RPG action... in London!
First and foremost, despite the action side of the combat, Hellgate: London is an RPG. So right from the start you’ll be deciding which class and faction you’ll be playing. In the game these factions have combined to create one force fighting the demons, but each has two classes attached, so your factions is decided by how you want to play the game. Templars are the melee experts and are the original Knights Templar, updated with modern, near-future in fact, weaponry. Cabalists are the mages of the Hellgate: London universe, with a heavy emphasis on magic and summoning. Lastly, we have the Hunters; these are long-range weapons specialists, good at picking off demons from a distance.Each factions has two distinct classes, which, despite there only being six in total, should cover everyone’s favourite RPG roles. The Templars have the Guardian, a defence orientated class that goes heavy on the armour and shields but can deal out some devastating damage at very short range, hand to hand combat. Then there’s the Blademaster, less armoured but fast and nimble, this guy (or girl) goes in with an edged weapon in each hand ready to mince demons… stick and move, stick and move!
Click for larger imageIn the Cabalist faction you’ve got a darker side to Hellgate: London with these guys drawing on the dark powers unleashed from the Hellgate to use them against the nasties. The Summoner is a tricky one to play in the solo campaign as they rely on creating and controlling demons summoned from the Hellgate. A Summoner can be a damn useful addition to a party but at low level you can find yourself taking hits if you’re not careful but you do have the ability to heal yourself and others right from the get go.. The Evoker is more your out and out combat mage, which, through some careful balancing, isn’t too weak to make a satisfying character to play.
But my real favourite is the Hunter Faction, which are the weapons guys using your more traditional rifles and explosives. The two classes here are the Marksman, who works best by picking off targets at long range but has enough oomph to get out of close-quarter scrapes with the same weaponry. Then there’s the Engineer, who’s a bit like a mechanical equivalent of the Summoner but he builds and releases bots and drones to do the fighting for him, backed up by his own small arms fire.
Click for larger imageAs per pretty much every recent RPG, in the character selection screen you can do all the usual stuff like name your character, alter their facial features and overall size etc. But unlike Oblivion where you choose a class by how you play or Dark Messiah where you can even change classes by levelling up certain skills and attributes, Hellgate: London locks you into the class you select from the very beginning.
What this means for the indecisive among us is that you’ll have to play a while with a character and if you don’t like it, well, you gotta start again. But it looks like EA have thought of this with the very first mission, which sees you picking your way through some rubble strewn streets populated with low level, easy zombies. The level is just large enough to let you get to grips with your character and though you’ll obviously be lacking in the potential powers of being a higher level, you can get a good idea of your chosen class skills and abilities and if you don’t like your pick, you’ve not wasted too much game time to go back and have another crack at a different class.
