By Jim Rossignol on August 29th, 2011 at 8:38 am.
We’ve seen quite a bit of footage of Hawken in action so far, but Adhesive send word that their first true teaser trailer for the beautiful mech-combat game has arrived, and you can see it below. It sets up the action with a bit of story, and then there’s some lovely footage of the robots leaping about and blasting the hell out of each other. More on this game soon, I hope, and definitely another trailer at the end of the week, according to Adhesive.
Is it multiplayer only? If so, what a waste of a great potential. This could be the new Heavy Gear or Mechwarrior if it featured a nice story and campaign.
Look at Shattered Horizon. Awesome game which none plays because the multiplayer crowd is too busy with TF2, Couter Strike, Call of Duty no X or Battlefield and is too close minded to try out anything else. SH being MP only is what killed it.
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Yes, it is MP only. I agree that MP-only is generally a bad idea, especially for small studios/indies, but this might just work.
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SH could have been a nice Single player game indeed. It has a lot of nice features with their zero gravity combat and really fitting graphics.
@Jim aww too bad, I’m a huge fan of the Mechwarrior series, Hawken looks pretty up to-the-job of delivering a nice single player.
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Well that’s depressing, I was looking forward to this one.
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I believe the devs said they didn’t have the resources to work on both, choosing multiplayer to focus on. I can’t recall if they want to do single player later on.
And although I mainly play single player, I can imagine why. The multiplayer combat shown so far looks pretty good.
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Pity. Lovely looking environments (pure out there CA brought to life), but just being multi-player arenas is such a waste in a way as no ones ever going to pause for thought to take them in.
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I support this sentiment. In competitive multuplayer, when you need human player on both sides, indies basically have no chance because their games fail to reach critical mass. I believe that for independent developers, it’s a safer bet to make a singleplayer or co-op title (unless they’re going to fund their game via microtransactions, and we know how well that tends to go).
It’s a huge, huge, huge – enormously huge – shame that no-one plays Shattered Horizon anymore. I’d buy it for it’s zero-gravity combat, but what’s the point if nobody is playing it anymore?
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You know how the pros (Blizzard) make games. Multiplayer first, then singleplayer. Best way to go if you have the rescources. “if” …
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Someone should arrange and rps event for SH.
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They desperately need to look at some kind of F2P business model, otherwise this game will be dead in a month. Just look at Section 8: Prejudice. Launched on three platforms, well reviewed AND with a fairly large advertising budget, and NOBODY PLAYED IT.
Now you look at Global Agenda – no problem finding a match there at any time, despite apparently the entire internet saying it’s the worst thing ever made.
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Global Agenda is actually really quite fun.
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I agree with OP — I’m sad panda that this is MP only…
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@Slayercake – I like it too. It’s just that most people seem to hate it. Doesn’t seem to have done too badly since going F2P though.
So, yeah – they need to look at a different business model, unless they don’t want anyone playing this game in a month.
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Thing is, if people buy this game maybe they can have the $$ to make a SP version. Also, there is a SEVERE lack of any good mech game for the past 500 years (slight exaggeration) so I’m willing to throw money at anything that has mechs and a good combat system.
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hm. I was thinking Brink didn’t exactly set the world ablaze either.
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also disappointed. The worst thing about multiplayer is that players can’t stop to stare at the scenario, take a deep breathe and enjoy it.
In deathmatches the environment is never important so it’s a paradox that the devs took so much care and imagination to design that beautiful place(for me a cyberpunk sprawl beneath a sickly orange sky is better than any green shit landscape or seascape). A real longtime deathmatcher, who went through dozens of matches, has always EVER played ONE single game, the game of being the winner. His eyes stare at different things, he sees differently, he lives in another world.
Oh, if only P.Dick were alive to see this.
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Perhaps this attitude is part of the problem. Nobody plays it because everybody thinks nobody’s going to play it. So it never gets a chance in the first place.
I’ll probably buy it, but I really want to see what game modes they’ll have besides TDM and FFA, as (according to the forum faq) those will be “the heart” of the game.
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@post internet
Yes…. RPS should really setup some Shattered Horizon game nights. I would love that!! Also I agree with tomatojustice in that its a self fulfilling prophecy. I’ve seen so many great mods and indie games fall victim to the ‘no one will play it’ downward spiral.
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The only time I ever play Shattered Horizons these days, I do so in order to float off to a remote part of the arena, turn off my suit, and float in the silent solitude.
That’s always been the biggest appeal Shattered Horizons has had for me– the free-floating and mag-grav are both great fun in movement and combat alike, but it’s those moments where your suit, for whatever reason, is shut down that are what made the experience something different and, yes, magical.
So even though I had a lot of fun playing SH when, you know, people played it, I still really love booting it up so I can turn everything off and float.
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@Khemm
Waste? Why? If it’s successfull, why not make a Single Player campaign?
We just need enough people to buy it, I will, if only because I like it’s art design,
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Have the devs stated they intend to create a SP campaign should their game prove to be successful?
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Better yet, will there be good mod tools?
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There are no other mech FPS games out there, so I see this succeeding. Mechwarrior Legends doesn’t count – there are only a handful of populated servers. As long as they price it well, this will be fine. It won’t break sales records, but I’m sure some sort of community will form – till the next Mechwarrior game comes (if at all).
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It’s beautiful :´)
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This is stupid. Bipedal robots (with jet packs, no less!) and low flying massive airships are probably some of the most fuel inefficient ways to get around. Why would you use them to fight a war over dwindling resources?
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Because robot fight.
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maybe they are like hybrid robots – & have a solar cells – solar robots if you will
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Perhaps they are dwindling food and water resources, rather than energy resources?
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Because its awesome?
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That would make a lot of sense, actually. Seeing all the megastructures around that could be salvaged for metal, and considering it’s the future (which means nuclear fusion or soemthing even more advanced as a power source), but also seeing that the planet’s atmosphere is sickly-green in many scenes and environments look like concrete jungle and rocky deserts, the absence of sufficient food and water supplies may well be the case.
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Fictional Video Game in Fictional Content Shocker!!
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Solution? A bicycle wargame!
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Bicycle Jousting Wargame!!!!
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Covmeister, soft isn’t the only form of science fiction. Some of us prefer a little scientific rigour.
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This looks pretty cool.
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i forget, does this have destructable terrain?
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No.
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Oh, the aesthetics and the architecture. I wouldn’t call them “beautiful” per se, never was a big fan of desaturated colors – but they are striking and memorable, that i can tell for sure.
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I find it surprisingly easy to spot the bots in what is otherwise largely grey-on-grey; a style that is oft completely unreadable for gameplay (hence everything having neon hint outlines in recent games).
This is a very, very good thing. Their art people gone done good.
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A small indie studio making a worthwhile SP experience isn’t really feasible.
MP is much more cost efficient.
You don’t need
Writers.
AI guys.
Level designers(not to be confused with map designers)
I haven’t played a single indie game with 2 out of those 3 greatly executed.
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Bastion. Frozen Synapse.
And that’s just off the top of my head as the most recent games I’ve been playing, I’m sure there are more.
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*coughtorchlight*
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Agree on MP being much easier for indie studios to implement, it certainly worked for Tripwire (RO1), and just imagine Notch having to create a SP campaign for MC!
Obviously there are exceptions, some games are easier to do SP for than others.
@Amun *coughworthwhile*
;)
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Zeno Clash
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Half Life :D
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Too bad it’s going to be dead a month after release, unless it’s completely mindblowing. Section 8: Prejudice and Shattered Horizon were pretty good and the same happened to them.
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S8:P had GFWL though…
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And Shattered Horizon was DX10-only, which was maybe half the potential PC market when it was released.
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@Amun
So? Other recent MP games, including Shattered Horizon, used Steamworks and bombed anyway. So much for the “GFWL guarantees failure, Steamworks guarantees success” mantra.
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i remember when shattered horizons came out i desperately wanted to play it. at the time, though, i was dx10 incapable (i think i was on xp) so it was impossible for me to play that game without making some significant/major changes t omy computing setup. i agree tha tit was dx10 requirement that killed the game. at the time, only 1 person i knew could play it and he wasnt that interested. i even missed the free weekend on steam as i still hadnt upgraded.
and now? well.. because of its lack of number’s ive decided against it. i agree that single player takes more resources to develop, properly.
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Quite. SH would have been right up my street, but they stupidly gave a huge segment of gamers the middle finger. The Steam hardware survey—so we’re talking gamers here, not any old Joe who owns a PC to do his taxes on—still has ~40% of PC gamers on sub-DX10 setups.
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hawken you do this to me?
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Hawken we be friends, Hawken we be friends…
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They mech it look so easy.
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Would jetpack it in with puns already.
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You lack the metal to compete with puns like these?
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Some of those mechs look proper stompy. I hope there’s a demo.
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It totally needs a demo.
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All these people worrymongering about how the game will fail because nobody will play it clearly have their priorities wrong. You don’t need other players. You can just stare at the pretty artwork all day! It’s like a gallery, only you walk around it in a mech. Would you shoot up a gallery?
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WHAT THE HELL YOU GUYS WHINING ABOUT?
IT HAS FUCKING ROBOTS!
ROBOTS!
fuck yeah robots
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What he said ^^
Seriously looking forward to this now since Mechwarrior 3015 is pretty much dead.
I needs my big stompy mech sim!
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are they robots? i thought you drive them
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Reeeeeaaalllly looking forward to this.
Also, the first-person action looked more like a PC player this time, which his as it should be.
/allhailpcgamingmasterrace
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Shooty robots of shootiness need a story?
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Anyone noticed, that all in Hawken looks like playing with small toy robots on a model railroad landscape? Dunno why… Mabe it´s because of perspectives and speed and… I don´t know. Just wonder if someone else noticed.
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That would probably indicate overdone depth of field, I believe. But I don’t get that impression myself.
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