So, months of hearing about the spiritual successor to Diablo 2 and I finally get to download the Hellgate:London demo. I hadn't spent too long on D2, truth be told, but enough to get an idea of what made it more addictive than banana chips with prawn pickle to a hell of a lot of people. Anyway, this demo is a fairly short affair, giving the choice of two character classes – Blademaster and Marksman. It offers 4 sidequests, around that many areas to explore and caps off at level 5.

Initial thoughts - this is a really shoddy game on a technical level. Not the “Ooh the antialiasing at x2 isn't really effective”; more like “My fucking character just walked right through another person! Are you holograms?! Every single one of you?!” That's right, basic clipping doesn't seem to have figured among the game's priorities. Characters go through each other, swords go through walls like goddamn lightsabers (without the necessary burn trail to pull off that excuse).

In other parts, jumping critters freeze in mid-air and after staying suspended there for a few seconds, reappear somewhere else. I'm pretty sure it's not part of their innate BAMF-ing skills. Your character's shadow could decide that it needs some time alone and just detach itself from your feet for a bit while you hover above the ground like The Incredible Helium Man.

Second, their random 3d level generation is an achievement of sorts, but it suffers from one major flaw – instead of one well-planned handmade level, we have a randomly generated level with generic props scattered all over the place. The only distinction I could make out was between indoors and outdoors, and they were both boring, same-y and slipshod. I can't see the later levels improving on this much, seeing that virtually every promo I've seen for the game has similar environs around.

With regards to the interface, I've become used to the quick-n-easy Titan Quest, and had to remap a few of the keys so they weren't too much of a stretch. Some new options in the inventory screen mean that you can't just right click to equip and sell stuff, and you have to shift+right click for selling, and hold right click and then choose a sub-option to equip. Not a big deal, but it's annoying. Let's see if it grows natural with more time. Another gripe involves this thingy called the nano forge – it upgrades items when the right resources are used along with it. Now you can only drag items from your inventory, not the stuff you're carrying on your person. Come on, if there's an item you want to upgrade, it's going to be one you're using regularly. Now you have to drag it from your body into the inventory and then use the forge. Again, not a huge problem, but still irritating and unintuitive.