Hellgate London: A Deeper Look

In my last review, if you can call it that, my choice and highest character was at about level 14; that was a hunter. Now that hunter is level 20 and I've also made a blade master which has sprinted to level 21. My summoner and evoker haven't really seen much action at all, although the summoner is really enjoying her five fire elementals; everything seems to die before she can actually get off a shot.

The point to this, of course, is that I'm still enjoying this game. I'm not hardcore in any sense of the term, I actually hardly play. But unlike other games, I keep coming back to this one.

A few notes about my system; it's brand new with "almost" the best components on the market. It's a XFX nForce680i LT motherboard with 2 gig Corsair RAM and a BFG NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX (needs more RAM, but I'm a slacker). And that's about where my geekyness ends with regards to computers. I list these items because I'm still getting some random crashes, I really think it's the RAM, but I could be wrong. I've got all the stupid Windows updates and fixes for Vista (what a mess that was, the gaming companies must have wanted blood over that debacle, I mean really, they were assured that Vista would be compatible with nearly everything out of the box; but hey, when you make billions a year, I guess you no longer have to be classy about your product).

Random crashes aside, the game runs great. At least until I put the graphics on full settings this weak and found out my uber machine has a conniption over that idea, so I had to tone things down a tad. Again, I seriously think it's the RAM. But, I get a really smooth game at ALMOST full settings, so that's not bad, and it's a beautiful game to look at; if you can get past the sameness of the dungeons.

So far that would have to be my biggest gripe, in spite of the randomly generated zones, it's not enough. Hopefully the developers can do something about that in an upcoming patch. Part of the allure of video games is wondering what's around the next bend and to see something new.

Now, about that hunter of mine; it started out great, one of my first fps ventures and I had no complaints. But something happened; she started to take a long time clearing zones. The air strikes are a nice touch and do some massive damage, but I have to wait for them to work. I have a feeling I've slaughtered her skill trees. But she can still run well, her unique rifle is awesome; got it around level 5-6 I think and I've been upgrading it the whole time. I was able to add a legendary attribute to it that gives a chance for a rebounder and it procs often. But, like I said, she's been going slowly so I tried something different.

The blade master is FANTASTIC. From the beginning she could clear a zone within minutes. Get ganged up on by a dozen mobs? No problem! And by level 15 she was sporting two legendary hive blades, hot knives through butter is what they really are. One has a mod with exploding spikes, another has a poison nova; and she has a legendary item with a rebounder attribute...or maybe that was just another mod; regardless, three AOEs and two legendary blades is nothing to laugh at. Even at level 21 she hasn't slowed down yet.

I even made a trip to Stonehenge on the hunter. It's a nice place, a real treat after the endless tunnels and burned out streets. She got one of the blade master's hive blades in some wooded area, thank you for the shared stash Devs!

Can't wait to see what else this game has in store for me, I'll be doing more write ups soon; I'm getting the hang of the writing thing and don't intend to stop anytime soon. See you later!