Hellgate: London review

It’s not that Hellgate doesn’t provide thrills. It’s that they’re the thrill of finding a significant upgrade to your current gun. Or a battery or fuel cell that can be slotted in to offer a tiny amount of extra damage. What Hellgate doesn’t provide is a sense of gung-ho adventure, or sadistic bullet-ridden torture. The magic classes, the Evoker and the Summoner (wizards both, the first focusing purely on damage output, the second on controlling demon pets), suffer from the same problem. Their regular attacks come from “focus items” - they’re meant to be crystals to harness inner energy, but they come across as plasma cannons.

It’s much worse when you play the sword-swinging melee classes. The Bladesmith (best for two-handed fast slicing) and the Guardian (takes punishment on his shield) spend most of their time going toe to toe with Hellgate’s legions of bads. The problem: fighting is just a case of holding down the left mouse button and some special abilities (shield bashes, extra-heavy swipes) until stuff falls over. Even then, the baddies don’t even fall over well: stiff, pre-canned animations rather than the glorious mess of ragdoll physics we’re accustomed to.