Over the weekend, I had a chance to play Hawken at C2E2 and came away quite impressed. I’ve been a fan of Mech games since the early days of Armored Core, but always felt they were a bit overly complex. Hawken has the fast paced mech combat I enjoy, without having to manage weight, engine power, heat, fumes, and smell. And it’s free.
Hawken is a free to play PC Multiplayer Mech arena-style combat game. That really sums it up in a nutshell. You pick your mech, load up some guns and skills and try to kill everyone before they kill you. Depending on map size and number of players, the combat is usually quite fast paced and frantic. The mechs aren’t slow, lumbering giants. Rather, they’re quite speedy and have the ability. Even the heavy class can dash. Each mech has two guns (left and right mouse button) as well as a special ability like cloaking, increasing accuracy or fire rate. In addition, each mech has three skill trees to further customize your mech. Throw in avatars, taunts and more options that can be customized, and no two mechs will be quite the same.
Hawken is gorgeous to look at. The mechs look incredible, I spent a while just ogling the tech. The animations are smooth, and the environments look fantastic. The game has quite modest system requirements, but really looks great. Everything has a really polished feel to it. The mechs look great, the environments, look great, explosions are huge, and this is in a free game. Everything has a very solid level of polish to it.
The controls feel good. Anyone familiar with FPS keyboard controls will feel right at home. There are some additions to the norm, like healing and special abilities, but they never feel too far from the WASD. I do highly recommend learning to side dash, as it will save your life many times over. I had fun playing it. I died a bunch, but learned how to play, and started getting kills. Each mech feels and plays different.
The game IS free to play, but you can purchase things for your mech with real money, or just build up in game currency. It is a little disappointing that in order to unlock new mechs it takes a significant amount of ingame currency, or real money. I am assured that you can be competitive with the starting mech, but that’s not as fun now, is it? Also, it would be nice to have an option to only play with free players, to assure an even playing field. The words ‘play to win’ start to float into my mind. But it is quite fun to play.
One nice thing about the game is that it is constantly being worked on and added to. More mechs, more areas, more guns and other customization options. It’s only going to get better, why not get in on the action now. If you act this week, you can use code HAWKEN@C2E2 to get a 2000 credit head start. So go, the mechs aren’t going to blow themselves up. Download it for free at www.playhawken.com.
