Review: Hellgate:London

First Look of Hellgate:London by me can be found HERE

It has been 2 months since I last posted about Hellgate:London, I have gotten the game, read the book and played until 80% of the game in normal mode and frankly there is no easier way to say this but the game has SERIOUS GLITCH. But let’s not scare away any potential new gamer first now shall we?

Hellgate:London has the potential to rise above the others. To go beyond what other online games have done. It has all the right substance to entice FPS gamer and MMO gamer alike but like all new ideas, it needs to be “refined” and I do not blame the developer for screwing that part up. No sir, not yet. I would say they did a fine job in trying to blend MMO with FPS. What went wrong however is the storyline. Everything just seems wrong.

STORYLINE

To put it into nutshell, you control a character which “stumbled” onto a dying man. He then ask you to grant his last wish. As a hero, how can you ignore that? So off you go into an adventure of unknown frontier. Then the story just fizzles. It spiral downwards to something else that makes no sense! It gives no explanation why you are the chosen one, why you are there, why the “heaven” started talking to you. One minute you will be commanded to go to some hell rift, the next you will be talking to demi god which seems to appear for no apparent reason inside the Storyline!

Fortunately, the novel Hellgate:London Exodus fills in the blank here and there. It explains what happened 18 years ago, how the first templar died and for what reason. The novel also did a fine job in pushing the limit of your imagination and your sense of purpose to finish what Thomas Cross (the character from Exodus) dies for. Quite frankly, I think the developer need to get a better writer for their in game story. Maybe Mel Odom is interested? The gameplay though is another story altogether

GAMEPLAY

The first few glitches that I mentioned way back a few months ago is not as noticeable anymore, you can now hide behind walls, or between building waiting for the monster to be ambushed. Which is a good thing as sometimes, it is just not wise to go head to head against 10 of those greater demons

What more, the gameplay turns a notch up in the “start-slashing” meter when you have more than one person in your party. Yeap, as you progress in the level and party with others, the game adjust the difficulty level to scale both you and your partners level. So if your partner is a few level significantly higher than you, it might be best for you to sit back and watch the show as you will get creamed easily.

How about the variety of demon though? Disappointingly enough, there is really not THAT much of a different demon available. Its the same old same old demon after a while. Granted, I got a shock when a demon “evolve” and change into a greater demon. It is kind of cool but it’s just not enough. I would suggest that they add in more variety of different demon just to spice up the game a bit. Better yet, throw in wave and wave of them which comes none stop to really push the button on Demon Hacking.

Quite frankly, I am slightly disappointed with the FPS part of the HGL as the soft targeting makes the game easier than before. There is no extra damage if you pop off the head of the demon compared to the arm. It all depends on your “critical” chances which kinds of turn everything side way for FPS player. All you need to do is just point and shoot. And wa la! The demon is dead. BORING

This is why I turned to play Blademaster instead. Blademaster is the in your face damage dealer. This also means that the demon will be in your face too, which generally turns up the excitement a notch up. The damage dealt by a blademaster is ridiculous, but so is the damage taken. So if you are a risk taker, go for blademaster. If you prefer safe gaming, go for any gun wielder.

But I must say, the developer did an amazing job with the creation of all the bosses. The bosses looks menacing and scary enough to make you think twice before attacking. If only the same can be applied for all the other demons design to make more "menacing" looking demon. Most demon looks more alien than demon to me. Maybe there is not enough evilness in them? Or too many hi-tech attack?

MUSIC

The music is slightly, how do I say it? Inappropriate? Well, the tune is dark and menacing coupled with some exciting beat here and there. But just as you are getting into the mood. The music turn silent. Nothing. Nada. Zip. What a party spoiler. It would have been better if they could have looped the music round and around instead of playing it intermediately. Did I also mention that the music is short? No? It’s short. There you go.

GRAPHIC

Ahh, the heart of a game. Some gamer swear by the Graphic before Game oath. And I would say HGL has a decent set of graphic. As mentioned in my last review. The graphic for HGL is handled fine in my 2 year old laptop. You could do the normal hoo haa adjustment in the setting but I find that setting everything in medium in my laptop will churn out a pretty decent graphic. Granted, when the whole thing goes to hell with all the demon, your graphic will drastically be dragged down to hell (pun intended). But if you have a decent Graphic Card, I would say Churn on the full graphic and let this baby rip!

CONCLUSIONS

There is no easy way to put this but HGL is still bugged, there are quite a few problems here and there but the fact remains that the game is sailing on uncharted waters. I can forgive them for the glitches. In fact, the way they are handling it is not half bad as they are vigorously patching HGL to further fix the game. So my conclusion is, if you are still debating to get this game or not. Grab it if you have extra money to spend. Hold on if you are going to be using your lunch money to buy as there will be a big patch to patch this game. Maybe then it’s worth typing your stomach for this game.

But if you are debating to get this or BF2142, I would still go for this.

P/S: All pictures are taken from the net. If I have taken one of your picture. I am sorry and you did a great job with the pix :D

-Because I Can-