17th February 2008.
Hellgate: London
Codemasters
PC DVD Platform
 When a game has a tagline of “Remember The Dead. Fight For The Living” you get a slight inkling of what it’s going to contain, and that is (hopefully) plenty of blood and lashings of gunplay. And Hellgate: London has bucketloads of both. It’s a first person RPG which strives to bring something different to this overblown gaming genre. It promises to combine the customability of role-playing games with all the action that a first person shooter contains. But does it?
The game is set in the near future where mankind is fighting a losing battle against a demon infested London circa 2038. A massive gash (insert own rude joke here!) in the fabric of our reality swirls and churns, dominating the horizon near the Hellgate as it blends into a permanently darkened sky. The Invasion, the unspeakable cataclysm that befell London a few years previous, has engulfed all humanity. The Powerful nations of man were eradicated and the decades-long process called The Burn – the alteration and assimilation of our world into theirs – has begun. A woman named Jessica, a direct descendant of a hero who first battled the evil hoards decades before, is the leader and you witness her ascension during one of the best opening pieces of animation I’ve seen for a game in a long time. It’s truly cinematic and really does grab your attention as it’s highly dramatic and quite sensational. The orchestral score is very subtle but straight to the point.
Before you get to battle the hideous hoards you must choose who you are going to be and there are three separate and very different factions, Templar, Cabalist and Hunter. After going thorough this quick selection process (choosing special ability, hair colour etc) you begin the game with a training mission. After this you’re into battle and the game proper. As the booklet states there’s really four main segments to the game; learn how to travel undetected, forge high strength weapons, harness arcane powers of magic and close the Hellgate destroying the demons forever.
 The whole piece is thoughtfully set out; some of the background scenery is just gorgeous but incredibly gothic and coloured with a million shades of grey. The character interaction is pretty good and an improvement on some RPG’s that I’ve played recently. Talking of characters their design is on the whole good but at times a little basic and predictable; the high-end detail is left to the baddies who look really gruesome. The rendering is very quick making it flow without any judder or jumping, this helps you to get lost in the darkness of the piece.
As you’d expect there’s a shed load of spells and items to swap and choose between, but not too many to get mixed up with. That's a fault with some RPG games, there’s just too much to do and perform. A great procedure to look out for is the hand-to-hand combat fights when you really do give your mouse a pounding. You can do this with a sword in your hand but bare-fisted is more fun.
There are a couple of downsides such as the length of time it took to actually load up the game and it does suffer from being a bit “samey” in places. The controlling system is a little complicated at first but after a few hours you do get used to it. During the first couple of sections you get small hints on screen about certain key options so if you’ve not read the accompanying book its best to scan it before playing.
On the whole it’s a good game with enough story to keep you going back to it. I don’t think it’ll take too long for experienced gamers to finish but there’s enough there for new comers to the genre to get their hands dirty and earn their RPG colours.
James.
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