Published on February 7th, 2012 | by Dan
2Hawken Looks to Revive Mech Combat Genre
If you’ve ever been sitting there playing some Tribes: Ascend, but found yourself wishing that the player you’re jetpacking across the battlefield was instead a mech armed to the teeth, Adhesive Games is about to rock your world. The studio’s upcoming game Hawken looks to bring us multiplayer mech FPS combat on the fast-paced Unreal Engine, aiming to create “an intense and enjoyable battle experience that captures the feeling of piloting a heavy war machine while keeping the action fast-paced and strategic.” Add in the fact that it will be free to play, and you have our attention.
Hawken takes place in the distant future on a colonized world that has become an industrial wasteland, and various factions are battling it out for resources and technology using mechs. There hasn’t been a mech-based game since Mechwarrior in the early 2000s, so Hawken is looking to revive the mech genre with what looks like exciting, fast-paced gameplay. And being a free-to-play game, we can probably expect a ton of customization options like mech upgrades, weapons, and cosmetic items.
Speaking of Mechwarrior, however, we also reported a while back that Piranha Games is planning to launch its own MechWarrior Online in the second half of this year. After more than a decade without any mech games to speak of, we’re getting two in the same year? And they’re both free to play? Insanity!
Adhesive Games has released some very early footage of a dogfight between two mechs, and I must say, the game looks like a damn good time already:
The planned release date for Hawken is December 12 of this year (12/12/12), and while no beta dates have been announced yet, closed beta sign-ups have already started. Are any of you looking forward to hopping back in a mech-based shooter? How do you think Hawken will compare to MechWarrior Online? Let us know in the comments!
nipnops
DanI put the OO in Swagoo. One of the founders of KBMOD. I stream on Twitch as well as writing and editing for the website.
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