Product Description

Hellgate: London combines the depth of role-playing games with the action of first-person action titles. It is a world devastated by a demon invasion, where players must create a hero and battle through innumerable hordes of demons while completing quests and advancing through experience levels. Explore a desolate city scorched by hellfire where the survivors meld science and sorcery to gain a foothold against the minions of darkness and save the bloodline of humanity. A robust, flexible skill and spell system, highly customizable items, and a massive variety of randomly generated equipment allow players to create heroes that are truly unique.
London, 2038. According to legend, when the ravens depart the Tower of London, it will crumble to rubble and disaster will befall England. As man became more dependent on science, believing only in what he could define or create, ancient knowledge and rituals were lost to the antiquity of time. Prophecies that had stood as warning for untold generations were seen as archaic folly or ignorant superstition. So, when the harbingers of evil began to manifest, few saw and fewer believed. When the demons finally came, there was little that stood in their way. Compelling cooperative multiplayer experience - by creating unique and individualized game play instances within a vast online community, gamers get all the best parts of traditional massive multiplayer games Hellgate - London Game on 2 DVDs / Bonus Disc containing - Making of Hellgate - London; Official Game Soundtrack

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3902 in Video Games
• Brand: Electronic Arts
• Released on: 2007-10-30
• ESRB Rating: Mature
• Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .75" h x 5.00" w x 7.50" l, .20 pounds

Features

• Explore post-apocalyptic London: from ancient ruins buried beneath city streets to shattered cathedrals to the last remnants of humanity bunkered in the Underground
• Infinite Replayability: Dynamically generated levels, chance events, and massive quantities of randomly created items
• Have it your way: Three unique factions with their own visual and gameplay style
• Beyond RPG: Experience new layers to the traditional hack-and-slash formula
• Hell Never Looked Better: Delivers a true, DX10 experience, while being fully scalable for optimal performance on older PCs

Amazon.com
It’s 2038, and London lies in ruins...

From Flagship Studios – creators of the award-winning Diablo® series and the fathers of the action role playing genre – comes HellGate: London, the next benchmark in the evolution of the RPG genre.

Combining the depth of traditional RPGs with the frenetic, visceral feel of first-person shooters, HellGate: London offers infinite replayability with dynamically created levels, monsters, items and events that gives each player their own unique hack-and-slash experience.

A post-apocalyptic London has been overrun by hordes of terrifying demons, leaving the city desolate and scorched by hellfire. Those who were unlucky enough to survive now gather in the only sanctuary left, the Underground, banding together in order to gain a foothold against the minions of darkness and ultimately save the bloodline of humanity.

It is no surprise that these sole survivors come from three of society’s most elite factions, each of whom are masters of a robust number of skills and weapons essential to demon-thrashing.

The Templar, a secret society preserving the rites of the original Knights Templar, mix futuristic technology with ancient artifacts to create powerful weapons and armor perfect for short-ranged and melee attacks.

The Cabalists are students of the dark arts and edges of science which often leaves them standing right on the line between good and evil. Their mystifying spells make them suited for mid-range combat.

The Hunters are mysterious, highly trained ex-military operatives who lay waste to their foes with hyper-advanced weapons that blend theoretical science and the latest in technology – and their bullets can come from almost any distance.

HellGate: London delivers an amazing gaming experience to PC gamers of all types – delivering the eye-popping DX10 visuals demanded by the hardcore, and scaling to ensure the masses of casual RPG players can still get the best performance on older PCs.

Key Features

• The RPG Authority – Flagship Studios was founded by the core creators of Diablo, one of the biggest PC gaming franchises in history with over 13 million units sold worldwide – they are the first, last and only voice in the world of action RPGs.
• Beyond RPG – Experience new layers to the traditional hack-and-slash forumla by experiencing the action RPG from the first-person perspective and through nontraditional character classes and playstyles.
• Have it your way - Three unique factions with their own visual and gameplay style, offering something for every type of gamer, whether they prefer the longer-range blasts of the Hunter or want to get up close and personal with the Templar.
• Infinite Replayability – Dynamically generated levels, chance events and massive quantities of randomly created items makes for infinite replayability -- no two experiences will ever be the same and every game will be it’s own unique event.
• Mad Skills – Each faction has three character classes that contain a wide variety of skills and spells that are fully customizable.
• London Calling – Explore post-apocalyptic London, even darker and gloomier than usual. From shattered cathedrals and landmarks to the ancient ruins buried beneath the shell of a once-great city, players will need to scour all of London in search of the unknown.
• Misery Loves Company – Don’t be a glory hog – fight online. Gather with friends or recruit strangers in Underground stations and venture out into mean streets of London together to erase the Demonic threat.
• Hell Never Looked Better – HellGate: London features all of the latest next-generation technology to deliver a true, DX10 experience, while being fully scalable for optimal performance on older PCs.

Minimum specifications:
OS: Windows XP SP2 or better
Processor: 1 GHz (or faster) Pentium 3
RAM: 512 MB or more
Video: 100% DirectX 8 compatible device w/ 64MB VRAM or better
(e.g., NVIDIA GeForce 3 (except 4 MX))
Audio: 100% DirectX 9 compatible device
Disc drive: DVD
Hard drive: 6 GB or more free space
Input: Keyboard and mouse
Internet: Connection required for multiplayer

Amazon.com
It’s 2038, and London lies in ruins...

From Flagship Studios – creators of the award-winning Diablo® series and the fathers of the action role playing genre – comes HellGate: London, the next benchmark in the evolution of the RPG genre.

Combining the depth of traditional RPGs with the frenetic, visceral feel of first-person shooters, HellGate: London offers infinite replayability with dynamically created levels, monsters, items and events that gives each player their own unique hack-and-slash experience.

A post-apocalyptic London has been overrun by hordes of terrifying demons, leaving the city desolate and scorched by hellfire. Those who were unlucky enough to survive now gather in the only sanctuary left, the Underground, banding together in order to gain a foothold against the minions of darkness and ultimately save the bloodline of humanity.

It is no surprise that these sole survivors come from three of society’s most elite factions, each of whom are masters of a robust number of skills and weapons essential to demon-thrashing.

The Templar, a secret society preserving the rites of the original Knights Templar, mix futuristic technology with ancient artifacts to create powerful weapons and armor perfect for short-ranged and melee attacks.

The Cabalists are students of the dark arts and edges of science which often leaves them standing right on the line between good and evil. Their mystifying spells make them suited for mid-range combat.

The Hunters are mysterious, highly trained ex-military operatives who lay waste to their foes with hyper-advanced weapons that blend theoretical science and the latest in technology – and their bullets can come from almost any distance.

HellGate: London delivers an amazing gaming experience to PC gamers of all types – delivering the eye-popping DX10 visuals demanded by the hardcore, and scaling to ensure the masses of casual RPG players can still get the best performance on older PCs.

Key Features

• The RPG Authority – Flagship Studios was founded by the core creators of Diablo, one of the biggest PC gaming franchises in history with over 13 million units sold worldwide – they are the first, last and only voice in the world of action RPGs.
• Beyond RPG – Experience new layers to the traditional hack-and-slash forumla by experiencing the action RPG from the first-person perspective and through nontraditional character classes and playstyles.
• Have it your way - Three unique factions with their own visual and gameplay style, offering something for every type of gamer, whether they prefer the longer-range blasts of the Hunter or want to get up close and personal with the Templar.
• Infinite Replayability – Dynamically generated levels, chance events and massive quantities of randomly created items makes for infinite replayability -- no two experiences will ever be the same and every game will be it’s own unique event.
• Mad Skills – Each faction has three character classes that contain a wide variety of skills and spells that are fully customizable.
• London Calling – Explore post-apocalyptic London, even darker and gloomier than usual. From shattered cathedrals and landmarks to the ancient ruins buried beneath the shell of a once-great city, players will need to scour all of London in search of the unknown.
• Misery Loves Company – Don’t be a glory hog – fight online. Gather with friends or recruit strangers in Underground stations and venture out into mean streets of London together to erase the Demonic threat.
• Hell Never Looked Better – HellGate: London features all of the latest next-generation technology to deliver a true, DX10 experience, while being fully scalable for optimal performance on older PCs.

Customer Reviews

Finally a good effort
If you don't want to read this long review, let me simply say that Hellgate London is a good game, and definitely worth the money.

But if you want to know a little more...

Let me start off by just saying it... Diablo 2.
There are few games out there that are of such a high quality that they become the standard that others have to beat, that they become the thing that is used to compare. Diablo 2 is such a game. It is the game of which it is said with other games; `Diablo also had that' or `unlike Diablo.'

So, here we are, Hellgate London; the game that wants to take over from Diablo. Can it? Well, yes and no. Yes in the fact that over the years there have been many Diablo clones, and none came close to `the real stuff.' Hellgate does. Hellgate comes close and even surpasses in some areas, like graphics. But then again, what would you would expect from a new game that is trying to beat a, what, ten year old game?

Also, one very interesting this is that I wouldn't actually call Hellgate a clone of Diablo. A clone is a copy; more of the same. While Hellgate is more of the next step. Yes, it has all the things you expect and know from Diablo. Health potions have become health injections, the identification scrolls have become single use identifier units. Items are still color coded, and there are even mods and weapons that can be compared to the weapons with sockets from Diablo. But simply the fact that you are actually in a 3D world already makes you surpass the 2D world. In Diablo you could see everything in a circle around you. In Hellgate you only see what you look at. And if you want to see what happens behind, or above you, you have to actually turn around, or look up. While Hellgate is not the kind of game where someone suddenly jumps out at you (save from the few monsters that appear out of nothing, but do so with a very convenient warning sound,) you actually have to walk to a corridor and look in to see what's happening there and if there are monsters to be found.

I have only tried one class until now, but in that class (the guardian) one thing I really like is that you don't have to target every single enemy. In Diablo you had to click on one enemy at a time to attack it (save for some abilities like the strife shot for the Amazon, or the throwing starts for the assassin.) In Hellgate you can simply click (doesn't even have to be on an enemy) and hold down the mouse key and as long as the enemies are inside your range you automatically attack the next one when the first one dies. Note, the enemy has to be inside your sword range, so you won't go running across the map automatically just because you hit the attack key.

Hellgate also comes with Randomly generated maps (apart from some key locations), so it does have a high replay value and it's not that once you played the game you know every map there is in the game.

In short Hellgate is a fun game that makes you want to play just that little bit more.

Now, I did say that there was a `no' part to it being able to replace Diablo. So here come the more negative comments.

First, it is indeed a great game that you want to keep playing. But with Diablo you wanted to play for hours, and then some more. You could easily play it 8 hours straight. (At least I could.) With Hellgate you play for an hour, maybe two, and then you get bored. It is yet another zombie, yet another Imp, that you kill. While that was pretty much the same with Diablo, there still is that `something' missing that prevents you from getting bored. With Hellgate you do get bored... but then again the game is still good enough that a few hours later you find yourself restarting the game to play a little more.

Missions are boring to the extreme, and some are down to the stupid even. Mind you, there is some line in the main... eh... plot. But the secondary missions. It really is all the same. Go there and kill 5 of those. Go there and kill that monster. Go there and get me that. In Diablo most of the missions were a continuation of the main mission, and even the sub missions (the ones you could skip and still end the game) had some tie to the main story. In Hellgate the only tie is that the monsters are your enemy and you go and kills some more monsters. Boring. Basically, the secondary missions have no value other then to get you some rewards that you are (mostly) going to sell anyway, and they get you to hack and slash some more and gain more experience. On itself that extra hack and slash isn't bad, since basically that's what you are playing the game for anyway. But the fact that there is no true story behind that hack and slash does tie to what I said about getting bored with it after some time. (Until you want to hack and slash some more.)

The maps. (The kind that lets you know where you are, not the kind you play on.)
The mini map that shows what's in your direct vicinity is good enough, but I truly hate the world map. The world map is laid out like a metro/subway map. Now, there is a reason for that, since a lot of the game plays there and you get from one place to the other in subway tunnels. But still. When you bring up the world map it basically only tells you where you are at the moment, and from it you can't really see if you have to go north or south since just like in a real subway map a place that is located to the north on the map might be very well to your south depending on how you are standing (and no, there is no compass.) While that is not a bad thing in the tunnels, on a bigger area that is larger than what you see on your mini map you can actually get lost because the world map only shows that you are in `that' location. Thanks, I know that I'm at Piccadilly Circus, now please tell me if I'm on the north or south side of it, and just where the exit I came from is again. No, I much rather have the map you had in Diablo, the one that you could have on constant as a semi-transparent overlay. But even that you can't do with the world map. Well, you can leave the world map on while you play, or you can put the mini-map as an overlay, but both are not really transparent, and it still is only a subway style map or limited range. Either way, overlay is not doable really because it obstructs your view.

Another thing, and eventually this too ties into the boring aspect, is that there is too much gray. Now, I know that you are running around in a destroyed city and cities tend to be gray. But still, I little more color would have been nice. Every street looks the game because wherever you look you see gray buildings and more gray buildings. It takes away variety and quickly turns the areas that aren't subway tunnels into a repetitive combination of gray buildings and boring monsters to kill.

And lastly, two things that I'm neutral about at the moment of me writing this.

First, the skills are set up very differently from Diablo. With Diablo you basically had to pick a few skills and stick to it; train them as high as possible. Otherwise you would end up being a weak mediocre jack of all trades that would get killed time and again. In Hellgate they turned that around 180 degrees. Here they actually want you to spread your skill points over many skills. And to make you do so you get a huge increase with the first skill point, but less with next skills points. For instance. With the defender there is a skill that you can use that makes you hit an enemy with 100% more damage (great against tough monsters only since reuse is time delayed and you can't use it al the time) The thing is, the first skill point gets you that 100% increase. But when you add a second skill point it only adds another 10%, making it a total of 110% extra damage.

While I do like this approach in general because it does allow you to use more skills, I have now (level 11 player at the moment of this writing btw) reached a point where I have noticed that in actual play I don't use several skills. Now it would be nice if I could use my skill points in the skills I do use and actually get a nice increase with it. Yet on the other side, as I said, I'm not `that' far into the game and I don't know yet what the increases will be. Maybe there are 20 levels, just like Diablo, and then 10% increases would still eventually turn out to be a massive 300% extra damage, if it keeps increasing in increments of 10%. Time will tell.

And lastly, a thing that I like and don't like at the same time. The monsters in the game don't level up with you. Monsters have been set to have a certain level in this or that part of the game. In playing that turns out to be still around a realistic level where monsters that are a little tougher do need a few more hits with the sword, while the base level zombies are by now little more than a nuisance and are cut down with the first sword swing. In a way I like that because it makes you truly feel that you are getting better. In the game Oblivion monsters do level up with you and at a point it just makes the game unbelievable. Here you are someone that has trained to be a master with the sword, cannot train any higher, yet still every robber you come across is just as skilled as you. Come on. With Hellgate that won't happen. Zombies that once needed 3 sword hits to be killed are now mowed down with a sweep of the sword while I don't even really slow down. Basically is shows me that I'm getting better, while at the same time there are slowly but surely popping up other, tougher, monsters that do keep me on my toes.

As I said, in general I like that. But I just wish that they would do something about those low level monsters. Streets are still filled with zombies, and now that I can kill them in one blow they are really nothing more than nuisances that distract me, at most. It would have been nice is they were replaced by different monsters that are a little higher up. Not enough that every monster is a master challenge, but enough to make you want to look out and not let them come too close.

So, where does that leave us?
Do I recommend to buy it? Yes. It IS a great game, and it by far surpasses any Diablo clone created to date. But at the same time it didn't succeed in replacing Diablo as `the game to beat.' It's not Diablo, but it is definitely the best attempt by far. I would give it a very close second place. And if you don't compare it to Diablo, and simply want to know if it's a good game, then I would even call Hellgate a great game.

H.W.

*****WARNING!!! DO NOT BUY THIS GAME**************
It has been announced that the online servers for the North American and European versions of this game will be going offline after January 31, 2009. If you buy this game, you will be left with nothing but a VERY unstable Single-Player version. You have been warned!

Enjoyable, yet flawed
A futuristic London beseiged by demonic forces? Sounds like a fun environment to me, and that's the setting of Hellgate: London, the much anticipated action/RPG from EA and Flagship. Loading up on loot and upgrading your character is the name of the game, with varying classes to choose from as well that determine what view you'll be playing from, including first and third person. The action elements are outshined by the RPG elements with Hellgate: London, but make no mistake that the overall gameplay is no less addictive for it. What really hurts Hellgate: London though is that the game shows off it's best stuff, and then doesn't so anything else to match or top it. It won't be long until the various enemies start looking similar and the environments become nearly identical. There are noticable technical glitches as well in an otherwise great looking game, which only looks better if you have a DirectX 10. The game's story is also worth noting, as it tries to weave in some comical moments that don't really work too well, and all together doesn't really amount to a whole lot as well. All in all, Hellgate: London is an enjoyable, yet flawed, spin on the Diablo formula that is definitely worth checking out to be sure, but until some patches are put out, the game is better left on the shelf.