Thursday evening T3 Entertainment, HanbitSoft and Redbana officially opened the gates to the hellish free-to-play action-RPG game, Hellgate. Currently it's in Open Beta and available to gamers in Europe and North America only (this version, anyway). And as promised, T3 Entertainment is celebrating the long-awaited launch with four special events: the Guild Reservoir event, the Daily Supplies event, the To Level in Hell event and the Level and Be Rewarded event, each awarding top players with valuable prizes.
"Hellgate is a free-to-play, online, action RPG that allows you to play in a first-person or third-person perspective," reads the game's description. "Set 27 years into the future, an ancient prophecy made centuries ago has come true and the gates of hell have opened. Demons have overrun the world of man and roam our lands, destroying, pillaging and killing humans. With the world above ground abandoned, dark and burnt to hellfire, humans are forced into hiding to protect what remains of their race while making plans to take back a world that was once theirs. In the game, mankind escapes to the underground system under the sprawling metropolis of London."
Hellgate was originally developed by Flagship Studios and launched back in October 2007. After the studio went bankrupt, development halted and the IP was seized as collateral by Comerica Bank. Prolonging the game's eventual death, Namco Bandai provided free US/EU server support until January 31 2009 when the servers were taken offline. HanbitSoft finally swooped in, acquired the Hellgate properties and launched the game in Korea after a controversial legal dispute with the defunct developer. The company then secured the US/EU territory rights in 2010.
As reported last week, the open beta now includes two new game modes – the PvP Duel Area and the zombie-infested Cow Room. To download the client, interested demon hunters can head here where there's a list of mirrors and an optional torrent method. The download size is right around 5.66 GB.
