Review: Hellgate: London

Hellgate: London (HGL) is an action game from many of the makers of Diablo. Like Diablo, it can be played online with a small party (up to 5 people, including yourself).

Gameplay

/stuck

To me, that is the Hellgate experience. I happened across a message board post that mentioned that the /stuck command will get you out of trouble if you get hung up in the scenery. I probably used it at least once every time I played. HGL is buggy as all get out. In fact, I couldn't finish it because the final quest is bugged. I've since been on the forums and seen a workaround, but I'm not going to bother. This game simply shipped too soon.

That said, I actually enjoyed myself, mostly. But I don't know if that's really because I like Hellgate, or despise WoW. A lot of people were comparing the two, and that probably made me like Hellgate more than it deserves.

Hellgate does have a lot of variety. Your choice of class, skills, gear, and weapon loadouts lets you experiment and play many different ways. A certain weapon and skill combo allowed my evoker (magic user) to tank a boss and his four giant friends. Figuring out strategies like that is very satisfying.

There's also enough variety in the enemies to keep combat interesting. And you're usually fighting mixed groups, switching strategies on the fly as the situation changes.

Grouping is also pretty cool in the game. You get more monsters, more types of monsters, and more rare monsters (which are more powerful and drop better loot) in a group. But again, bugs rear their ugly head as the "auto party" function in the game appears to have no actual function. If I hadn't been hanging out on the Penny Arcade Ventrilo server, I probably would never have partied at all. Of course, you get so much trash loot in the game that you're always waiting for someone to "play Tetris", rearranging their loot and breaking some of it down into parts which can be used to upgrade other pieces. Oh, and subscribers and non-subscribers often can't see each other when they're in a group. Feh.

Theatrics

The cinema that starts the game is good. The NPCs are reasonably well defined, but largely forgettable. I've heard the cinemas at the end are really good too. I may never know.

Aesthetics

The game looks pretty good.



Providing the textures actually load.



And the clipping volume (the thing that determines where the ground is) isn't borked.



There are plenty of nice particle effects, and the sound work is good. You can even hear what quality of loot dropped by the sound. There are problems with some of the effects going off unrelated to your attack. Sometimes I would see and hear shooting but no damage being done or vice versa.

Final Score
3 out of 5