Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I love stories with happy endings. And uplifting middles. And only sorta upsetting beginnings. This is the rare tale that both rides that grin-coaxing emotional rollercoaster and focuses on issues of gender inequality in the gaming industry. A rarity? You don’t even know the half of it – mostly because I haven’t told you about any of it yet (jeez, hold your horses). But in short, Hawken publisher Meteor – whose executive branch is apparently half female – had a minor kerfuffle involving a monolithic poster of a scantily clad, Rosie-The-Riveter-esque character smack dab in the middle of its offices. So a few employees played a prank involving an equally nonsensically dressed male technician, and the results were, well… just delightful.

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Look at them! So lovely. Fluttering their big eyes in my direction. I would kiss them all. Failing that, I will blast the sparking guts out of robots on them. Same thing, really. Hawken‘s latest map is called Facility, which seems like a very pretty name for a really outstandingly handsome death-arena. Sigh. Such beauty. Harvesting floating rock minerals like a Greek god. Mmm.

This latest update also includes a bunch of minor changes, which can only add to Hawken’s eligibility on the dating circuit.
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I’ve rather been enjoying my games of Hawken. It’s very much a deathmatch arena game of old, only spangled up with its own roboty game modes and lovely visuals. The next update looks promising, too, bringing us a lovely-looking new map called Front Line, as well as a new robot. Said robot is the first genuine support mech in the game, and it’s called The Technician. It’s a medic, yes, but also it enables heat management of other robots, as well as doing shooty stuff – making it a support-bot with some offensive capabilities of its own. If this were a traditional deathmatch game I’d be looking forward to those first few games after the patch where everyone is playing as the technician and they’re all unable to kill each other. As it is, folks will have to shell out real world cash or grind-gathered resources for this chap, so they won’t be ubiquitous post-patch.

Anyway, you can see all the intricate details of the update here.

Handsome Hawken is ever more handsome – or at least that’s the intention – thanks to implementation of Nvidia’s PhysX tech. The new trailer (Below) shows how PhysX improves particles and debris in the world, creating effect that is partly awesome and partly, well, gaudy. I get that this stuff is super clever, mathematically speaking, but some of the particle effects just seem over the top to me. I suppose that’s the point, because it makes it stand out, but I suspect that this kind of stuff will only really sit comfortably when it’s used in a more subtle way.

Anyway, take a look.
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It’s cold outside. Holiday vacation hasn’t started yet. The world might end soon. These are all equally pressing issues, but fortunately, I think I’ve got a solution that wraps them up in a nice, holiday-friendly bow: giant robots. Think about it: they’re naturally warm, have no concept of “work,” and will probably be the reason our race of overly argumentative organ pods goes extinct anyway. Win-win-win. Also, Hawken just went into open beta. It’s really great, so it’ll probably help you feel better about the sorry state of your life and stuff. But mainly those other things.

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HAWKEN is about to go into open beta. The F2P mech shooter is embracing the last time the date will look really cool for another thousand years, and opening itself up to the masses on the 12th of the 12th of the 2012th. And this screenshot here? That’s ours. OURS! The other rubbish sites don’t have it. You can have a bigger version if you click on it.

Sign-ups for the beta are taking place now, and it starts a week today.

Hello, you. The Hawken beta gets into full swing today, and I think you might want a key, because it’s looking rather good. Fortunately for us, Meteor have provided an RPS “superkey” with ten thousand uses. That means the first ten thousand of you to enter it into the Hawken site will get your eager paws on the controls of a robot today. Get going!

The key, instructions, and a trailer, are below.
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“Do we have keys for that?”
“Dunno.”

Games journalism IN ACTION. This was our response to news that much anticipated F2PFPSMechMMO Hawken is to squeeze in a second round of closed beta in a mere three days time, ahead of an open beta in mid-December. We’d, uh, better try and get ourselves on that. TO THE SENDING AN EMAIL CAVE!
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