By Jim Rossignol on October 29th, 2012 at 12:00 pm.
With the Hawken closed beta kicking off this weekend, Adhesive have put out a couple of videos explaining the basics of their jet-packin’ robo-combat for beginners, which I suppose will be all of us. They show some tips about the garage, where robots are armed, tweaked, and deployed to the battlfield. Then there’s some explanation of how to not to die too horribly once you’re out there. All that means plenty of game footage, as you’d expect.
We’ll be giving away keys for a later round of the beta really soon, so keep an eye out for that.
29/10/2012 at 12:07 GernauMorat says:
I was able to play one game over the weekend. The rest of the time connection errors made it unplayable, which was a pity as its seems excellent.
29/10/2012 at 13:29 PoulWrist says:
At least you got to play :P I could only see 8 servers, and only 3 of them reported any number of players, and no matter how many it said there were, I couldn’t join because full. I hear all the fanboys say this is so much better than MWO, but… I’d really like to see for myself, please.
29/10/2012 at 14:15 haze4peace says:
They released a patch that fixed a few things as well as vastly increased the amount of servers available by 2-3 times. It can still be hard to get in though, but it never took me more than a minute of trying.
29/10/2012 at 12:07 wodin says:
Played abit of the last beta..it was OK..Nothing amazing and not shit either. Just another online shooter but in a fast walking tank..the only thing I really hated was the way some can move left or right really really fast..it felt like the new form of bunny hoping, that was annoying.
29/10/2012 at 12:48 Chaosed0 says:
The left/right dashing is what makes the game, though. If you’ve ever played any UT, you’ll know that the only way to really get good at the game was to master the dodging – it’s exactly the same here, except perhaps even more important since you move so slowly otherwise.
29/10/2012 at 13:08 Mr. Mister says:
I’d say that wat makes the game is more the shaky screen rather than that though (still approve of dahing), and not in a bad way. The mechas blend quite well with the battlefield too, and it’d be hard to spot them without the red squares at mid distance. Not that I disapprove of that either: It’s been a while since I saw camo paint (rather than guillie-like devices) working.
29/10/2012 at 13:01 PatrickSwayze says:
I HATE WHEN PEOPLE MOVE WHEN I TRY TO SHOOT THEM TOO! NOOBS! XD
29/10/2012 at 12:34 Hunchback says:
Looks great to me… Weird that the people who posted before me are not all that overwhelmed by the game.
29/10/2012 at 18:43 Captchist says:
Doesn’t really have the sense of scale that I like from Mech combat styles games.
It felt like a very small arena shooter lacking the complexity of targeting body parts, or varieties of range that you get in other Mech combat games.
I.e. if felt much more like an arena shooter in mechs than a mech game.
29/10/2012 at 12:36 Carbonated Dan says:
as someone in both betas I’d like to get in before the partisan Hawken vs MWO comments
MWO is a slow, tactical, squad-based game with shooter elements
Hawken is a fast, twitch shooter with unique (well, dishonored-like) physical presence
these are completely different games that happen to have similar skins – the former is the most tactical shooter experience I’ve had outside ARMA – the latter is a skill game whose visceral movement may prove to have an exceptionally high skill ceiling
the only sensible comparison: Hawken’s environments are more detailed
29/10/2012 at 13:31 PoulWrist says:
How dare you bring logic to a fanboy argument!?
29/10/2012 at 13:01 Mr. Mister says:
Played only a deathmatch and a half, enough to realise how important it is to know the best spots of the map to hide and repair.
29/10/2012 at 13:32 pupsikaso says:
Is that some kind of stun they are showing closer to the end of the video? I wish that wasn’t in the game. I hate these “stun” abilities in games, especially in FPS games where they have NO place being.
29/10/2012 at 13:44 Scouter says:
EMP, it’s a bit hard to land and if you do it point blank you can stun yourself as well.
29/10/2012 at 13:46 sabrage says:
There’s an EMP device, but that was just the end of the video.
29/10/2012 at 14:12 haze4peace says:
It is a stun as in you can’t use your weapons for about three seconds, but you can still run/dash. Not only is it hard to land, but you only get one per life.
29/10/2012 at 15:52 HisMastersVoice says:
Except the duration is, or at least was, five seconds and it’s very easy to land as it has a massive AOE. Just shoot it at the ground in the general direction of the enemy and you’re hard pressed to miss with it.
29/10/2012 at 19:33 pupsikaso says:
This is what I was afraid of. It’s why I hate these stupid “crowd control” abilities in PvP. It takes the skill out of the game. You can’t hit someone so what you do is you fire a big ass explosion that you couldn’t miss even if you tried and then hey! Target practice!
29/10/2012 at 22:09 HisMastersVoice says:
This is pretty much the only major balance issue that’s a leftover from Alpha. Most people in beta still haven’t clued in on how powerful the effect is, since it’s a purchasable upgrade and a lot of people run naked mechs.
I hope once more people star abusing the item, Adhesive will look into it a bit more. There was a lot of back and forth about this on the Alpha forums, with lots of good solutions.
29/10/2012 at 14:46 mrmalodor says:
Hawken is much better than MWO so far, except for the server issues. The same fucking thing happened in the alpha – too many players, too few servers and no proper queue system. I haven’t played much during the closed beta due to these issues. It just takes too long to get connected. They better have that shit sorted out when they go open beta. Also, I’m disappointed that they removed the old missile base map, I liked the layout.
29/10/2012 at 16:30 Carbonated Dan says:
care to expand on ‘better’?
29/10/2012 at 17:29 mrmalodor says:
Pretty much everything.
29/10/2012 at 18:37 Hmm-Hmm. says:
Heh. Can you explain why, then?
30/10/2012 at 03:08 sidhellfire says:
He said Hawken, that implies he likes simple FPS games, and has no skills required to answer complicated questions like yours. “Pew Pew Battlefield Heroes better than Allegiance.”
29/10/2012 at 17:46 Synesthesia says:
So far it plays amazing, but the extremely slow trickle of hawken points makes it too much of a grind, at least for me. Let’s hope they go the tribes way on it, or even better, tf2.
29/10/2012 at 21:43 xyphen says:
Horrible optimization ruined the experience for me . I have 8 GB of ram,1GB ddr5 oc card , and game crashes with low memory error …