It’s not that Hellgate doesn’t provide thrills. It’s that they’re the thrill of finding a significant upgrade to your current gun. Or a battery or fuel cell that can be slotted in to offer a tiny amount of extra damage. What Hellgate doesn’t provide is a sense of gung-ho adventure, or sadistic bullet-ridden torture. The magic classes, the Evoker and the Summoner (w♏izards both, the first focusing purely on damage output, the second on controlling de༺mon pets), suffer from the same problem. Their regular attacks come from “focus items” - they’re meant to be crystals to harness inner energy, but they come across as plasma cannons.

It’s much worse when you play the sword-swinging melee classes. The Bladesmith (best for two-handed fast slicing) and the Guardian (takes punishment on his shield) spend most of their time going toe to toe with Hellgate’s legions of bads. The problem: fighting is just a case of holding down the left mouse button and some special abilities (shield bashes, extra-heavy swipes) until stuff falls over. Even then, the baddies don’t even fall over well: stiff, pre-canned animations rather th❀an the glorious mess of ragdoll physics we’re accustomed to.