Hellgate: London Review

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Written by BuckGB on November 2nd, 2007

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The A.I. however is more of a problem. NPCs who try to follow you usually end up looping round you and bumping into things even when you stand still and the enemies seem to know only one tactic, called (charge-in-straight-lines). NPC voice acting is terribly awful too, using over-built British accents to give out one-liners while the actually important dialogue appears as text. Lesson one for developers: Text OR voice.

At one point in the game I found a merchant who behaved especially oddly. I clicked on him and the text popped up as usual, saying (Math is hard. Let's trade!) at the same time as his voice says (and I quote):

(I envy you so much it hurts.everywhere, but especially in my pants!)

Yes, that sentence did deserve it's own paragraph didn't it?

Despite the frustrating NPCs though the game somehow manages to remain appealing. The interface is incredibly polished and easy to use. More importantly, gameplay is fun, like really. It gets dull after a while because the levels are dynamically generated and re-use the same tile sets a lot, which is another way of saying they aren't custom built or unique in any way a lot of the time, but in medicated doses the game is awesomely enjoyable.

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