And you thought the tube was bad now?
When I first saw screenshots for Hellgate: London all that time ago my first reaction was one of apathy. Oh look, another shooter based on fighting demons, this time set in London. Whoop. But that’s not really a fair assessment as Hellgate: London does feature demons… and lots and lots and lots of them but it’s not a shooter. It’s an RPG with both single and multiplayer campaigns, a fully fledged levelling system with skill tree thingie and loads of pick-ups, upgrades and modifiable stuff. So think S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and you’ll be along the right lines.Hellgate: London is set in a ruined London of 2038, the devastation caused by the titular Hellgate opening up in 2018 and spewing forth all manner of demons from Hell. An unprepared human race was thoroughly beaten with just the Knights Templar, still in existence but a shadow of its former power, offering up enough resistance to allow refugees to escape into the London Underground tube system, which are mysteriously impervious to demon attack.
You play the role of a fighter in the (literally) underground resistance, newly suited, booted and geared up to try and prevent ‘The Burn’, a process in which Earth is turned into a flaming Hell. Using the tube system to travel and occasionally moving over ground to jump between stations, you’ll complete tasks and side quests in an effort to drive the demons back into the Hellgate and close it once and for all.
Click for larger imageSounds noble, don’t it? Read on.