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

[Woodsey]

It was fucking awful, or so I hear.

It was one of those rare games you hear about that people are genuinely psyched for, and then falls flat on it's face from bugs and general shittiness.

 

[Blind Sight]

It crashed and burned due to bad gameplay, awful environments, and the fact that they released it too early. It's a shame, their cinematics looked amazing, then a friend actually picked up the game and we realized how unbelievably horrible it was.

EDIT: He's probably willing to sell it too, if you happen to live in the Ottawa area.

 

[Kouen]

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?

FSS Killed the game, Game was too buggy single player wasn't even patched more than twice then FSS got greedy and started doing some subscription shit and added a whole expansion of sorts, yet STILL Neglected single player. FSS Crumbled away and had to close its doors. Bandai Namco kept the servers running free of charge for a time for all people who already bought the game and registered but eventually the Servers was pulled offline.

The IP for the game was bought by a Korean Company (I Forget the name) and made it a free to play game over there. recent news is that Hellgate London will make a comeback this year Entitled "Hellgate: Resurrection".

Your best bet if you want a copy is Ebay you will be hard pressed to find it in any store unless your lucky and find it in the bargain bin.

as for whats been done to the game since the Koreans took it over, well Ive heard its been improved vastly, rebalanced properly this time and added content.

My thoughts on the game was despite its flaws I did enjoy the game in fact I own 2 copies on my shelf and will check out Resurrection when it hits US/EU

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?

Yup That is correct Some Ex Flagship Studio members did start Runic Games ^^,

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

It was not very good...but heres all that i know.

It was turned into a manga (a prequel of sorts that was cancelled almsot before the second volume was supposed to come out) then it was a trilogy series of novels that ending after the third one and last I heard a movie was being made.