Now I’m goin’ to hell

A couple of weeks in to Hellgate: London, and I’m still rather enjoying it. I’ve performed a highly complex statistical analysis of what I most like about the game; I’m afraid the results utilise some incredibly advanced theoretical modelling techniques to represent the concept of “fun” in a thirteen-dimensional topographical waveform that might be a bit advanced for you earthlings, but hang on to your hats and and see if you can follow along. Here we go…

There’s loads of loot in Hellgate. I like loot.

Hrm. Maybe it’s fairly simple after all.

Course it’s not just the loot, the general running-around-shooting-demons (and zombies and beasts and freaky floating head things with tentacles that just appear right next to you and go EEEEERRRRRUUURRRURUR) side of things is also good. As a Marksman, and concentrating on passive skills for the most part, it’s extremely FPS-y, there’s only a couple of active skills I frequently use. Loot, though, definitely gives it an “oh, go one then, just one more round of the mini-game” impetus (the mini-game consists of three icons that appear on screen challenging you to kill x of a certain type of creature, or make x kills using a certain type of damage, or pick up a certain type of loot; once you fulfil the three criteria, voila! More loot!) Aside from the mini-game, rare mobs and named bosses are fairly common (well by definition they can’t be that common, but they’re common for rare things. If you see what I mean.), and they explode in a particularly satisfying shower of money and, oh yes, loot! I do seem to be getting quite lucky, though; Hellgate uses the good old green/blue/orange uncommon/rare/legendary loot classification, and I’m pretty much kitted out in legendary gear now, whereas Melmoth only has a couple of bits.

Hitting level 20, I wandered off to Stonehenge to make the most of being a subscriber. It’s fun enough, plenty more demon, zombie and floating-tentacle-head shooting fun. I got the items needed to unlock Moloch, the super-uber-head-demon-beast chap, so Melmoth and I popped in to say “hi”, maybe have a cup of tea, then while there it seemed rude not to unleash a devastating rain of fire and destruction upon him. Unfortunately Melmoth was much lower level than Mr Moloch and scarcely able to scratch him. On the plus side, he made an excellent diversion, enabling me to stand and shoot the beastie for the ten straight minutes to knock his health bar down to around 75%, at which point a bunch of priest things spawned that healed him back to full health by the time we could clear them. Another twenty minutes, Moloch at 50% health, back came the priests… half an hour, 25% health, oh look, it’s the priests… If they’d spawned again at 1% health I think I might’ve gone on a mad rampage around the living room, or at least said “tsk”, but fortunately they didn’t, so a mere hour and a half of constantly shooting the big ol’ demon netted the spoils (of a couple of legendary items for me, and… none for Melmoth. All that +luck gear must be paying off.) Next time, maybe recruiting a few more people might make it a bit quicker…

The best thing about Hellgate, though, is Lucious Aldin and Techsmith 314 (well, maybe second best, after UBER LEGENDARY LEWT). Unfortunately I seem to have finished their missions for now, I’m rather hoping they’ll make a comeback later on. As a taster of the crazy madcap japes these two get up to, if you don’t mind a few spoilers see the quest walkthrough for “That’ll Get Infected“. Already, “bio break” has been replaced in our online conversations with “I think I need to use the privy-OF DESECRATION!”

1 thought on “Now I’m goin’ to hell

  1. Melmoth

    Unfortunately Melmoth was much lower level than Mr Moloch and scarcely able to scratch him. On the plus side, he made an excellent diversion,

    They should make that a staple of MMO classes: Mr Diversionary.

    “Hey Mr Boss, don’t hit my friends, look over here instead! I’m over here! Woo hoo! Look, I’ve got a badger on my head! Isn’t it crazy?! Look! A badger and… ARGHHHH a badger!.. on my head!.. get it off! It hurts…. ahhhh the searing pain! Oh gods, not my orbicularis oculi!”

    Ok, it needs work.

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