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Need more proof that we’re thirty short days away from the launch of Hellgate: London? Check this GameStop Deal of the Week flier out:
The official Hellgate London website has been updated with a post regarding Hellgate London appearing in various mediums so close to release.
Howdy folks! With launch just a month away, it appears that some of the Hellgate: London fever is creeping its way into the most unusual of places. Let’s look at Exhibit A below. Yes, those are pictures from the fabulous Nintendo DS game, Animal Crossing. Our very own UI Artist Authority Captain Chief, Jason Sereno, received the letter shown in the picture in his in-game mailbox. Pretty rad, huh?
Now, Exhibit B is a little… jarring. Is this a hint at things to come? While we know some people here are dying for this to become a real project - *cough*Brennan*cough* - it’s nothing more than some tasteful artwork done by, yes, Jason Sereno. Strange how all these things get traced back to the same guy. Is there something you’re not telling us, Jason?
On top of that there is also a new feature on the website:
If you look over in the bottom right corner, you’ll now see a “Talk About This Story!” link. Now you can directly comment on the news stories, providing us a faster, more direct way to communicate with you. Right now this is only for registered people in the Beta, but once the game ships, any player will be able to make use of this feature.
So let’s try this out right now everyone! Click that link, sign in, and sound off!
Enjoy 
The official Hellgate London website has an update regarding pre orders.
You want to pre-order Hellgate: London. You walk into Best Buy or Wal-Mart, and no one knows what you’re talking about. What gives?
Wow, this was confusing lots of people, us included. Apparently, Best Buy and Wal-Mart only start pre-order programs 30 days before a game comes out. That means until October 1st comes around, you can’t pre-order Hellgate: London from them and get your hands on those awesome Dye Kits. Luckily, October 1st is right around the corner!
Also, please be aware that Best Buy will be taking pre-orders in-store and online, and Wal-Mart will only be doing in-store pre-orders. If you’ve been waiting for a specific Dye Kit from either one of them, you’ll have your chance soon enough.
To go with that, there is also an update on the Dye Kits, this time for the Guardian:
Weta Holics has posted up details about a chance to win a Hellgate London statue from Weta Collectibles.
25 Sept 07 Enter to win a Hellgate: London statue at this years’ Rock & Shock horror convention!
The fourth annual ‘Rock & Shock’ horror convention will be held at the DCU Center in Massachusets next month, and if you’re attending, you could win a Hellgate: London statue from Weta Collectibles!
The Rock N Shock convention is unlike other conventions - at this years RNS, a three day event, punters can expect to see killer horror convention events during the day, and rock concerts at night!
The Hellgate: London statue will be on display at the Dread Central booth. Since their contests occur every hour and prizes are picked from an open pool, anyone can win the statue at any time over the three days!
Here are the details of this very cool convention:
Rock & Shock 2007
October 12 - 14, 2007
DCU Center
And the Palladium
Worcester, MA
It does not mention which statue will be in the competition.
Enjoy
GameSpy has posted up a preview of their experience of the Beta test from the views of three of their editors.
Sluggo: To start, it’s worth noting that what we’re testing is a multiplayer beta. You’ll be able to play Hellgate as a single-player RPG, but in this format, it’s more like an MMO: you create an account and connect to the beta servers; the actual gameplay and questing areas are instanced, but connected via hubs where you can see tons of other players walking around, interacting with NPCs, chatting with each other or forming parties.
They test various classes and describe what they are like.
Delsyn: So far at least, Hellgate is playing out like a weird combination of Diablo and Guild Wars (note that this is not a criticism). Your rationale for the instanced zones is exactly the same design philosophy that Guild Wars uses for the choices it made — instanced areas connected by multiplayer hubs where players can get together. I like the randomness aspect of the instanced zones also. That’s something that can’t be done in a classic MMO setting. The sacrifice is that the game loses out on some of the social opportunities of a true MMO (something Guild Wars deals with also).
They also talk about how diverse the experience is for all of them and how varied Hellgate London can be.
Sluggo: There’s no doubt that a lot of Hellgate players will have had some experience with World of Warcraft and other Blizzard games, so the loot hierarchy should be easily identifiable: white items are basically trash, green items are a little more rare and of higher quality, and then there are blue, orange and other “epic” and “legendary” items to be found. I’m not sure if it’s because this is a beta, or if this will be indicative of the final game, but I’ve already had numerous blue and orange drops.
Delsyn: Actually the loot system is a little more complicated than that. Every weapon and piece of armor does different types of damage and has a variety of secondary effects and can be enhanced with found items. A green sword that does corruption damage and boost shield overload may hold a much different value than a similarly priced green sword that does physical damage and boosts strength depending on the type of class the player is playing and what sorts of enemies they’ll be fighting.
One of the things I like so far is that there are three differed “hotkey” loadouts that a player can use to switch between weapon combos on the fly. The problem is that there’s simply not enough storage space for all the junk you have to haul around. The colossal amount of loot and the need to manage it was one of those “love it or hate it” features in Diablo I have the feeling it’ll be the same here.
There is also the inevitable talk of lag and crashing, however we know that it’s a beta test which is there to iron all these kinks out.
Delsyn: My technical experience has been horrendous. I’ve experienced insane lag that has monsters reacting two to three seconds after I shoot them. I’ve been dropped out to the menu more than once and had my password not be recognized to get in. Loading times have been ridiculously long. Worst of all, though, was the fate of my poor Blademaster. I had reached level six in the Covent Garden trainyard and jumped through the portal to back to the hub. Boom, crash and when I restarted, my character was back to level one. Worse, when I try to load her up, the game seems to hang forever, my poor Ilyana trapped forever between load screens. We’ll have to see how this improves in the next few weeks.
PLEASE NOTE: There is still an NDA in effect, and it’s only game companies that can talk about this stuff, not the rest of us in beta. Thanks.
Thanks to kallenai for the link.
Enjoy
Decided to combine these into one post as Im not sure if they were at the same place or not.
EA had a Campus Party in Valencia and there was a Spanish preview of Hellgate by EATV.es, while this interview is in Spanish, you get to see the European EA P.R. Manager although his speech is translated into Spanish 
The part about Hellgate starts at 7 mins 24 seconds.
There is another interview with EA, which may have been at the same place or at Redwood. It’s conducted by ElHabib who is a reporter with Game Trailers, and he interviews Ulf Johansson who is the European Product Manager working from EA’s Geneva office. He talks of Hellgate London, and talks of where it’s based, what it’s like, but there is no new information. He talks of other EA games too, so the Hellgate stuff is throughout the video.
Thanks Destrachan for the find.
Enjoy
Destroyer72 has just pointed out that Gamespot has updated their website with a new preview of the Marksman Class as well as the Multiplayer beta.
This time around, we played as a marksman, which is the other hunter class. The difference is that while the engineer gets to play with a lot of cool toys, such as robotic droids and bots, it comes at a price in firepower. The marksman, on the other hand, is a pure shooter and has skills that are geared toward making the class more lethal in combat. These include the ability to throw grenades, make ricochet shots, use a beacon to highlight the weaknesses in a target’s defense, call down napalm strikes, and much more.
Party combat in Hellgate: London is a lot more visually spectacular than solo combat because there’s just so much more going on. Even with just a single teammate, you can expect a lot of graphical fireworks. Keeping tabs on each other’s status is also easy because an icon and health meter appears in a list on the left side of the screen for every member of your team. That way, if you see your teammates are in trouble, you can try to aid them, either by killing any demons that are giving them trouble or by trying to heal them.
There is also mention of the loot and the crafting system on the page along with a set of five new screenshots.
Bonus points to those who notice the new thing about the skills
———–
Answer: The max is now 10 instead of 5!
Enjoy
GameMeca has posted up a collection of images that portray Hellgate London themed figurines.
These toys have the Korean Hellgate London logo on them, which means that they most likely have been created by Hanbitsoft who are the Korean publishers of the game. These figurines appear to be actual toys rather than collectibles such as the Weta figures, so one can only hope for a more affordable price.
As of now, no pricing details have been announced or plans on distributions and these may just be prototypes.
Thanks goes to Mendax for the great find.
Enjoy
AtomicGamer.com, a gaming news site hosted by the UGO Network, has published a Hellgate: London preview, two pages in length, an HD video of the beta, and five new screenshots. The article covers a host of topics ranging from the basics such as the classes and their respective strengths to how the gameplay feels.
One of my favorite parts of Hellgate: London is that with a scroll of the mousewheel you can seamlessly transition from a first-person mode to a third-person mode. Yeah, a bunch of games have something like this, but many of them don’t handle the switch between the two viewpoints correctly - either the third-person crosshair doesn’t work right, or your guns aren’t visible in first person mode. If it’s not that, there’s some strange thing that makes it annoying to a player that’s used to either viewpoint. Hellgate works great in both modes, and while I felt like I should have been able to throw out some kind of built-in secondary attack or bash people with the butt of my gun in first-person mode, that’s just a holdover from what players usually get in a FPS. The feeling passed quickly.
Here’s an AtomicGamer exclusive clip with a minute of footage from Flagship Studios’ action-RPG title Hellgate: London. Here, we explore an underground train station and find that rocket pistols do indeed get the job done.
Really does feel like the final weeks of pre-release are truly upon us. Soon we’ll be remarking about the old days when news was scarce and we had to walk uphill to school both ways in the frigid bowels of winter. Sigh, good times.
– Scapes
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