This morning, I spent some time wandering around London, but I must confess it’s changed since last I went there. The sky swirled with red, and the most oddly shaped airplanes circled overhead. The part of town I meandered through, clearly had seen better days, debris everywhere, windows smashed, not a phone in the place was working.

And all around me, you could see all sorts of drunk people, just moaning and dragging their feet along, just hoping to be put out of their misery. I didn’t feel happy where I was, so I moved along to Holborn Street Tube station, hoping to catch a ride to Covert Garden, where I had spent a far few hours watching the street artists toil away, hoping for at least 3 or 4 silly tourists to show them the money. But the most bizarre thing was, there was no service. Not another strike, I thought, but no, it appears other things had caused the service to cease permanently.

An alternative service was provided to Covert Garden, and when I arrived, hoping to catch some of the performers to laugh at, again not a soul to be seen. And well frankly you begin to wonder how badly the city of London is doing for cash, because this place looked like hell. The roof had gone, the walls collapsed, and no sign of that band we saw earlier in the year playing for customers, badgering them to buy their CDs.

Here, the drunk people were getting vicious so my time here was short lived. The rain was beginning to batter down against as I hastened to my goal. The journey was long and painful, I had died a few times it felt along the way, but around the back of the main streets surrounding the formal glorious gardens, there was something amiss. Something which shouldn’t be there.

A mariachi band.

No, sorry I couldn’t help myself there! Now for those living in London, and thinking “The place hasn’t got that bad already has it?” let me assure you, I was visiting a different London, where minions of evil had taken over, and condemned the earth to ruin.

Hellgate: London.

I had received a copy of this game this morning and well, seeing as it was there, and my time with the gym could wait till later this afternoon, I didn’t see what harm it could be in trying it out on the uber beast, still beaming from ear to ear, over my shiny Adobe box from yesterday and how much better it performed. And I must say, I’m stunned.

Stunned of how the bloody thing stutters so much and thrashes the hard drive like no other game on here, and that includes the upcoming Crysis game which features some of the best visual effects going in a computer game, my god, a man with a tick, Parkinson’s disease, leprosy and chronic sh*t syndrome would function better.

And frankly I’m annoyed. This is surely a sign of bad optimisation as no other game that has been pounced on by the uber beast here at the home of the Lord of Leisure has even tested the rig to its limits, the Crysis demo has come close but even then, there was no stuttering. However, I will say that when the hard drive is not being accessed, the game is quite smooth, however this was few and far between and after a while this got annoying, so I finished where I was, put on some pants and went out for a walk.

If you are wondering what the game is about, there is a evil darkness that consumes everything except Earth because Humans are great and everything. A woman says she has the truth and then you go around various London places doing naughty while jolly angry foes shout “Damn you, you scallywag” and try to hit you.

If you have played Diablo 1 and 2, you know the format, and indeed the team from Blizzard’s nicely done RPGs are behind this. So you can expect the greatness to be continued and refined. But that’s the problem, it’s not like Diablo, it is Diablo, just in 3D and with future-refic guns and things. Even the interface reaks of Diablo-ness, with the bar looking exactly the same, and they have even pinched some of the old sound effects.

The waypoints of safety have been converted from towns filled with amazon women and dodgy used car salesmen to Tube stations filled with people who look like they’re on drugs and the one main bloke who has all the good quests which are the only ones worth going on for the story the others you can do just on the way.

In fact I wouldn’t be surprised later on if Diablo, the Lord of Terror jumped out and he shouts “SURPRISE!! Oh you should see the look on your face, it’s a picture let me tell you! WOOO HO HO!”

And that can be fine, I happen to like Diablo (well truth be told I like Diablo 2, the first one was complete b******ks) so I could get into this game mighty fine if it wasn’t for me busy schedule of lying down and sleeping.

But there are a few things which I want in order to become hooked, first optimise the bloody thing before I come over to all your developers’ houses and nipple pinch you till your ears bleed, and second for Blade Masters, can’t there be more drops for that class? After all, wandering though, it appears everything you pickup, is geared towards the Engineers or another class whose name I forget (window cleaner or something). Be reasonable!

Lastly, there is no way I am paying for the extra multiplayer stuff based on what I have witnessed thus far. Granted, World of Warcraft is a hack and slash affair which takes about 56,000 hours to level up, and happily mugs you of a few quid every month for next to no new content except if you are at an uber level, but at least it does it with a sense that you feel like you get something out of it.

I don’t see that happening with this. I think I would just feel I had been bum raped, and (regretfully for the male population) that’s not what I’m looking for. Though this game does offer one hope for Londoners. The congestion charge is nowhere to be seen. Always a plus. 🙂