Hellgate also has a remarkable number of different weapons, complete with different damage types and slots for specific upgrades. No special skills are required to add or remove weapon upgrades, and the process is quite intuitive. Figuring out what the stats associated with your items really mean is a little more difficult, and I'm still not sure what type of damage is most effective in any given situation, or if it even matters.
For a game with so much loot, your inventory is almost ridiculously small. Different size objects don't organize themselves, so you're continually moving things around just to make a little more room.
Performance and Bugs
Like most new games, Hellgate: London has some nagging technical issues. The bulk of complaints appear to be coming from people using Vista and DX10. I'm using XP and so far I've had only 2 crashes to the desktop. I can't remember, however, the number of times I've gotten stuck. I quickly discovered that "/stuck" takes you back to the beginning of the instance, but I'm not sure how people new to these games are supposed to figure this stuff out. Rest assured that some of these issues are being addressed in patches even as I write this.
Online Play
At this point, Hellgate: London's online play essentially consists of a multiplayer co-op option for the single-player campaign, with a shoddy chat system and voice support through Xfire. London's tube stations serve as meeting and trading places, from which groups of up to 5 tackle instanced versions of the game's quests. The only mechanism for finding a group is a chat channel, there's no player search function, there's no auction system, and player vs. player combat is limited to dueling with other members of your party. It gets the job done if you want to run quests with a few friends, but it's miles away from the persistent world settings of MMORPGs like World of Warcraft and EverQuest. Naturally, there are plans to improve the online side of the game, including the addition of some kind of PvP, so it remains to be seen whether it will catch on the way Diablo 2 did.
Much ado has been made about Hellgate: London's online play and the optional monthly fee that goes with it. Let me stress that you can play online for free; a subscription simply gives you a few extras. These extras include more difficulty settings, additional character slots, a larger inventory, the ability to create a guild (non-subscribers can still join a guild), and a mixed bag of content to be released in the future. The truth is, right now there isn't a whole lot to subscribe for, even at the fairly competitive rate of $9.99 per month. If you've played through the single-player campaign with several classes, filled all of your online character slots, or you like the game so much you want to start a guild, then you might want to commit to a monthly fee.
The Bottom Line
There's something very good at the core of Hellgate: London, even if it is rough around the edges. The game's combat really stands out, and a few romps through the single-player campaign using different classes could well be worth the price of admission. Unfortunately, the rest of Hellgate is harder to recommend. The environments are not particularly convincing, inventory space is annoyingly small, and portions of the game feel unfinished, or at least rushed. The online component currently consists of little more than multiplayer co-op with hubs that serve as meeting places, although the developers do have ambitious intentions to add content to the game. Hellgate: London is worth considering for the single-player, or even for a quick demon crawl with a few friends, but I'd suggest taking a wait-and-see approach before plunging into the subscription plan.
