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Like an ancient leviathan that rises from the deep seas to sow terror and discord every 100 years, Hellgate London is once again being revived. Hellgate London was a game with massive potential and wide scope that floundered during the middle years of broadband internet’s introduction. The best way to describe Hellgate London was that it was a first/third person Diablo style cyberpunk shooter-looter.

The Earth has been overrun

The premise of the game is that the earth has been overrun by demonic beings and the risen dead, due to portals that are known as hellgates opening up all over the world. Our journey focusses on London decades after the initial invasion. Humanity is barely scraping by but a recent discovering may hold the key to closing hellgates and allowing us to retake the earth. Enter the protagonist our heroic avatar who not only saves this information from the demon’s clutches but helps reconnect and revitalize humanities last remaining bastions of safety within the English tube system.

Honestly, I loved this game. The options of guns, blades, or magic, the traversal of the world through tunnels and notable landmarks, and the little thrill of excitement at recognizing a game location that you have been to in real life all made this a memorable game. It was fun and engaging despite the clunkiness and bugs.

I think ultimately it was the always-online for multiplayer, the cost and poor management of servers, and the frustrating (although brute force solvable) quest bugs were what spelled the game’s doom which was a real shame as it was overall a robust experience (barring overused tiles). Hellgate London was an excellent first that showed the potential of the concept an expansion or sequel would have been the real jumping off point for the game.

Remember the dead, but fight for the living!

The original Hellgate London debuted on Oct 31, 2007, by Flagship Studios. While Flagship intended for Hellgate London to be an ongoing project and even managed to launch a few updates the plan ended up falling through and the original servers were shut down on February 1, 2009.

Hellgate London’s first solo player revival was thanks to the modding community that had grown up around hellgate. While the original game was left in purgatory these modders grabbed the bull by the horns and applied fixes and modifications that breathed new life into the game. You can see some of their work at Revival. They have continued work on the game to this day.

The next official reboot of Hellgate occurred on November 3rd, 2008. It was brought to us by Hanbitsoft and launched with a free to play model. Unfortunately for us the game was only fully released in Korea with the North American version trapped in eternal beta.

September 2014 marks the launch of another version of Hellgate called Hellgate Global, another free to play. This version eventually launched on steam with the expansion Hellgate: Tokyo and a new hell mode. While I personally found the servers inadequate for mostly legless play the monetization wasn’t too bad by western monetization standards. This version managed to last 2 whole years before being shut down January 2016.

That brings us to today where it seems like the Hanbitsoft solo player Hellgate London game has finally come to the Americas. It is due to launch Nov 15 2008 and it looks like it is using cleaner textures and possibly updated graphic options. 

While Hellgate London has died again and again and again while never living up to the potential it showed I still hold out hope. Maybe this will be the one to drag hellgate kicking and screaming into the world for good.