Date:
Monday , November 26, 2007
Author:
Mark Warner
Editor:
Brent Justice
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Hellgate London: DX10 vs. DX9 Gaming Experience

In 2038, London lies in ruins, but will Hellgate: London also lay your video card to waste? We'll run this new hybrid RPG/FPS through the paces and show you if your video card is up to the task for DX10 in Hellgate!

Introduction

On Halloween, Flagship studios (the same people who brought us the classic Diablo series) shipped their latest game, Hellgate: London. Published by EA Games, Hellgate: London has the somewhat unique distinction of being half single-player action RPG, and half MMO action RPG. Admittedly, the MMO portion of the game is currently lacking population to make it truly massive, but the game is yet young. In addition, online play is free, but a subscription service with extra perks (such as a larger stash and high-level raid content) is available. The game is played almost entirely in the third person perspective, with all of the proper attitude, rotation, and zoom controls needed for such a game. When a player equips just a single firearm (without a shield), the first person perspective becomes available, and the game is transformed into a first-person shooter. Even with the genre-bending, experienced gamers should have no trouble picking up on the familiar "WASD" keyboard controls, and new gamers won't be hard pressed to learn them either.

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According to Flagship's web site:

Combining the depth of traditional RPGs with the frenetic, visceral feel of first-person shooters, Hellgate: London offers infinite replayability with dynamically created levels, monsters, items and events that gives each player their own unique hack-and-slash experience.

And they do mean frenetic. Players will frequently find themselves hopelessly outnumbered by zombies and gigantic demons, with little means of escape or survival but what your sword or assault rifle can carve.

There are 6 character classes, divided into three basic "factions", each with two classes. The Templars, descendants of the spirit of the legendary Knights Templar, can wield swords and short range firearms, and can be of the Blademaster class, or the Guardian Class. The Cabalists are witches and warlocks, and they use magical attacks, calling upon the energy of the demons themselves to destroy them. Cabalists can be Summoners, whom never travel alone, or Evokers, destroying the demons with fire, poison, electricity, and other magical means. Finally, the hunters are the technology masters of Hellgate London. Hunters can be Marksmen, utilizing long-range weaponry, or they can be Engineers, building drones, robots, and even weapons with which to fight the onslaught of demon-kind. All of the Factions and classes work together and complement each other well. There are no character-controlled "Bad Guys".

Technology

Hellgate London uses a proprietary graphics engine developed by Flagship studios. Of the game's graphics and DirectX 10, Flagship says:

HellGate: London delivers an amazing gaming experience to PC gamers of all types – delivering the eye-popping DX10 visuals demanded by the hardcore, and scaling to ensure the masses of casual RPG players can still get the best performance on older PCs.

Essentially, it is marketing babble, but it at least tells us that there is DX10 content.

For physics, Hellgate London relies on the popular Havok engine, now wholly owned by Intel. Havok is used in rather a lot of games, ranging from Guitar Hero III, to World in Conflict, to Assassin's Creed. Network connectivity is provided by Ping0, a service of Flagship studios. Ping0 is in its infancy, but it looks as though it will become a game hosting service and digital distribution system, and not just for Flagship products.

Testing

For this evaluation, we are going to focus on the highest playable settings we achieved with 4 different video cards. From NVIDIA, we are testing with the GeForce 8800 GTX and the new GeForce 8800 GT. From ATI, we are using the new Radeon HD 3870 and Radeon HD 3850 video cards. We are going to show our highest playable settings on all four video cards in both DirectX 10 mode and DirectX 9 mode. We will then show you exactly what IQ improvements you can expect to get from Hellgate London in DX10, compared with DX9.