Hellgate: London

Format PC

Developer Unknown

Publisher Namco Bandai

Genre First Person Shooter, Action

5 Comments

Hellgate: London's been a long time in development, but it's finally gone into a closed pre-release testing stage that appears to be hovering somewhere between alpha and beta. Having secured a place on the trial, we cheerfully clicked all the boxes and playfully set up our accounts, before jumping into the action and splashing around like idiots.

What this whole pre-release thing means is that the servers are up and down like a bride's yo-yo, and any talk of glitches is best left for the review. Which, for the developers, must feel alarmingly close. Rather than let this hamstring this whole piece into a sodden mess of apology and conjecture, I'll just describe what happened in my first few hours in the game.

What I'm interested in is this: does Hellgate feel, in my bones, like the reinvention of the 2D dungeon trawl that I've hoped it would be? Is this, in other words, the 3D Diablo we've all been waiting for?

A quick recap, so everyone's up to speed. Hellgate: London is set in 2038, in a world under assault by the demons of hell. To fight them you have six classes to choose from, split across three factions.

The paladin-esque faction of the Templars contains the attack-happy Blademaster and the defensive Guardian. The hand-wringing witches are represented by the Cabalist faction. Here you'll find the Evoker - the template weedy dude with big spells - and the Summoner, who'd be wise to stand back and let his uncanny menagerie do the work.

Finally, there's the Hunters faction. The Marksman plays the game most like an FPS, while the Engineer is essentially a Summoner who deals with robots instead of infernal imps.

All factions are on the same side - it's no Alliance vs Horde scenario. At this stage, Hellgate definitely isn't geared towards PVP play, apart from the odd duel.
I chose the Summoner. I like pets, and I like my pets to be on fire. The tutorial zone whisked me through a steampunk Russell Square, more Victoriana than Futurama, that serves as your basic WASD tutorial.

Populated with a dozen fodder zombies to get you used to your weapon, and a guy called Murmur who guides you to
your first Tube station. Sealed by the Freemasons, these under-ground sanctuaries act as hubs for progressively more difficult batches of (sometimes) randomly-generated mission areas.

First impressions were that it instantly felt smooth, and right - the content of Diablo with the presentation of WOW. The graphics, in particular, have come a long way, and it's far more satisfying to see loot burst from a dead body than it is to ransack the poor sods. The first-person perspective is a token option - you'll end up settling on the third-person zoom level that gives you most view of the playing field.

The Summoner starts with a shin-high flaming imp. He died more than I like my pets to die, so I spent my first skill point on a new pet. With my new rune-infested, erm... zergling, I realised I was invincible until about level 4-5, an hour later. This isn't
a problematic balance issue at such an early stage, but I suddenly felt a little redundant.

What was far more frustrating was the lack of control over my pets. It was like walking a particularly randy dog, only when he humped someone's poodle, I'd shoot the poodle with an explosive bullet instead of apologising to its owner. Then, I'd shoot the owner.

Often my pets would run off completely. At higher levels of combat - and especially in groups - the last thing you want is your pets acting like a freelance Leeroy Jenkins. If Flagship don't want this class to be underused, they'd do well to sort this out.

Meanwhile, items you find are typical adventuring fare. You can dismantle loot to produce raw engineering materials, and use those to upgrade other items at hub stations.

Rare weapons will often feature upgrade slots, depending on the type of damage they deal. Get something good that you can't use? Sell, trade, or dismantle. I'd be stupid to suggest that any of this is original, but it's 3D and you're running around in it. See?

I thought I'd better get a more rounded view of the game before my slim umbilical cord of server time was severed. My usual role-playing preference is to be that insipid 'please like me' class, the priest. No priests here, though - even the tank seems responsible for his own hit points in London. So I grew a pair, and went for the Blademaster.

This is the class I had imagined from reading and talking about Hellgate. This is the guy who approaches a bunch of enemies, slings his grapple-hook into the mob, drags one of them out and chops him up quick smart before dealing with the rush of his mates. The one-hit killer. The dual-wielding sod. The bald dude with a goatee.

We've been told that the game wouldn't rely on the twitch skills of the traditional FPS, but sometimes - in particular where the enemies are flying - you'll be forced to act quickly, and with some precision, to drag your hovering foes into close range combat. Easier to use a gun, maybe - but the grappling hook feels cooler.

It was all a walkover, until I found my first Hellgate. After about 90 minutes, I found myself in Covent Garden. This is one of the non-random areas, and it looks unexpectedly like the real thing - I tentatively stepped through an 'anomaly', and found myself instantly pummelled upside my helmeted head by a creature twice my height and five times my width.

I responded with a panic and a swear, but the demon was too clever for my tactic-free flailing. Luckily for me, there's no real penalty for death, unless you want to pay money to be resurrected on the spot. This demon guy was too tough for me; I was going to have to make some friends.

Luckily, everyone's happy to be playing, and are forgiving of the numerous glitches and moments of confusion in this early code. Bits of your avatar disappearing, inventory items duplicating, the limited availability of the server - everything's forgiven because we all felt special.

For the same reason, everyone's pretty friendly and helpful. The nature of the classes mean it's more 'every man for himself' than a fully-fledged MMORPG, but I was lucky enough to team up with people who weren't morons, and it made the game five times more entertaining.

Until I dropped down a staircase in the Kingsway Sewers, and aggroed three floors of monsters at once. Needless to say, they had the last laugh.

Then, the server stopped. I've tried logging on for three days since, but no luck. I'm left genuinely intrigued - I definitely want to get my characters out of their early stages, and find out how the game develops.

Basically, what I'm saying is that I can't wait to review Hellgate: London, because I think, despite a good few worries about the overall gameplay and pricing structure, that I'm really going to enjoy it.

Jon 'Log' Blyth