Hellgate: London...what the hell ever happened to it?

[The Eggplant]

Pretty sure this thread's going to be exclusively for the PC crowd, correct me if I'm wrong.

So a few years back (2007, if memory serves), I heard about this cool game called Hellgate: London that Flagship Studios had just released. Developed in part by former members of the Blizzard team that developed Diablo, Hellgate was supposed to be some kind of spiritual sequel to that franchise, continuing the whole "epic battle of man vs demon" but bringing that concept into the era of modern gaming...and, incidentally, throwing in a post-apocalyptic London for good measure. It sounded groovy, but alas, at the time my only computer was a lower-than-low-end Compaq laptop, which pretty much meant no playing any games released in 2002 or after.

Fast-forward to 2009, when I graduate from high school and receive a shiny new Toshiba lappy with pretty decent mid-range stats and more than enough oomph to run me some Hellgate. With high hopes I venture forth to my local Gamestop...where I find nothing. Best Buy? Nope. Wal-Mart? Nada. Target? No dice. Direct from Flagship? Aww, hell, they went under in '08.

So my question to any Escapists who have ever played this mythical game...is it any good, and why did it vanish quite so completely? I've known games from defunct dev teams to stick around for a while, so why did Hellgate disappear off the face of the earth?

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

I believe the online play was closed.

 

[Korten12]

I loved it, played it until the very end. Hanbitsoft got the full rights to it now and plan to re-release it in the US sometime this year. I cant wait for it. I sometimes go around and play the single player. I have been meaning to lately. Its out in Korea right now.

 

[Frankster]

Servers died :\ Shame, me and some of my friends have good memories off it, and contrary to what some are saying "crap" it certainly wasnt, especially in comparison to the countless grindy mmorpgs it was competing with. Im normally allergic to mmorpgs, but hellgate was a pleasant variant (wasnt quite an mmorpg i know, but not quite sure how to classify it xP) and i treasure my gaming memories from it.

 

[dariuskyne]

I own a copy of this game. And yeah it's a "spiritual successor" the main diff from hellgate and diablo is fps intead of isometric you still get to mess around with your gear, upgrading it and whatnot, have a bunch of linear paths youy need to do to unlock the next area, etc. overall i enjoyed playing it, to get a copy you'll probably have to hit e-bay or the such or wait for the re-release (if such will happen) unfortunately for now, there isn't any online playing, but the single player's good for time-killing, and general fun.

 

[Reg5879]

My mate plays it on his PC, he loves it, but I personally think it is dull and boring.

 

[thiosk]

Hellgate: New York would have sold better, but it was simply the wrong game at the wrong time.

 

[Signa]

My friend got me a copy and to put it simply, it was shit.

Calling it "shit" may be a little harsh, but I can always read a game well with just 5 minutes of playing. There is something undefinable about how well a game controls and looks that I can pick up on and see if it's worth my time. HG did nothing for my tingling video-game sense.

Hell, I had another friend try to get me to play the free MMO Runes of Magic. I was constantly swearing and hating on it, but I felt it was something I could still play. HG didn't frustrate me the same, but it left me feeling far less satisfied.

 

[Aenir]

I played in the beta. The only fun I got out of it was when the forums were going crazy and I saw a thread titled "What the Hellgate?"

That is the only amusement I got out of the game. It was bad.

 

[Ken Sapp]

I very much enjoyed Hellgate. The realproblem for me came from the fact that they tried to focus too much on the online side of it. I felt it was definitely a good spiritual successor to Diablo. My biggest wish is that they had released more of the online elements to the single player game, such as Stonehenge.

 

[The Eggplant]

Sooo...general consensus is that it's either awful or excellent. Which kinda undermines the whole point of "consensus," but never mind.

I guess I'll file it into the category of "buy if found at a yardsale, ignore otherwise," and just pick up Dragon Age instead.

 

[IxionIndustries]

I heard about it only after it died... It sounded like my cup of tea.

Magic vs. Technology? Check.

Demons, Zombies, and Aliens out the ass? Check.

First Person combat? Check.

Post-Apocalyptic hellhole? Check!

But nooooooo... Apparently people say it's crap, and their glad it's dead.. I for one at least wanted to try the fucking thing.

EDIT: Also, does anyone remember an MMO made by NCSoft? You drove around in cars and shit, and fought eachother with them.. It sounded pretty fun.

 

[The Eggplant]

I heard about it only after it died... It sounded like my cup of tea.

Magic vs. Technology? Check.

Demons, Zombies, and Aliens out the ass? Check.

First Person combat? Check.

Post-Apocalyptic hellhole? Check!

But nooooooo... Apparently people say it's crap, and their glad it's dead.. I for one at least wanted to try the fucking thing.

EDIT: Also, does anyone remember an MMO made by NCSoft? You drove around in cars and shit, and fought eachother with them.. It sounded pretty fun.

Well, yeah, I pretty much felt the same...but given what I've been hearing from here and other sources about how buggy it was (not that the concept or whatever was bad, because that I can deal with, but just how dicey the actual mechanics were), I'm not going to go out of my way to look for it at this point, no matter how much its ideas seem to fit my interests (and they sure as hell do fit my interests...the concept is bloody awesome).

And neh, the only MMO relating to NCSoft that I'm even remotely familiar with is the Guild Wars series.

 

[Korten12]

Pretty sure this thread's going to be exclusively for the PC crowd, correct me if I'm wrong.

So a few years back (2007, if memory serves), I heard about this cool game called Hellgate: London that Flagship Studios had just released. Developed in part by former members of the Blizzard team that developed Diablo, Hellgate was supposed to be some kind of spiritual sequel to that franchise, continuing the whole "epic battle of man vs demon" but bringing that concept into the era of modern gaming...and, incidentally, throwing in a post-apocalyptic London for good measure. It sounded groovy, but alas, at the time my only computer was a lower-than-low-end Compaq laptop, which pretty much meant no playing any games released in 2002 or after.

Fast-forward to 2009, when I graduate from high school and receive a shiny new Toshiba lappy with pretty decent mid-range stats and more than enough oomph to run me some Hellgate. With high hopes I venture forth to my local Gamestop...where I find nothing. Best Buy? Nope. Wal-Mart? Nada. Target? No dice. Direct from Flagship? Aww, hell, they went under in '08.

So my question to any Escapists who have ever played this mythical game...is it any good, and why did it vanish quite so completely? I've known games from defunct dev teams to stick around for a while, so why did Hellgate disappear off the face of the earth?

watch this vid I posted not to long ago. it lags only a lit bit becuase of the recorder.


but yeah Hanbit soft got hold of the game now, its going to be coming back with an expansion known as Hellgate: Tokyo.

http://hg.hanbiton.com/Home/Home.aspx

 

[Qracle]

Hellgate was a very nice game, plagued with administration problems, a terrible subscription model and a rushed launch full of bugs that they never got a chance to fix.

 

[Fdzzaigl]

It was an extremely repetitive game, even for a hack&slash.

I think hack&slash was the wrong genre for it in the first place, when I first saw the trailer and got interested I thought: "Cool a horror mmo!", then I found out it was a hack&slash...

Still bought it, but it was a very generic experience, repeated rooms with the same recoloured monsters all over, even the bosses weren't anything special imo.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

I alpha and beta tested the game...lots of reasons. When it boiled down, it tried to do too much, and did nothing well. It also shipped too early, due to the companies NEED to ship. They just could never get it balanced, never get all the bugs. But playing as a hunter was fun.

Had it been a Singleplayer game, they could've focused on these issues and made it fantastic.

 

[Flour]

I alpha and beta tested the game...lots of reasons. When it boiled down, it tried to do too much, and did nothing well. It also shipped too early, due to the companies NEED to ship. They just could never get it balanced, never get all the bugs. But playing as a hunter was fun.

Had it been a Singleplayer game, they could've focused on these issues and made it fantastic.

It's still possible to play offline and it's actually sort of fun.(well, it could really use an unofficial multiplayer server or something) Also, didn't some members of the development team start the company that made Torchlight?