Hellgate is back! Man, I never thought there would be a day I am typing this out. Ever since the original developers, Flagship Studios went belly-up and the global rights for the game went to Namco Bandai, which some how bought it for fun, there wasn’t much hope in seeing the title getting a relaunch. Korean online gaming giant, Hanbitsoft, got the rights for Korea and subsequently published the game and updated it further with the new Tokyo region. Thank goodness for common sense, Hanbitsoft finally contacted Namco Bandai and secured the rights for an English global server.
I wouldn’t say it is exactly a first impression as the game was available some years back before the official servers closed. Playing as the Engineer class too, Hellgate was one of the first shooter game which got me really pumped up (after Counterstrike). I didn’t like the creepy demon settings with creatures suddenly spawning out from nowhere in some maps, but the cross combination of a supposed FPS and RPG in an online world was very, very refreshing. I think it is still something “new” for most of the players now.
I guess I shouldn’t be explaining too much as I took some videos in-game and uploaded them onto my YouTube channel. Do note that the game is not open world, it plays similar to Guild Wars’ system. Sadly to say, there isn’t the party-matchmaking window found in most current instance-based online games before players step into one. You got to really manually find an active guild to really enjoy the higher modes (Nightmare etc) and reap the rewards. Now to wait for the Open Beta phase…
