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> Results: Hellgate: London
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The ESRB Says
Blood and Gore: GamerDad blew enemies to bloody pieces from start to finish. Mild Language: Occasional use of 'hell' and 'damn' and similar words. Intense Violence: Every room features an arena-style fight to the death! When checking the official web site to figure out what the developers thought this game was supposed to be I came across what they thought about themselves: "the first, last and only voice in the world of action-RPGs." Putting aside the immodest sense of self-importance for a second, that statement pretty well frames expectations for the game - expectations driven by the game media as well as the company itself. Hellgate: London is NOT going to be a cool, fun, but limited little action-RPG of the type we've seen so much lately in games like Space Hack, Silverfall, Alien Syndrome, and the like. No, it is clear that Flagship Studios has set themselves to the task of redefining the action-RPG genre for the new millennium. So did it? No. Hellgate: London is a decent action game that melds action / shooter and action-RPG elements in a wonderful post-apocalyptic vision of London. You can see modern marvels and historic landmarks alike in ruins around the city, but ultimately your are just playing a modern incarnation of the traditional action-RPG. Not only that, but the most anticipated part - the online play - was marred prior to release due to the controversial tiered pay-to-play system. This brought acute attention to the state of the game at launch - which was unfortunately atrocious. The response from the developers in terms of patches has been very good, but the PR has not helped those most likely to be in the segment supporting continued development through subscription payments. You play as a melee, ranged or mage character, and Flagship has done a commendable job of making each have a distinctly different feel. Each class has two sub-classes that branch nicely - melee has straight offense or combined offense/defense characters; ranged has a Marksman or Engineer, with the engineer able to call robots to his aid; magic users are either summoners or evokers. Melee characters play like the typical fantasy action-RPG sword-master we've played before, ranged characters can play very much like a FPS, and magic users have a somewhat combined feel depending on your play style. Quests are instanced similar to Guild Wars, and the travel system is very nice in that it eliminates much wasted time common in MMORPGs and allows you to get into the action much faster. And getting into the action can be quite fun - this is a RPG that is full of eye candy and as deep as a mid-summer puddle after a sun-shower, but the combat is absolutely thrilling at times. It is a visceral blast to run through crowds of enemies - and since you get four types of characters (I count the Engineer and Summoner as the same since they feel very similar), you get plenty of variety in the action. The problem is that this is only fun for a while, and with nothing cohesive to string together those isolated moments of fun, the game fails to hold attention for very long. This is bad for a single-player experience but death for a multiplayer focused game - and worse than that for one that intends to charge for the best features of multiplayer.  
Hellgate: London is another relatively mild M-rated game, but one that still deserves the rating and an Adult GamerDad Age Seal. Why? Because you face gory monsters in brutal combat at every turn. You enter a zone and you meet up with dead or dying humans at every turn - hell has broken free and people are desperate and broken. The cutscenes show brutal death and murder, and the gameplay is intense and visceral. I would still call it a relatively mild M-rated game, but one that is certainly deserving of the rating and the Adult Game Seal.
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