Before I review Hellgate: London I’d like to give you a little back story about it. After the creation of Diablo II Blizzard decided to close down Blizzard North (The division that created the Diablo series) and hire some of the ex employees to join Blizzard. The ones that weren’t offered jobs decided to create their own company called Flagship Studios. Since Blizzard had the Diablo Trademark Flagship had to name Diablo III something different, and also change the game until it could not be counted as part of the Diablo series. So they decided “Hey let’s make Diablo III a first person shooter that takes place in London in the future!” and they did.
Hellgate: London takes you into a hell-ravaged future where demons are everywhere and humans stay underground in subway stations like hobos fighting off occasional attacks and building up forces to fight back the demons. Now the rest of the game is exactly like Diablo with a few twists.
As soon as you install the game you must go through a long loading process until you get to Character Creation. Once you choose your class from the options of: Engineer, Cabalist (Sorceress), Blademaster (Barbarian), Marksman (Amazon), and Templar (Paladin). You get to briefly and slightly customize your character’s looks and then it’s off into the game.
Once inside you are greeted by Murmur; Hellgate’s version of Wariv. He explains to you in a painfully long process how to move your mouse around and shoot. Then you must head out to your first Subway or Hobo Station as I like to call them. Once inside you are greeted by a few of the resident hobos and can talk to the vendors and get quests. If you don’t feel like doing all the side quests just follow the main story line (Blue Exclamation Mark) and you will be sent off to find a Portal (Circular Door) which will take you either to an abandoned subway station or outside. Now much of the game is like this going from Subway to Subway shooting cheap rip-offs of Diablo II’s monsters. The Imps are still called Imps and they still get revived by Imp Shamans, though they aren’t called Shamans.
The only exciting parts of this game are the special missions where you will either command other units from a topographical view, or go into Techsmith 314’s brain. There is also a cool new socketing system that is basically exactly the same as the old one, just this time you can remove the socketed items. The only truly new thing the game offers is the crafting system which lets you create items from items you broke down.
Overall I think that Hellgate: London is a big disappointment and speaking as a Beta-Tester I think that Flagship Studios could have done a much better job.
Next Time: Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 vs. Gears of War!
