Hark - It's Hawken

From the Beta:

• + Adrenaline-pumping action of explosions, dust, and smoke.
• + Full customization of armaments to fit every play-style.
• + Combat takes place in 3-D space; levels above and below the player are planes of fighting.
• + Feel like piloting a mech when moving.
• + Great aesthetics of a dreary sci-fi world.
• + Free to play!
• - Some better upgrades that affect play can be bought.
• A fix: Use Valve’s game model of making anything that can be bought an aesthetic feature only.
• - No instruction is given as to what elements are in the HUD.
• A fix: Include, in the Options menu, a simple screenshot of the HUD with all features tagged.
• - Some game modes are not intuitive for what is supposed to be done.
• A fix:  At the start of joining a match, display a quick-but-detailed set of what to do in a game mode.

Hawken can’t go Gold soon enough.  It’s free-to-play, looks great, gives superb action, and – possibly the most important note – it’s a mech game!  But what’s the meat of the game?

Jumping in, the first thing I noticed was the HUD system.  Dials, gadgets, and meters are built into the mech canopy; however, only through experimentation could I figure-out exactly what everything does.  There is not a starter-guide to what everything represents.  The saving grace is that 5 minutes of gameplay stressed every point of the system, showing-off the full limitations of my mech.

In every match, firing and getting fired upon was enjoyable.  The rattle of machineguns, the pop of rockets, and the clink of grenades were full of life.  Flashes, smoke, and explosions lent themselves to visually, acoustically, to an aesthetic of the dystopian world of Hawken.  Activating jump-jets gave me an excellent view of the entire playing field through my mech’s cracking canopy.

Cracking canopy?  Smoking engine?  Just taking too much damage?  Hawken gave me the ability to repair that damage.  Shutting-down my mech, a little drone pops-out to buff my combat machine.  However, the ability was balanced, as I couldn’t move when being repaired, and I couldn’t act right away if a rocket was aimed at my face.  The only issue seemed to be that it took me out of the action for too long, breaking the flow of gameplay.

Damage could come from above or below, left, right, forward, or backward.  Hawken delivers play in 3 dimensions; jump-jets give a quick traversal option for handling the many tiered arenas of the game.  I never knew when the next unseen baddy would take a potshot at me; such a setup made me think of strategy and tactics in a whole new way.

To cut my gushing short, Hawken is a fantastic game, not even getting out of Beta.  Despite no exposer to, let’s say, a story while in-game, the mechanics are solid, the visual quality is on a professional level, the sound is vibrant, and the gameplay is quite satisfying.  I had a great time playing this game; I hope you get a chance to jump into this mech-genre reviving title sooner rather than later!