EA's main booth at the Business Center was jam-packed with journalists and reporters, but in no time at all, we were able to check out Crysis (2lions will give you the heads up on that one) and Hellgate: London.

I've been wanting to catch a glimpse of this game for quite a while, especially the single-player portion. Not only was I treated to a lengthy sample of the single-player mode, but Bill Roper himself was there to point out all the crucial details and to give a more elaborate explanation on where the game´s going.

Before we headed off into action, we were given a brief introduction about Hellgate: London, most of which I'm sure you already know by now. The presentation kicked off a more in-depth look at some of the character classes and races. Each class and race appears to be meticulously designed and players are free to determine their appearance to suite their style of play. We were given a brief description of the Templar, which stands as the game's melee class. Apparently, Flagship are also very keen on the Summoner class.

Bill kept referring to Hellgate: London as an action-RPG that really looks to make the most out of classics like Diablo and Diablo 2. Since most of the development team worked on titles like Diablo 2, including Bill himself, many aspects of Blizzard's insanely popular hack'n'slash fantasy game made their way into Hellgate.

When the game itself started, we were able to witness the Summoner character class in action. The character was reasonable leveled, which meant quite a lot of skills and abilities were at our disposal. As it happens, they are quite cool, since they appear to rely on some of the features of their enemies (a.k.a. the demons). Summoners are actually able to utilize diverse pieces of demons and some of their powers against them, and they seem to do it very well too. Again, the amount of creatures you can summon greatly depends on how much you've leveled the character. The moment multiple creatures were summoned, each one of them proved to be useful in their own way. Watching the Summoner commanded his minions around reminded me a lot of Codemasters' Overlord (http://www.actiontrip.com/reviews/overlord.phtml). This is a good thing, mind you, and controlling numerous creatures has its benefits, especially when you face multiple enemies all with different defense abilities.

We saw the Summoner moving into action against a larger opponent. Apart from skillfully using an assortment of summoning abilities to keep the monster at bay, our heroine (you can choose your character's gender) went on to activate a powerful torrent, which proved mighty handy in a sudden enemy onslaught. It also gave the character a chance to focus on the strongest opponent, while the torrent kept taking out smaller foes. When the killing spree ended, we happily collected the remaining loot and were quickly on our way...

The fictional setting of an apocalyptic London is looking better and better. The game ran quite smoothly and I was impressed with some of the animations that come with spells (and there's quite a lot of them).

The in-game audio goes along well with the game's dark ambiance. Throughout our little hack'n'slash venture through the desolate streets and sewers of London, we heard a variety of sound-effects and screeches from all types of monsters.

In the end, I asked Bill Roper if they were happy with the feedback that keeps coming in from the ongoing multiplayer alpha. He seemed relieved players are able to test and give their own input on the numerous features before they can be put it in the final game. Many times it proved that the design team would get stuck with an idea, related to a class, skill or weapon, and some of the players' impressions would help sway the decision towards a more satisfying gameplay experience.

-- Ure 'Vader' Paul

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