I'd love to tell you all about the fun experiences I've had with Hellgate London. It'd be great if I could say, that I've enjoyed playing with my friends and being absorbed into dark and sinister world depicted beautifully in EA/Bandai's latest release. As much as I'd like to tell you all the great things about this game, I can't. Because apparently unlike most games in existence, this one truly won't work with anything less than Windows XP.

I know what you're thinking, "Dude, it says right on the box it requires XP SP2." To which I reply, I know, so do most other games these days, but it hasn't before actually prevented the games from working. I have Windows 2000... I realize I'm about 2 full OSes behind on the latest buggy software, but the similarities between XP and 2000 are not so great... you have to try pretty hard to make something work on XP that doesn't on 2000. For instance, the function GetProcessHandleCount? appears in the XP kernel32.dll, but not in the 2000 version. 2000 and XP have like functions that can accomplish this in the PSAPI.dll, but apparently that API wasn't good enough to sell more copies of crap. Is it so much to ask that software not be woven into the fabric of an OS so tightly that its unusable on software versions written 16 months apart?

But none of this is really the fly in my ointment. I can accept that my computer doesn't meet the requirements of some overrated game. Fine, ok, I don't need them either. But their software didn't just come out and tell me it didn't like my OS. No, it allowed me to spend 45 minutes waiting for the damn thing to install and register on their asinine webpage before culminating to a crash immediately when I attempted to run it. After spending an hour digging around on the internet, it was at last revealed to me that all of the waiting and navigating was for naught.

One simple check at the beginning of the install is all it would have took. One dialog box that mentions "Hey, idiot, we really meant it when we said XP is a requirement of this game." I wouldn't have been offended. Disappointed, yes, but I wouldn't feel like my hopes were dashed at the end of the gruesomely long road; I could have salvaged the evening.

Here is my review of the parts of the game I was able to experience first hand:

• Box: Not too shabby. Solid plastic construction. Simple, straight forward opening process. Cover art of Cthulu is a little cheesy though. If you were to judge a game by its cover, you could say there was potential in it.
• Instruction Manual: Alright. It covers the basics, but its pretty brief. The character class descriptions really don't cover key features. I guess maybe the in-game stuff explains things more, but as far as I know every character is the exact same except for customizable hair color.
• Install process: Honestly the worst install process I have ever experienced. 45 minutes of slowly paced progress bar fun. If that gets too boring for you, you can retype your registration key to get your online account started. Seriously, if you install this game, get it going and go for a nice long walk. Do NOT sit at your computer and listen to your friends have fun playing the game online leaving your imagination to run wild with possible character builds and epic adventures. You'd be better off running your fingers over a chalkboard for the better part of an hour. Also, the install sits at 100% for about 5 minutes, it was as if time had stopped and the universe was laughing its silent, evil laugh at me. I made myself dizzy spinning around in my office chair in frustration.
• Splash screen: Nice... quick to load and to the point. No fuss.
• Error Message on crash: Crap. Since they didn't check for minimum requirements, the game crashes with a system error, which doesn't help explain what has happened. Sure, to a developer, a missing entry point means you have the wrong version system dll, but to average Joe Gamer, you might as well have said that there was insufficient Grue to launch.

I give this game a 9 out of a googol. It lured me in with the promise of old-school Diablo 2 fun, and took me along for the ride, but broke my heart when it deemed my system to be a relic unworthy of its hack and slash love. I'll not be playing this game. My bitter resolve to have nothing more to do with this game is matched by my resolve not to have to install XP and go through the excruciating HGL install process again.

The End.