Hellgate: London Hunter Previews

The weekend brings us a handful of new hands-on previews detailing the Hunter profession in Flagship Studios’ Hellgate: London. The first article is at GameSpot:

The hunter’s basic statistics include accuracy, concentration, willpower, and stamina, which can be increased when you gain experience levels to improve your abilities as a marksman and as a scout. The class possesses several basic skills, as well as three primary skill trees: weapons (which include skills like increased critical-hit damage and the ability to make fired shots ricochet and damage nearby enemies), devices (such as automated drones and walking turrets that follow you to provide backup fire), and stealth (including skills that let you temporarily cloak yourself or reduce your chances of being detected on the move). While the templar class is based on the ancient order of the Knights Templar, the hunter is clearly the most technologically advanced profession in the game. Hunter characters start off wearing jointed metal power armor and look for bigger and better conventional armaments, like assault rifles and submachine guns equipped with explosive incendiary rounds.

The second is at GameSpy:

Templars and Cabalists are both pretty out there, but Hunters are a bit more down to Earth in concept. They’re simply guys in power armor that brandish big ole’ guns. No harnessing of infernal energies, and no sword consecration — just point, and shoot. That said, they do have some pretty cool abilities. The fit into Hellgate’s occult/alternative science milieu by means of the Area 51-style technology they have access to, which enables them to do some pretty cool stuff. There wasn’t a whole lot of time to delve too deeply into their skill trees, but a few of the early choices available to Hunter characters suggest a slippery, long-range play style.

The third is at IGN PC:

Playing a Hunter wasn’t completely different than the experiences we’ve had with the other factions at this point. But as we mentioned earlier, we’ve only played the beginning portions of the game with any of the factions before many of the skills and weapons begin to differentiate the factions and classes. Once nice thing about the early Hunter game is that one of the possible weapon combinations in place at the moment can dispatch enemies from a pretty decent distance. The second weapon we had the chance to check out was a flame shotgun type of weapon without the same range but incredible power to destroy groups of enemies in one or two shots.

And the fourth is at 1Up:

While it wasn’t in this version, we learned a little about how the game will start. One of the things the Diablo games did so well was ease players into the game so smoothly that before you knew it you were rocking along through the levels and it was well into the wee hours of the night. Flagship intends accomplish the same effect with Hellgate: London. The plan is to drop new characters on the war torn streets of London where you almost immediately get attacked. With a quick taste of combat, you’ll run across fully buffed, high level non-player characters from each of the three possible factions, have a chance to check them out, and then select which you want to be.