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Demons are presumably intimidated by body
armour that looks like it got nicked from a
street racing workshop
Aw, Hell!
Dispense
with the malarkey: all you need to know is that it’s 2038 and
demons are spilling out from hell like explosive diarrhea. You’re
part of the remains of secret order of demon hunters called the Templar
and you’ve just been tapped to save the world, kick demon butt and
evict them from Earth. When you begin the game, you get to choose one of
three broad professions of which each has two subclasses. Boiled down,
you get analogues to Diablo II – a melee class, a tank, a wizard
style nuker and in a twist of sorts, an FPS
style of play using big guns with a class called the Hunters.
Once
you’ve got that sorted out, you’re thrown into a basic
tutorial that forms the beginning of the game. This gradually leads to tougher
quests that have you gallivanting all over the London train station
network, which act as ‘towns’ of sorts as you do the dirty
work of the Templars. You also get to engage in
the odd random mission or two. These mostly fall into Fed-Ex, kill X
number of creatures, obtain Y number of some part of their anatomy or
just kill the odd boss or two. The main unique feature for Hellgate, in addition to the usual varying difficulty
levels like Hardcore and the game’s equivalent of Hell (literally)
mode, is that the game randomly generates a map of the area the first
time you enter it. This means that you can end up with a unique map when
you replay the game.
The Hunter class consist of ex-Special forces operatives
who use guns with neon discoball bits and an
FPS perspective to wipe out the demonic hordes
The
drill is familiar for most RPG gamers – slaughtering hordes of
demonic fauna to snag experience points which then goes towards leveling
up your character and giving him better kit. Every time you level up, you
get allocated a bunch of points which can then be added to a skill tree
for each character class and baseline physical stats. As you commit
demonic genocide, you’ll also come across loot dropped from their
flaming carcasses.
Taking
a leaf from MMORPGs, Hellgate
has a subscriber system which allows players to pay a regular monthly fee
for extra content and access to better subscriber only random loot drops.
The latest patch however hasn’t been added to the local Asian
server and a subscriber option in Malaysia isn’t available
yet.
The demonic hordes must have generous life insurance
policies because they just keep swarming you without seeking cover like
kamikaze lunatics
As
a single player game, it’s a fairly enjoyable romp through familiar
territory, especially if you’ve played Diablo II. Each of the
classes provides a unique play experience. Playing through the
multiplayer aspect of the game is similar to the single player aspect as
you’ll have to pass through the same territory, quests and stories,
save for better loot and also having other players join you on occasion.
Quests are instances that are randomly generated just for you with only
those joining your party being able to join the same instance.
Replayability is extended with the random map generation though
this feature is occasionally wonky with unplayable or botched maps.
Graphically, the game is decent though unexceptional with certain parts
of the game having bland, flat swathes of texturing. This however, is
somewhat understandable seeing as the game is optimised
for online play.
As
it stands however, it’s plagued by a host of bugs like the
aforementioned wonky random map generation, memory leaks, random crashes
and glitches that are being fixed in incremental patches. But for what
it’s worth, it’s a somewhat entertaining romp if you go in
without expectations.
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