Hellgate London: The Best Underdog in MMOs Today

A few weeks ago I took a huge leap and began playing three more MMOs. For over a year the only one I've played has been World of Warcraft, but I was curious. Hellgate London drew my attention because of its ties with Blizzard; the Hellgate London developers were largely responsible for bringing us the fantastic Diablo series and had also been heavily involved with World of Warcraft. Having read many negative reviews about the game I was obviously cautious about putting my money down for it. For months a voice in the back of my head had been telling me to keep an eye on the game and give it a shot. It had so many negatives going for it though:

Unfinished single player mode.

No auction system.

No immersive world to explore freely.

Limited interface action buttons.

Several levels of difficulty that limit player interaction.

And of course a host of bugs that every new game comes with.

These were just a few of the many issues I had read about. Still, I wasn't satisfied. I asked myself, "just how fair has the reviews been, really? The market is dominated by WoW players and ex-WoW players, so what were the realistic criteria for success?" Finally I took the leap.

It turns out that had I actually started playing the game upon launch, I likely would have a completely different view on it. Essentially the game was a failure at launch, as in, it didn't work. That is a hard hit to come back from. Everyone expects bugs, but they also expect the game to be playable. This was the source of the negative campaign against the game and, in my opinion, justly deserved; no publisher should ever allow an unplayable game onto the market. I confess that I don't know the whole story, but come on; the game didn't work out of the box!

Fortunately, I missed all that drama. I did have some issues getting the game loaded, but that may have just been because I was using a new computer that I had just built from the ground up and was still learning it. Once I had the game loaded and my account set up, it was all fun from there on. Except for the odd crash now and then, but again, maybe that's just my machine, I'm only running on two gig of RAM at the moment.

It's a really fun game. Essentially it's a dungeon crawl experience. I haven't grouped with anyone yet, just running solo on easy mode (I'm a wuss) but it's a blast. From the character creation to my current level (14 I think) it's been a nonstop rush; the music, the moody setting, the lighting effects, all lend to a very frightening experience. There is a chat box so in spite of my solo adventuring I can still get the MMO experience by watching the discussions of other players...and gold seller's spam. In between dungeons are social hubs where I can see other players running around showing off their leet gear. The FPS aspect of the game is great. I never really got into the FPS thing, but I loved Portal and Hellgate London hasn't turned me off from it either, given the right pitch, I'll gladly play more FPS games.

I haven't played far enough into the game to experience some of the more persistent bugs that are still in live, but they aren't game-breaking so I'm not dreading them. This game has come a long way from the atrocity that came out of the box on launch day and continues to evolve into the greatness that many people had initially hoped for.

The game works great, has nice graphics, and a dedicated support team that honestly wants to give the players the best game they can. Hellgate London is not simply a quick game build to appease a corporate plan; it's here for the long haul. Give it a shot, $20 off the shelf and $10 a month. If you're looking for something other than the thousands of fantasy MMOs, or if you're disillusioned about the "next WoW killer" epidemic, you'll find that Hellgate London is worth the time. It's not the best and will likely always be an underdog, but I don't think it's so bad being the best of the underdogs.