"Let me rend you by the hand, and flay you through the streets of London,
I'll show you some pain, that'll make you plead for death."

(Reprised folk song, England 2038)

All is not well in the London of the future. The city's smog problem has got considerably worse, not helped by a tear in the fabric of our reality which has poured a demonic torrent of destruction onto our plane. Creatures from Hell have come forth, seen, and bloody well trashed the place. There are human survivors though, underground fighters trying their best to take on the otherworldly menace. And they're literally underground, as the remaining civilisation ekes out an existence in the tube tunnels beneath the streets.

Broadly speaking, Hellgate is a shooter and RPG hybrid, although it's a little more complex than this. It offers the player a choice of three diverse classes (with two sub-groups of each). The game plays very differently depending on what you pick, and not merely because of the skills and powers available.

Choose the gun-toting Marksman class, and Hellgate is very much like a traditional first-person shooter. Pick one of the sword-wielding Templars, however, and a third-person perspective is employed, so the experience becomes a bit more like a fighting game. The other main class is the Cabalists, who are magic-using types.

This variety is multiplied by the fact that not only is the loot randomly generated, but so are the actual levels. Yep, you read correctly. It's a bold move and one which led to us jotting down this little note early on in our review: "Levels all feel a bit samey." The game is largely played out underground, and one station and set of tunnels looks very much like another.

However, there's a reason for this randomisation; Hellgate has been designed with online multiplayer gaming in mind. The theory is that with no set levels, no one can gain an advantage by learning them, although we're not sure that the rather bland environment that results from this sacrifice is a price worth paying.

There's a full single player campaign as well, naturally, but as with the Diablo RPG series the focus is on levelling up your avatar on the online servers. And further comparisons can (and have been) drawn because both games concentrate on "phat" loot, and lots of it.

When a big demon is downed, it drops a shower of goodies, all graded in terms of rare and epic loot. There's also a decent crafting system which allows you to customise weapons in several different ways. Collecting cash and rare trinkets and then planning your upgrades is one of the most compelling parts of the game. Plenty of customisation is available when levelling your character, too, and juggling stats and weapon mods to make an ultra-powerful demon hunter is where Hellgate really shines.

While the single player mode ultimately seems a bit pointless - after all, who can you show off your fancy equipment to when there's no one else around? - gunning down beasts online, shoulder to shoulder with other party members, is definitely quite a blast.

However, despite the undoubted fun to be had on a basic level, Hellgate falls down in several important areas. As a shooter, its mechanics aren't completely convincing (the weapons don't seem to have any real power or "oomph" behind them), and as an RPG it feels rather too superficial, particularly with the obviously random and repetitive levels.

The hype machine said Hellgate was going to be a blockbuster. Of course, we never swallowed any of that, but many of us doubtless had our hopes up, especially given the mouth-watering "sci-fi and demons" setting. The end result is somewhat disappointing, although it's still a fairly enjoyable shoot-and-loot experience at heart.