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An archived Hellgate: London feature. See the Hellgate Archives for more.

Feature: Gamespy's Hands on Hellgate Co-op Report
Date: July 27, 2007
Source: Gamespy.com

Hands on Hellgate: London Co-Op

It's true; we GameSpy editors sometimes live a charmed life. We can't think of any other job where guys like us would get invited to Flagship Studios in San Francisco to play the co-op mode in Hellgate: London. We've kept an eye on this game ever since it first caught our attention years ago in 2005 and we couldn't pass up a chance to check out the inner workings of its co-op mode.

Three of our intrepid editors volunteered to fight back the hordes of hell. Patrick would be the backbone of the team, playing as a Guardian, master of melee combat and our tank. Gabe would be our Summoner, bringing forth his own minions to aid in our adventure. Li would be our Marksman, raining hot lead down on our enemies with an array of futuristic weaponry.

After three hours of battling demons, knocking each others' gaming abilities, and pestering Flagship CEO Bill Roper with our questions, we wrapped up our session, and what follows are our impressions of Hellgate: London.

Li: I could've played Hellgate: London all week if they'd let me. Typically, dungeon-crawlers aren't my style, but playing as a Marksman made the entire experience a whole ton of fun. I was able to have an experience that felt very much like an FPS while still leveling up, choosing new abilities, and modding my weapons. I think it says a lot about a game when a big first-person shooter fan like me is able to sit down with it and have a great time while Gabe and Patrick were able to have completely different experiences playing as a Summoner and Guardian.

In between all the shooting of demons I was drawn into the game's weapon modification system. Every mod you slot onto your weapons is depicted graphically so your rifles and pistols and rocket launchers look more and more impressive as they get more and more deadly. It's also a great way to show off what you have as people can take one look at your rifle and know that you've enhanced the heck out of it. The system is simple: if your weapon has slots on it, you can enhance it. Different slots take different mods and these mods will do everything from increase your accuracy to adding various types of damage to your weapons. Killing demons is fun, but I'm glad there's also cool stuff to do between all the slaughter and mayhem.

Gabe: Li wasn't the only one to enjoy the weapon-modding aspect of the game, and even though I played a more magic-focused class, that certainly didn't stop me from tricking out my hand cannon to maximize fraggability. As a Summoner, I had a couple of little beasts at my command by the end of our play session, so I mainly attacked from a distance while my minions and Patrick tanked piles of zombies and other horrors. That meant that I spent a ton of time shooting at things from afar, so strapping new gizmos to my gun was a major plus. You can get as intricate with modding as you like.

While it seems that Flagship is still fine-tuning things like drop rates, I almost always had a surplus of handy mods for any new firearms I ran across. I chose to add parts to a crazy kind of electro-gun that would enhance its electrostatic abilities, increasing the chance of stunning my enemies and keeping them at a distance where my pets could chew on them. I also kept a lava-spewing cannon as a sidearm, tricked out with a special fuel canister that increased the chances that my foes would erupt in flames.

Overall, Hellgate: London felt a lot like a super-refined City of Heroes to me; taking a somewhat action-oriented approach to the MMO genre, but then providing enough customization for the weapons and armor to give the game the depth that I always felt that City of Heroes lacked. There are quite a few different ways to mod equipment, and while most weapons come with slots for customizing fuel, ammo or adding magic effects, there are a number of "crafting" stations where you can boost other facets of your hardware. This was one of my favorite parts of the game, because it enables players that are more familiar with MMOs to dig as deep as they like and get the most out of the game.

Joynt: Playing the Guardian was a blast. We had some other options, since there are six core classes initially available in the game, with Flagship hinting at a few others while we were there. I could have retained my martial flavor and been a damage dealer, for example, but we were there both to have fun and to see how Hellgate hangs together in play, even in early Alpha. So we had a tank, a ranged DPS character, and a pet class. Since you're responsible for your own healing with health and energy injectors, as well as a huge array of anti-condition equipment (take that, poisons!), there's no healing class. That really cements the two pet users as the third element of the game's holy trinity of classes.

Part of what makes having no healers work is the context-sensitive shift key. When you're running, it's sprint. You can assign your talents to be context-sensitive, in addition to just dragging them into your numeric slots and activating them that way. Most importantly, when you're affected by a condition (such as that bane of my character, poison) if you have an appropriate item to counter, it will be available contextually. While you're probably better off knowing what you're fighting and changing hot keys to fit the fight, having the shift key always essentially offering suggestions is a nice touch.

After three hours of dungeons and magically protected Metro stations, we'd all hit about level eight. The interplay between the classes was, again noting this was an early alpha build, fantastically rewarding. My Guardian was capable of taking, even in these early levels, absurd quantities of damage. Equally important, one of his early ability selections (level four, I believe) let him simply force enemies within a certain range (and under a certain intelligence) to engage him in melee. And while I did satisfying damage in melee combat, in the more interesting, bigger fights, being locked in melee with my Guardian was a death trap for enemies because that meant Li and Gabe were free to hammer away at them from range. Whether it was a pet that has been Enraged into a monstrous size and power or Li's sharpshooter laying down withering fire, or in real bad times both, our three characters fit together like pieces in a puzzle.

But I bet we could make a solid showing as three Marksmen... after all, if nothing survives to close the distance... hmm.

Li: Three Marksmen! Just imagine the ranged firepower that we'd be able to lay down, especially if we were conscious about what weapons we carried. Perhaps one guy could be a dedicated rocket launcher dude for area attacks, another could have a sniper rifle for pin-point attacks and the third would have an autocannon. If all three selected their rapid-fire ability (a power that saturates the area with automatic fire for a few seconds) they'd decimate almost anything in their path. Of course, if any demons were able to survive the initial barrage and close to melee distance we'd be hosed for sure. It's precisely these kinds of scenario that have got me really excited for Hellgate: London. There are so many variable play styles to try out.

The setting for Hellgate: London also lends itself well to dungeon crawling. Subway, or rather, Tube stations are basically your safe havens where you can barter, heal, and get more missions. Everything else is mostly overrun by demonic forces. One feature I really liked was the randomization of the levels. I could tell that our experience was unique because even the folks at Flagship Studios had trouble telling us where to go during our forays into the wild.

I definitely got a few Diablo flashbacks as I feverishly looked through my loot to see what sort of new goodies I picked up. This did result in me getting left behind as Gabe and Patrick would battle onward while I'd be busy trying on a new piece of armor. As Gabe pointed out earlier, there are also plenty of drops to keep you trekking on. I'm a packrat in games so I can see myself making lots of trips back and forth between dungeons and stations to sell all the goodies I find. I think the feeling was mutual as the three of us even took a break just to look at each other's characters and see how decked we were.

Gabe: The cool part about the Diablo-esque frequency of equipment drops was that, at any point, you could drop a kind of personal teleporter to instantly whisk you back to the last Tube station you visited so that you could swap out or upgrade gear without having to schlep your way out of and back into the dungeon you were fighting in. These teleporters functioned both ways, guaranteeing that you needn't interrupt your dungeon crawl too much.

All in all, I really enjoyed my time with Hellgate: London because it brought back so much nostalgia for so many different games while improving on them. I found myself constantly saying to myself, "oh yeah, I remember that from City of Heroes [or Diablo], but this is clearly a superior execution." Still, I was surprised that this game is still in its early alpha stages, because most of the systems seem to be working very well already.

One last thing I'd like to note was that while I was pawing through my inventory in an attempt to free up some space for some new gun that shot a swarm of angry insects at enemies, Bill Roper mentioned that I could stash the bug-thrower in one of my three variable-loadout slots. These slots (mapped to the F1, F2 and F3 keys) are designed to enable you to quickly swap between weapons (to facilitate moving from ranged to melee weapons), and yet there I was, listening to the creator of the game tell me how to exploit my inventory. It was such a singular experience that I just had to exclaim, "Is Bill Roper actually showing me 'sploits in his own game?!" Yes... yes he was.

Joynt: We all got to talk with Roper about the pricing setup as well. From what I've seen, I think that people are going to be satisfied with either "version" they end up buying. When you purchase the game, you're getting the full single and multiplayer experience that we got to bask in for a few hours. When you go full-bore for the subscription model, if Flagship delivers, you'll get what you're paying for.

The specifics of what you'll get with a subscription are largely still up in the air, but I like what is on the drawing board. Larger storage spaces and the ability to create guilds are gimmes, but new classes and holiday events that go way beyond what you're used to are as well. For, say, Guy Fawkes Day, subscribers might find the entire game world (or select areas) suddenly fire-orientated, with more fire monsters, more fire-type item drops, and an ember-red color emanating from the sky. The current goal is to release substantial content updates quarterly, with the scope of them basically capping at (again, potentially) new Metro stops or parts of London. San Francisco Bay Area dwellers pining for Hellgate: BART/Muni are out of luck.

Li: I have to admit, playing this alpha build of Hellgate: London was more fun than any game in that stage of development has a right to be. There was so much to do and see and explore and the developers aren't even done with it yet. The proprietary engine they've built is fantastic for what it does: provide an experience that is rich and constantly changing to keep gameplay interesting. I'm a huge fan of the overall art direction. Some of our characters started looking pretty damned cool after a few hours of leveling up and collecting items. Hellgate: London won't be taking on Crysis for best visuals but that's not the point. Flagship Studios has set out to create a fun and addictive game for the entire spectrum of gamers, and I think it's well on its way to achieving that. Once this puppy comes out we're all going to have to get a campaign going.

Gabe: Totally!

Joynt: I can hardly wait for Hellgate to ship, but only if you guys learn to play. Honestly, we can't do the whole campaign with the two of you just making me look good.