Hellgate:London – WilfridWong.com

Leave Diary D1 – A Day of Recovery and Into the Hellgate Abyss

Since I am not taking an oversea holiday during my 2-week long holiday, I thought it is a good idea to start a journal. Otherwise, two weeks would go by and I would have done … nothing.

Since last Monday, I have not been feeling well. Doctors said it was viral fever. That is to say, no antibiotic required.

I am not a fan of antibiotic. But I have to admit the last time I was sick – not too long ago – and I was given antibiotic. I had recovered within days.

The perk of being sick – if I could even say it is a perk – is that I get to sleep a lot. My work is demanding (whose isn’t in fact here in Singapore?). The hours are long. There isn’t much time to unwind. And even in the middle of the night, I would wake up stressing over something at work. Since I am not feeling well and I am on a 2-week long break, I get to sleep a lot. So much so that my head it aches.

And that feels so good.

Long story short, I woke up in the morning feeling terrible. I went to bed at night feeling fine. So it was a day of recovery, a reminiscence of that feeling of feeling hopeless when you are in a tough situation and when you get out of it, you don’t even recall the hard time.

My summoner has taken down Oculis in nightmare difficulty.

Last entry I have talked about Hellgate: London getting a release in Steam. It is a 11-year old game – one that I was used to play in between jobs. I did not get to finish the original game. Since its recent release, I have spent close to 90 hours playing it. For a game that I have paid less than S$10, it is money well spent.

This version of the game does have it issues. But by and large, it runs. And it is perhaps the best and the most complete version that this franchise has, which includes:

Hellgate: London – completed.
Stonehenge – almost completed.
Second Attack – completed.
Abyss – completed.
Hellgate: Tokyo – not started.

So I Asked David Brevik What He Thinks of Hellgate: London 2018 (Steam Version)

I hope this is not an out-of-season April Fool’s joke. In two days’ time, Hellgate: London will be relaunched in Steam. Or at least a form of its previous incarnations.

Hellgate: London was released back in October 2007, a game developed by the ex-Blizzard team including David Brevik. I had a lot of fond memories with the game even though it had a really rocky start.

I remember having bought the game on day one, eager to get into “London” and to witness hell breaking loose. The game was buggy back then. I have made some progress and within days (or hours?), they have to deploy a patch (was it 1.04?) that wiped off all the progress. I kept playing for quite a while. When was it? What was I doing back in October 2007?

To answer that question, I looked up World of Warcraft in Wikipedia.

The Burning Crusade was launched back in January 2007. I vividly remember introducing the game to my wife thanks to the beautiful blood elves being introduced in that expansion. That was after my wife has passed the Financial Risk Management examination. I was pretty much addicted to WoW and I would imagine playing Hellgate: London as a filler. Because by then, I might have well been leveling my “alts” in WoW. Or doing some mindless dailies.

What did I like about Hellgate: London?

In a strange way, the realism of venturing into a lifeless city (which is kind of the plot as the city was overrun by demons). There was danger everywhere (yup, lots of death). I got to control the left and right guns with the left and right mouse buttons. The big demons were scary. Their number could be overwhelming. And it was satisfying just to survive, perhaps with a few good loots as souvenirs.

They say third time is a charm. I sure hope so. The first time Hellgate: London was launched, it has failed. Then a Korean company bought that over and turned that into an MMO with microtransaction. That didn’t work well. Now, the same Korean company is reviving it into a single player game. I do not know how much of its former self still lives in this latest iteration. I will have to wait for two days and see if it is not an April Fool’s joke.

Back to the title of this entry. I am in the Discord channel of It Lurks Below, the latest game created by David Brevik. And I asked him how he feels of his game coming back to life through Steam.

And he responded as follows.

I’m pretty excited about it. I’m happy that people will be able to play it again and a new generation of gamers will get a chance to experience it, but I am not sure how it stacks up to what I made vs. the changes they made once it was made for Korea/Asia. I don’t know how grindy/mtx/etc it will be now. I’m still happy though!

Mr. Brevik has a point. Rest assured that I will report back in after I have experienced what at best would be a fragment of my fond past in two days’ time.