Hellgate: London

Oct 31, 2007

There’s a grand, almost royal disappointment lurking at the heart of Hellgate. It’s a disappointment wrought from the strange collage of game styles it’s inspired by. It’s both a fast-paced first-person shooter recalling Half-Life and Call of Duty, and a simple action-RPG like Diablo.

On paper this could, and should, be one of the great addictive pleasures of our time - an engrossing treadmill of leveling up and upgrading your weapons, skills and items, mixed with the violence and feedback of the best action games.

Instead, it’s a game in which you point hose-pipe weapons at fat zombies and stunted demons until they explode in a convulsive fountain of gore and inexplicable loot. It’s a game where even the most basic movement feels stilted, the most basic violence unimpressive and the Londoners you meet on the way recall the worst Dick Van Dyke accents.