Visual Versus:Hellgate London VS. The Witcher

It's the battle of RPG's, but this is not a competition of who can collect the most troll skulls or who can do more damage over time, but which game looks the best. These two RPG's are very different in most ways besides the common rules of what keeps a RPG a strong game. Both game publishers don't have a strong history of good looking games, Atari (Witcher) never made too many games that we ooo and ahh over but this game looks simply fantastic. The same goes with Namco Bandai who has a good reputation with most of their RPGs but never have given us a blockbuster production as good as Hellgate London. And although part of the publishing team of Hellgate was EA, were sure it was probably mostly distribution.

Screenshot from Hellgate London

To kick things off I wan't to say that this was a hard choice because the atmosphere/feel of both games are extremely different we still felt it was a fair fight since their release dates are no more than a week of each other. Hellgate is a post apocalyptic setting where (what else is new) you will fight goblins and baddies seen from other genres but hell opened up so bare with me. We didn't expect much variance in the formula even though the setting is drastically different than those knight and castle RPGs, but there is the great difference in large amounts of action that seem to stay away from RPGs.

Hellgate London first person view

Overall Hellgate London has a very likable visual aspect and great atmosphere, plus points for a more original time frame and scenario. The repetitive battle actions tires our eyes and leaves little variance between animations (at least with melee weapons. But the gun play can look great, and makes this one of the more action filled action RPGs, the gun models don't look great but good, and the variance of what the guns spit out is destructive and fun. As for the games atmosphere its very good, the Gears of War rubble streets are very pretty and the buildings look realistic, and I think I have seen enough castles and dungeons in other RPGs to kill myself... so if you tire from visual redundancy than this might be your game. The very last thing to talk about is the creatures your going to be fighting, the badguys in this game can make reference to Mortal Kombat 2 (the Movie) and Clive Barker's Jericho, but if you keep those feelings dormant then you might have better luck getting through the monster list.

Witcher Graphics Card Screenshot

Witcher has a more formal take on this, and although, formal might sound like a bad thing, the Witcher is superior in gameplay mechanics. Of course that isn't what we are here to talk about though, so how does the Witcher look? The Witcher takes this stale RPG type and makes it shine, the cinematic scenes are gorgeous and lands stretch very far without fogging. Although the in game character models are nothing to talk about the monsters are very well done but sometimes unimaginative. This game will have quite a few fans of the genre listening to "Take My Breathe Away," but for a lot of gamers already indulging themselves in greater graphics they might sing a different tune. The Witcher takes no real creative leaps towards any specific area, the lands, buildings, textures, trees and so on are great but have been done before. Hellgate London maybe doesn't have as much polish but for anyone who loves action RPG's they will find that the visuals of Hellgate are more original and refreshing. Still, we can't stress enough how great some of the areas look, grassy lands and swamps look very real and engaging and give you that surreal feeling of exploration as such games like World of Warcraft gave.

Our conclusion is... we have to give it up to The Witcher, this was an extremely hard choice but it really game down to the power of your graphics card. This doesn't always win us over but the Witcher's visual presence is so strong that we have to take it over Hellgate's more original take on the genre. Both games require Pixel Shader 2.0 and Vertex Shader, but you can run Hellgate London with only a Nvidia 6200 to a 6800, while the Witcher uses a much superior card the SAPPHIRE Radeon X1950PRO Video Card. Power isn't everything but the polish that went into the Witcher can't be overlooked and wins this Visual Versus.