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Hellgate: London
Author: Joe MartinPublished: 2nd November 2007
Conclusions
Hellgate is a difficult game to score in the end because it really does feel like two, maybe even four separate games. The first division comes from the perspective the player takes in the game – playing it shooter-style with a Marksman really is a very different game experience to playing it as a third-person warrior or mage.The second and more important division though comes from the multiplayer and singleplayer choice. These really are utterly different games.
The singleplayer campaign has weaknesses. It reuses the same environments and areas to an extent that would shock even F.E.A.R, the NPCs are laughable in a bad way and even when the game is fully pimped out graphically, it still looks like something you’d expect to find festering inside a scab.
Oh, and the plot is fairly limited too – though there are a few little treasure-hunting easter eggs thrown in to make things a bit more interesting. We could say more, but it would spoil it.
The singleplayer has strengths too though. The combat is interesting enough to get us by, but it isn’t really that awe-inspiring. Customisation on the other hand is a great thing and it’s nice to see that players can rip apart old guns to find gadgets that can be used to boost their more powerful weapons.
Click to enlarge
Multiplayer on the other hand is an entirely different ball game. Here, the game slips out of action RPG classification and clearly declares itself as an MMORPG. By that standard the graphics are pretty good, though still not that great, the plot becomes less skeletal and more just ‘streamlined’ and the clipping issues are more forgiveable.
In multiplayer the game becomes pretty damn good and there’s the promise of more to come as long as EA and Flagship follow through on the plans to add more content for subscribers.
To put it simply, while the singleplayer side of things is on the lesser side of average the multiplayer compensates by being on the lower side of really-quite-good, but still remains above average.
When you get right down to it, Hellgate: London isn’t quite the epic RPG re-imagining that it was hyped up to be and just goes to show that even a team of ex-Blizzard developers don’t always produce golden games. That said, the game is still enjoyable and playable and if you’re after a game which tries to do lots of different things at once then Hellgate is The Safe Bet.
A jack of all trades and a master of none, Hellgate feels like an odd blend of Knights of The Old Republic and Nethack, with a touch of FPS thrown in for good measure. Unfortunately, while it keeps a lot of the good stuff from these games it also retains a few of the flaws and we’re left with a game that is probably going to entertain most people for a good twenty or so hours, but which isn’t really going to rock anyone's world.
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