Hellgate: London Preview
Designed by many of the same people that worked on Diablo and Diablo II, Hellgate: London is a blend of action role-playing and first person shooters. The online play is similar to Guild Wars with 'hub' zones where players and meet and group up with other players and instances where the true adventuring is done.
While it is sometimes called an MMO, it is not to be confused with games like Everquest and World of Warcraft. The game is set up similar to Guild Wars in that players have central 'hubs' where they can buy weapons/armor, obtain quests, and meet up with other players while the rest of the game is composed of instances where the true adventuring happens.
The premise of the game is simple. A hellgate opened up in London virtually destroying the city and sending most of the inhabitants underground into the subway system. The people waging the war against the hordes of demons and undead are divided into three distinct groups: the Templar, the Cabalists, and the Hunters.
The Templar
The Templar are the sword wielding fighters who make up the last bastion of defense against the forces of hell. Players can choose to be a Guardian and fight with a sword and shield or play a Blademaster and duel wield swords. Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be melee weapons besides swords, but players can elect to equip a gun in their off-hand to give them some ability to deal with pesky flying demons.
Playing as a fighter can be a lot of fun. You have to get up close and personal with the enemy, but swords pack a lot of punch. The Templar may rely heavily on health kits to keep themselves alive, but they are a very fun class to play. The sword play is pretty simple: click your mouse button and you swing your sword. You can also assign skills to mouse buttons so you can have a regular attack on your left button and a special attack on your right button if you wish. Along with being able to assign skills to the number keys, you can also assign them to the 'Q' and 'E' keys which makes them handy for those using WASD as movement keys.
The Cabalist
The Cabalist are divided into Evokers who are more of your stand and blast type casters and Summoners who just hang out and let their pets do the dirty work. Well, okay, Summoners do a little more than just hang out, but they are going to do most of their damage through their pets.
Magic is fun. The Power bar regenerates pretty quick, so you won't have a large amount of downtime after a big battle. The Cabalists also get a couple of skills to heal themselves so, even if they can't take as much of a bashing, they can keep themselves alive.
The Hunters
This is where fans of first person shooters will have the most fun. Hunters can be Marksmen who wield a wide variety of weapons like sniper rifles, machine guns, and rocket launchers. They have access to a wide variety of skills to help them in blasting down zombies and demons. The other class in the Hunter faction is the Engineer who creates robots to contribute to the battle.
While the Summoner is the true pet class, the Engineer is more of a hybrid. Their pets are useful, but the Engineer remains able to equip a wide variety of weapons much like the Marksmen, so they will be able to dish out a good deal of damage themselves.
The Game
The game is fast and fun and, most importantly, it is refreshingly original. As expected from the designers of the Diablo series, Flagship has combined aspects of two different types of game and created something new. In many ways, the game plays like a first person shooter with fast action and movement-oriented combat instead of the stand-there-and-swing combat found in many rpgs.
But this is not a first person shooter. Players choose a class, level up, gain skill points to spend on a skill tree, find equipment, enhance that equipment by equipping weapon mods, go on quests, etc.
I think the thought dominating the minds of most people during their first fifteen minutes in the game will be: Wow, this is different. Now, different doesn't necessarily mean good, just like splicing two popular game types doesn't always breed success. If you like first person shooters but hate role-playing games, this one might not be for you. And if you like role-playing games but dislike first person shooters, this game might not be for you.
But there will be plenty of people who like one and dislike the other and find that they love Hellgate: London. Fans of roleplaying games can play a sword wielding templar or a magic casting Cabalist and have a lot of fun while those that prefer Quake to Neverwinter Nights can go with a Hunter and have some fun.
The graphics are pretty good, though it doesn't have quite the eerie feel that marked the Diablo series. It will support both DirectX 9 and DirectX 10, so those feeling the need to take Vista out for a stroll can take advantage of some of the new technology -- but expect the DirectX 10 route to take a much heftier system to run. (Luckily, Vista users can choose to play the DirectX 9 version as well, so if your system chugs in the DirectX 10 version just run the other one.)
The gameplay is fast with a more movement-oriented combat. No just standing there and letting the mobs beat on your armor while you click a key on your keyboard. Well, you can do that, but you'll just run through health kits a lot quicker. Hunters and Cabalists will fare much better keeping on the move and dodging enemy attacks while the unload on the hordes of demons.
It isn't all roses though. Flagship has decided to create a subscription system that will segregate players into 'basic' players and 'elite' players. You need not pay anything more than the cost of the game to play through it and have fun, but if you pay the $9.99 subscription you will have access to 'elite' aspects of the game such as new content, new classes, etc.
Flagship is dressing this up as a way of paying for expansions each month and having them trickled down from the development team instead of paying for a separate (more expensive) expansion with loads of content.
My take on it is they simply can't afford to run the servers without getting the players to pay for it. Certainly, paying ten bucks a month would equate to two expansions a year (and then some) and I'll bet my first month's subscription fee that we won't be seeing two expansions worth of content added the first year.
But, that is optional, and I am sure most players will play the basic game until something comes along in the elite version that they want enough to pay the monthly fee. Personally, I think this is one of the areas that could backfire on Flagship. If the fee was more along the lines of five bucks a month it would be easy to swallow, but ten bucks a month for a game that really isn't an MMORPG is pretty steep.
Overall, I think the game will be a good purchase for those aching for the days of Diablo and Diablo II and who have already solved Titan's Quest with every possible combination. But if you didn't like games like Oblivion that gave a first person perspective to an rpg then it might not be for you.
For those that don't as much care for action role-playing games but really love first person shooters, it might be a fun distraction but it isn't going to replace Halo or (my favorite FPS series) Ghost Recon: Advanced WarFighter.
Also, for those that have already made up their mind to try this game out, if you pre-order now at many different retailers you can get into the beta before the game is released on October 31st.
| Tags: Hellgate: London Flagship Studios Diablo | Posted by Dan on 09/23/07 |
| Comments |
|
||||||
| |||
