Whenever I watch Hawken footage, I need a bit of time alone afterwards to lie down and stop the room from spinning. Everything shakes in Adhesive’s mech-on-mech FPS. Even the crosshairs judder in combat. I wish the bolts were a little bit tighter. While it’s immersive, the localised earthquakes on feet seem to be engineered by evil dentists, intent on cracking the teeth of the drivers. I’ll bet there’s an option to auto-pilot the things right to a dentist’s office for a mid-battle fixer-upper. That’s the only explanation I’m considering, so don’t fill the comments with alternatives after watching the video below, as there’s almost no chance of me paying any heed to silly theories not based on the history of evil dentistry.
FYI: Hawken is accepting free-to-play conscriptions for the closed beta at their site.
The current release date is 12.12.12. I doubt it will slip, but if it does it better be to a numerically pleasing date.
02/03/2012 at 10:20 Davee says:
That’s some very jerky – but otherwise nice footage. I just hope turning to F2P won’t make it Pay2Win in the end. We’ll just have to see.
02/03/2012 at 11:35 RedViv says:
That’s the only thing I worry about.
02/03/2012 at 15:10 simoroth says:
“Look at the bright side, kid… you get to keep all the money.”
02/03/2012 at 16:24 Galaxy613 says:
The guy’s who are backing this are also backing LoL, so IMHO we shouldn’t worry until we need to.
02/03/2012 at 21:03 LionsPhil says:
I’m a little concerned about the jerky, really. Previous trailers had very readable gameplay. All the UI fuzz and judder this time, less so.
02/03/2012 at 10:20 O-2-L says:
ive been signed up for this for a while, and mechwarrior online :)
02/03/2012 at 10:23 Shadowcat says:
Hopefully by the time you read this comment, the typo in the alt text will be fixed :)
02/03/2012 at 10:25 Kdansky says:
If you had not written this, I would not have cringed.
02/03/2012 at 10:34 Craig Pearson says:
Ahem.
02/03/2012 at 10:38 The Tupper says:
“Shake your cock” was much funnier. Reinstate it, I say.
02/03/2012 at 11:30 dangermouse76 says:
In opera mobile for my Sony phone ( symbian ).
” Better than a bag full of dicks”
Still in the browser tab description….. this pleases the Dan.
02/03/2012 at 14:42 The Tupper says:
You’re lucky Dangermouse. Mine still reads “The Gravity Force That Books Suffer”. I suppose it might have been a bank holiday or something that day.
02/03/2012 at 10:47 Magga says:
Looks better every time. I bet it’ll play awesome on a big screen.
02/03/2012 at 10:49 Khemm says:
Single player campaign… Please… I’m getting sick of really great looking shooters which are multiplayer-only and eventually disappear completely. It’s especially painful because Mechwarriors had awesome campaigns and Hawken has such a phenomenal looking, gritty world.
02/03/2012 at 12:00 marcusfell says:
Personally, this isn’t going away anytime soon.
– Lots and lots of press hype.
– Their biggest competitor, MechWarrior Online, is also F2P.
– The Devs just don’t have the money for it. They need the be as successful as possible, which means focusing on the most lucrative part of the game. If this one works, I imagine they’ll come back around and add in some single player portions.
02/03/2012 at 13:15 Khemm says:
I understand it comes down to the budget they have, but I doubt they will consider a SP mode even if Hawken proves to be successful for them… Such a shame.
They should totally kickstart a SP campaign for this game.
02/03/2012 at 14:09 MichaelH says:
As far as budget goes, I believe they recently came into a windfall in the form of a 10 million dollar investment.
02/03/2012 at 15:00 Gnoupi says:
With the F2P business model, you can be sure that this won’t have a strong single player campaign.
02/03/2012 at 15:03 bill says:
It does look just ripe for an awesome sci-fi singleplayer campaign. It’s dripping with atmosphere, and i kinda feel all that great design will be wasted on a mp shooter.
I hope they add one later as a DLC or something.
03/03/2012 at 10:00 Cugel says:
Khemm, I could not concur more.
02/03/2012 at 11:27 Shortwave says:
I’ve got my nick reserved, eagerly awaiting beta.
I hope this game is eyefinity friendly, that would rock my world.
02/03/2012 at 12:16 Snack says:
The FOV seems a tad too narrow or is it just me? And with all that camera shacking things might go out of control.
02/03/2012 at 15:06 Cognitect says:
No, it’s not just you.
02/03/2012 at 12:37 wcq says:
Is it just me, or does the machine gun still sound like a sewing machine?
I know it’s nitpicking, but it bothers me, dammit!
Large caliber weapons should sound have a bit more punch than that.
02/03/2012 at 13:25 Blackcompany says:
So there’s not mech going on in gaming right now. Got it.
02/03/2012 at 13:37 Petethegoat says:
How come no one is moaning about the brown and grey? This is one of the worst offenders in a long time.
02/03/2012 at 15:05 bill says:
Because it looks awesome and has a very different and original art style?
It’s not just a case of complaining for the sake of it, it’s complaining because all the games look the same and that’s dull. this doesn’t look the same and that isn’t dull, so why complain?
02/03/2012 at 16:54 cassus says:
I’ll quote every game developer known to man. The earth, and most other planets, are made from dirt.. Brown and grey is the dominant colours of planets. Hell, mars is basically nothing but brownish red. Sure, some grass would green it up a bit, but even war torn areas in the news tend to be rather brown and dull. The apocalyptic settings of future wars are always brown for a reason. The planets are covered in dust after having been blown up repeatedly for hundreds of years. People just didn’t bother repainting their ruins after a while.
If they made really nice looking sci-fi white areas, this would feel like an arena sport-type deal, like Unreal Tournament and whatnot.
That’s what devs usually answer when given the question, and I kinda see their point. Mirrors Edge didn’t exactly make every developer go “heeeeey…. let’s make everything shiny white!”
02/03/2012 at 13:39 torchedEARTH says:
I plan to get my copy after lunch. Probably tooth hurty.
I make no apologies.
02/03/2012 at 13:45 Blackcompany says:
That’s ok. I hear its three-to-play.
02/03/2012 at 14:05 Brothabear says:
some of the best sound Audio ive seen in a game in years especially in the indie department.
02/03/2012 at 14:35 Edawan says:
The frantic action could have used a better encoding than youtube…
02/03/2012 at 14:40 Gary W says:
Looks like a cross between Steel Battalion and Quake 3/UT.
02/03/2012 at 15:14 Tei says:
This looks better than any other sci-fi game recently, except Mass Effect 3. But mass effect uses very low res textures that make looking at anything nearby painfull.
02/03/2012 at 15:19 bonjovi says:
The launch date won’t slip. but the game will release with the 2GB day 1 patch
02/03/2012 at 15:21 jonfitt says:
The one thing that puts me off Hawken is that is looks like UT with mech cockpits slapped on. Much too much of a twitch shooter. The mechs don’t seem big and awesome enough.
Is there anything wrong with UT with mech skins? No. But it’s not what I’m looking for.
02/03/2012 at 16:24 Galaxy613 says:
Well, the mechs ARE only 5-8 meters tall, of course they are more agile than mechwarrior mechs..
02/03/2012 at 16:48 cassus says:
Just savage looking gameplay. I live the herky jerky cockpit movement. Feels very realistic. Can’t wait to try this game.
02/03/2012 at 17:44 Rusty says:
“[t]here’s almost no chance of me paying any heed to silly theories not based on the history of evil dentistry”
You cheeky devil, you stole that line from the American Republican debates.
03/03/2012 at 17:41 Phaserjunkie says:
Here’s my take on the loose nuts and bolts of Hawken:
I think it’s to provide a bit more simulated feel of game-play. Think of it this way. If you’re sitting in a cockpit of a giant mecha, and you’re getting shot at, of course things are going to be glitchy and falling apart. I mean, if you expect a clean, stable UI throughout the whole match than obviously, you won’t make a very good pilot. Things aren’t going to be stable when you’re mech is blowing up….