The Devil Lives in London?

A game that is overlooked and often spoken ill of is Hellgate: London. It unfortunately fell flat mainly due to the lack of coverage and bad reviews, and the company folded along with the entire multiplayer section of the game.

It is a unique take on a Hack and Slash game as it is an FPS set in the post-apocalyptic future london. You can choose between six different classes, two melee (dual wield and tank) two casters (dps and summoner) and two ranged (gunner and gunner summoner). In my opinion the classes are not particularly varied or unique enough to have warranted so many but despite that they do play fairly differently.

The levels are randomly generated in five or six different environments well populated but all rather similar. The progression is balanced but fairly monotonous. You fight wave after wave of really similar enemies in these environments that after twenty or thirty iterations get rather boring. Unfortunately the game is very grindy, as is the case of most Hack and Slash games.

The saving grace of the game however is the special missions and the boss fights. Each boss is again randomly generated from a selection of powers and enemy types and are a lot tougher than their standard brethren. As you can encounter the bosses in any area it adds some great variety to the areas and an added amount of difficulty that is often needed.

Unfortunately the best part of this game was in fact the multiplayer, it had added special enemies and equipment, the ability to share equipment between characters and several other nice little options that improved the game massively.

One thing that always really bothers me about these type of games is the sense that your character "appears". All the NPCs speak to you as if you don't know what has been going on, you start off the game in some dead-end that leads only forwards and you have no gear to speak of. Is it too much to ask that a non-rpg puts a little back story on your character. Now it isn't just this game I am talking about but all Hack and Slash games.

Now while this might seem like a rather negative review of the game, every single hack and slash carries the same issues, even a great like Diablo suffers from these. I really enjoy playing Hellgate: London and keep coming back to it time and again. It is just as much fun as any other Hack and Slash and also covers an FPS element that makes it enjoyable. The game however is not in wide circulation due to the closure of the company but if you do see it in shops it will be very cheap. My vote; if you like Diablo this one is worth a play through.