Hellgate: London set to make a Halloween debut

It looks like we’ll really have a happy Halloween this year. According to EA and Namco Bandai, Hellgate: London, that drool-worthy action RPG/FPS by Flagship Studios, will start hitting retail stores in North America on October 31 and in Europe on November 2 for the PC.

Never heard of the game, you say?

Hellgate is primarily an RPG set in a post-apocalyptic London. It looks and plays like an FPS, but there’s number-crunching happening under the hood. Yes, you can level up your character and increase stats too. The best part? You can use high-powered rifles and cannons (i.e. big guns).

You’ll also be able to take the fight online, teaming up with friends to save London in a client-server environment and playing through the entire story-driven campaign for free.

Almost everything seems to be looking good, except for one detail: Flagship is offering an optional subscription service which will give players access to additional content on an ongoing basis (such as quests, character classes, demons, items, etc.).

I could have sworn other games offer the same thing. They’re called patches, and they’re supposed to be free.

Bill Roper justified this by saying: “But we’ll be providing a secure client/server infrastructure, 24/7 customer support, and a live team to balance and fix bugs.”

Bill, you’re a game legend and we love you. You’ve played a key role in Diablo, Warcraft, and Starcraft. You’re like a Shiggy Lite! But isn’t this subscription service milking the cow a little bit too much? After all, the concept’s already been done. It’s called Steam and yes, it’s free.