the weapons and ammunition themselves, many spare parts can be looted from enemies to upgrade your weapons and equipment. This is a very useful and interesting feature but it takes some time to get used to and master. Also, players can mould their characters according to what skills they acquire. Gaining experience from slaying monsters will allow the player to procure and upgrade skills which become increasing powerful. More skills can be unlocked as the story progresses.

Another utter disappointment of Hellgate: London is the multiplayer options. The multiplayer allows the player to connect to the server to play together with players around the world. However, the biggest fault is that the storyline is exactly the same to that of the single player campaigns. This means that you will be doing the exact same thing during single player, except now you have human allies playing alongside you instead of computer AI. This game becomes so entirely repetitive that your interest will die out faster than your character dying to a horde of hellspawns. This is one big setback that I feel should be addressed.

Hellgate: London failed to live up to all its hype and my expectations and I would not recommend this game to anyone, less hardcore Diablo fanatics.

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