Hellgate: London

Hellgate: London Hellgate: London - Into The Rift Cris Velasco and Sascha Dikiciyan 1 comment

Please excuse me while this music website becomes a gaming review site!

And you thought Halloween was over! Hellgate: London was released on October 31st, although some stores received it late (or perhaps store employees were too lazy to put it on shelves).

Most people consider Hellgate kind of a sequel to Blizzard's "Diablo" and "Diablo II", although I think they're wrong - it's an entirely different game. You can play the game in third person (behind) view or as a first-person shooter (this works best if you choose the Marksman class). The only Diablo reference is because these are the same people that made Diablo, but under a new company: Flagship.

I'm not exactly sure what the story is, but the game takes place in the future. There is a hellgate that opened up in London (hence the name) and humanity have gone into the subway and lives out in the London Underground stations.

I've only played the marksman class, but it's pretty fast-paced and the frame rates are pretty smooth. Unfortunately the load time is horrendous, but I suspect it is because I have all my settings maxed out.  Before you add that I need a faster computer - trust me: I have a pretty high performance computer.  (Having said this, I will go and check to see if there are new Nvidea drivers).

LIMITED EDITION
What is up with the crappy extras lately? For an extra $10 you get:

• Exclusive useless online-only pet (I'm not that excited about these in-game items)
• A useless oversized box (it's seriously huge, like about the size of a DC's Absolute Edition)
• Bonus DVD, "Making of"
• Soundtrack
• Dark Horse's "Hellgate: London" comics, by Ian Edginton and Steve Pugh. It's probably the same thing as the trade paperback, but smaller (resized to the size of a DVD case).

Really, the only cool thing is probably the Soundtrack and the Comic Book. It seems like they just threw on the Soundtrack as an after thought because there's no tracklisting, you don't even know who the composers are, and no ID3 Tags (all the music files were in WAV at an insane 2304kbps).

The two composers who worked on the soundtrack are named Cris Velasco and Sascha Dikiciyan.

I haven't gotten around to listening to the whole album, but it's pretty safe to say that it's ambient and scores to the game. For instance, the frantic fightings might call for a faster/agressive/loud song, etc.

Since I've only played it for a few hours, I have to say that it's a pretty good game so far. I did notice a NPC called "Steven Patrick" in the game that is supposed to be Morrissey. His quests includes "Panic" and "Some Quests are Bigger than Others". The "Panic" reference is funny because the lyrics goes: "Panic on the streets of London".

UPDATE: Complete tracklisting, thanks to Cris

HELLGATE: LONDON SOUNDTRACK      1.Into The Rift 2.Fight for the Crypts 3.Respite 4.Battle Comes 5.Bedlam 6.Into the Depths

7.Closing In 8.Lost 9.Ambush 10.Remember the Dead 11.The Covent Gardens 12.For the Living 13.Hellgate London

 11/06/2007 22:04:38  vu my♥posts vu@weheartmusic.com www.hellgatelondon.com