Hellgate London - Beta Impressions

After 10+ hours wandering around in demonic-hell infested London I step back just long enough to write this quick review.

Hellgate: London = Diablo + Serious Sam

It’s a weird comparison I know, but between the immense 15+ bad guy spawns and the obsessive item management- this game is basically a demonic birth child of Diablo and Serious Sam (minus the funny antics).

Let me break it further down though:

Featuring the Item Management System from Diablo 2

Rather than calling this game a Diablo 2 killer – let’s just call it Diablo 2. If anything the system might be a bit rougher around the edges than the purely streamlined Diablo 2. The item system in this game is like casino- you kill bad guys and hope they drop good stuff- more notably green stuff (uncommon) and gold-yellow stuff (rares) items. In the beginning you’ll pick up everything to pawn at the shop, with items taking up grid space (so you’ll occasionally have to rearrange stuff to fit your 733t stash). The shop owners are ever intent on selling you useless junk, so the real goodies you’ll end up finding from the carcasses of bosses mostly and the occasional rare item chest.

To further add to item micro-management and this one is kind of annoying- scrolls of identify are relabeled analyzers- and you’ll pick up mysterious ? items that you’ll have to analyze to figure out what they are. It’d be nicer if your character had the brains to figure out what stuff was minus this tedious chore (and there isn’t a button to quick analyze stuff, which further adds to the casino feeling- am I finally going to get a decent item?).

There’s more though. Like the rune system, weapons can be fused to components to make stronger and cooler weapons and the only way to get truly great gear is to go through this hellishly complicated system of weapon modification. There are various weapon types with differing expansion slots (i.e. battery, tech, ammo, etc.) so you’ll have to collect and choose carefully.

Finally, you should expect skills and items to be assigned to numerical hot keys like a certain other game, and mana potions and health potions can be triggered likewise. Don’t forget there are also town portal scrolls, or personal transporters, but hell they look like town portals to me.

FPS-style action is unusually like Serious Sam (+ Diablo of course).

I used a marksman for my main character so I definitely was on the gun-toting side. There are other classes that make use of swords, summons and so forth, but as far as my guy was concerned, I was basically Serious Sam with unlimited ammo. This means holding down the fire key and running around like a lunatic (usually pressing back a whole freaking lot).

The bigger comparison to Serious Sam though comes from the fact the game has loads of enemy spawn at the cost of hi-def graphics. It's not comparable to Half Life 2 or even Doom 3- this game looks a notch below that, but a notch above in terms of fast-paced action. You can sprint in the game (but you can’t fire) so you can run past enemy hordes or away from them if you really need to. When you sprint, you totally go turbo speed- and the game lets you run like a crazed monkey injected with Red Bulls.

However, fighting enemies ends up to be tedious CRAMP of death, and like Diablo, you’ll be gripping your mouse1 button so hard that your finger will start to dislocate after the next hour or so. Especially on bosses where apparently 1 minute of auto-fire ammunition is nothing more than a pinprick to their lifeblood it’s almost agony to watch the teeny bit of HP sap from their full bar as you plug them with shrapnel.

Still, nothing beats the fact that the enemy-areas are loaded with bad guys, and this does make the game more exciting than it actually is. Too bad though enemy types are fairly limited. You’ve got charging dudes that rush you like football tacklers. Flying birds that shoot sonic waves, and crazed Alien like beast spawn that hop around like insects on crack. It gives you some variety in how you aim your mouse, but rest assured the game turns into shooting gallery 101.

Skill-Tree, Quest System, MMORPG?

Stepping back into the Diablo platform- you’ll notice NPCs with the all too freaking familiar ! floating over their heads and them nodding grimly or praising you like over-active cheerleaders as they reward you with big fat prizes for turning enemies into bloody stool.

The typical quest motifs are all there. Collect me 9 BITS of BRAIN and I’ll give you this plasma rifle with +25 damage against beasts. After you collect those BITS of BRAIN you should also go run over to the next station and talk to LUCIUS (cuz all cool hell-games have guys named Lucius) and then he’ll give you more instructions to kill GIANT OVERSIZED BAD GUY WITH 10000% HEALTH. Ah yes, of course I shall do that.

The skill system is JUST like any other MMORPG, you get points and you spend them. Don’t balance them out enough and you’ll find your character wearing Level 1 armor but having the ability to equip BFGs that can mow down enemies at the expense a stray fireball will blow you up to ashes. The skill tree looks JUST like the one you see in Diablo- spend a point here, get a skill- equip the sucker and go down one PATH (and only one path) because that is what your character will be forever. The choice can be agonizing at times, but that’s how video games are.

Finally- the MMORPG aspect of it. You get to chill and see other players running around (mostly sprinting like lunatics). In enemy-areas though, like Guild Wars, it becomes your zone and so no one, and I mean no one bugs you there.

Sweet mercy yes.

Conclusion

If Hellgate: London tried to label itself as Diablo killer IT blatantly LIED to you. This game is repackaged Diablo in 3d and is ONLINE probably more for the sake that you’ll be less likely to pirate the game. Unfortunately in the beta there are some network hiccups and when that happens EVERYTHING stops. You can shoot like a mad-man but all the enemies stand there like disconnected zombies that have had their brains removed. If your internet connection lags you’ll notice weird frame-skips, the enemies will attack you, but then strangely go back in time and die and you won’t take damage.

Hellgate: London is addicting, it has a cool sense of style and the setting in London is a neat feature. However, between the recycled randomly generated dungeons- the world does get old fast and players will notice there is nothing new under the sun here. The most fun may be trying out the different character types- but beyond that, it’s not even a true MMORPG in the sense that there’s no streamlined world- it’s all temporally randomized dungeons- with the exception of stations loaded with NPC-quest buddies and greedy merchants. I’d wait a few more weeks before picking this up, I think there’s some innovation that needs to go in the game- otherwise this whole entire game is just another 3d Diablo-clone. Happy hunting…for that uber rare 733t armor, it’ll only take you 10 hours to find it.