Hellgate: London

Strictly speaking, Hellgate: London is not a massively multiplayer game. Yes, there were initial plans to make it so, but Flagship Studios changed those to allow for a deeper single-player experience.

At its heart, though, Hellgate is a single-player, mission-driven hack ‘n slash that combines melee attributes, mage and pet classes and good ‘ol fashioned guns that can fire off an enormous amount of bullets as well as explosive and incendiary ammunition.

But for the past months, Hellgate has been testing out the game and its shared online cooperative mode on beta servers. The game has had a few glitches, but this was a beta, after all, and those are to be expected. Players could meet in the various shared locations, like the station at Covent Gardens, and team up for quests.

Think of it as Diablo II meets DOOM meets Guild Wars. You charge into a zone, encounter a lot of hell-spawned demons, clear the zone and along the way accomplish the task. A good group of players, each playing a variety of roles – from tank to ranged to support magic to healer – can do the job rather effectively. But because the game also seems to create zones commiserate with the abilities of those entering the zone, even a single player can achieve a high degree of success.

The game’s setting is a post-apocalyptic London, complete with areas of devastated interest. The streets lie in ruins, and demons and other abominations freely roam, window-shopping, and whatever else it is that demons do.

The game has six character classes: Blademaster (dual-wielding melee), Marksman (guns … big guns), Summoner (some magical spells, but a pet class), Guardian (tank), Engineer, and Evoker (dark magic). As you fight and level, you will be able to acquire new abilities. You can also craft better weapons and armor, replete with buffs on them to absorb more damage or deal it, but generally this game is focused on putting the player in the middle of the action, and making it as intense as it can possibly be.

Not that the majority of monsters you encounter early on are very challenging. If you play smart, they are targets to test out abilities. As you level, though, the difficulty ramps up. Each class plays marginally different, and – like most RPGs of this sort – weapons and armor are classified by character class and level.

Travel is handled in a couple of ways. You can unlock teleporters, of a sort, but only after you have journeyed, on foot, to the area you want to unlock. The levels themselves are dynamically generate, which means that you might got through the same area with a couple of different character classes and not see the same things in the same locations. That is a nice touch.

When it comes to the game’s graphics, expect load times and some clipping problems. There were also several instances of lag, particularly toward the end of the beta period. Still, the game did have some very nice details within the environments. The city looked like a Call of Duty game – after the shelling. The sound was mostly brooding music and combat-related elements. Some of the NPCs had voices as well, but nothing to get excited about.

Hellgate: London is a basic RPG that is more of an excuse to run ‘n gun, dash ‘n slash, or sprint past ‘n cast. In this regard, judging from the beta, it succeeds rather well. This is not a game that will have you pondering the bleak future it depicts, but rather will have you zone through and ravage the landscape, killing monsters that – in many instances – don’t seem to mind your presence until you draw first blood. Yes, if they spot you, they will attack, but some of these monsters are rather myopic.

While the game is not treading any ground that could be considered truly new, it does bring a solid bit of entertainment with it. The game’s main focus will be the single-player campaign, but cooperative missions, which was the point of the beta, will be a viable alternative for games looking to experience the game on a grander scale.

The game is set to release at the end of the month. Hmm ... demons, Halloween - well, that seems fitting.