Hawken is following the recent trend of Free to play online games, and the quality of these titles never stops amazing me, I remember seeing Hawken when it was first announced, and my first thought was, wow this has to be a pre rendered gameplay, and two years later im sitting in the cockpit of my mech being amazing to see graphics that most AAA titles just don’t have. That being said, the game is still in beta and mass amount of content just isn’t the name of the game here, what is though is a solid gameplay experience that for free, you can’t not try it.
This is a game with no story, it knows exactly what it is, and it does that fantastic, you start off with a basic mech, you get given one Machine gun and one TOW launcher to start you up, and your choice of an extra gadget, from mines, to mini turrets to help you make heaps of scrap metal, now your basic mech does not mean that its underpowered and will have you being wrecked through your first 5 levels, it’s more of a all-rounder, your balanced mech than others, but there is a mech to suit every play style out there, you have your scout style which is fast and weak, dealing your hit and run damage, your sniper , raining destruction from afar and your walking battle tanks, which you never want to turn a corner and see one prepared to fire. One mech that I find strange to not have been included was a medic class, it seems strange for a team based game such as this but the game works regardless.
In its current state, the game has 4 game modes, one that was added very recently, Death Match which is your basic free for all, Team Death Match, Missile Assault where you need to capture and defend 3 missile silos to attack the Enemy team base and siege, where you need to capture energy units so you can launch your battle ship to take out the enemy base, then the other team needs to control Anti Air to attack the ships to protect your ship that is currently up there. Though as siege has just been released currently most of the game’s population can be found there, though as of now the games player base is pretty small, meaning that you have to go with what’s the current trend to get a good match otherwise I tried a TD after siege release and was put into match after match with 3-4 players, which gets pretty boring after the 3rd time, though hopefully after the beta it will bring more of a community to the game.
For the mech’s themselves there isn’t much of a customisation so far, for different mech parts, you can change the body, head, arms,legs thrusters and repair drone for which there are 3-5 parts for each section , but unfortunately you have to buy the “real money” currency, though it doesn’t seem to do much more than change the way the mechs look, weapons are also pretty scarce right now, with only the primary weapon being interchangeable, and only 3 other being there to use as it is, it’s currently not the biggest selection of weapons you’ve seen before. You can also change the color and camouflage of your mech, but again costing real currency, there are also two Coming soon boxes in the style shop, maybe some form of decals are coming soon, then you have the optimize tab, which you standard levelling tree that we have all come to love as RPG’s slowly make its way into the other games, you have three tree’s Attack, Defence and mobility, you won’t get enough points to go through all three so choose what you value most and role with it, you also unlock small bonuses from levelling such as spread stabilization and other upgrades like that.
Right now that’s all that there really is in the beta, you have rankings and other such things being released as time goes on, but as beta’s go, this game is pretty solid so far, bugs are few and far between, most are not gameplay effecting either, the graphics for a free to play title as I already said, are outstanding, and its optimized to work fantastic, there isn’t much music, but sound wise everything works that if you’re wearing a pair of good headphones it makes you feel like your inside a walking battle mech.
For those of you who are not in the beta at the moment, don’t worry too much, wait till its released of open beta the game is one that is a need to play title but at the moment its not fully complete and its lack of content will leave you waiting.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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