Hawken Message Board

Check out the launch trailer for this mech-based shooter.

Hawken is one of the most attractive games I’ve ever seen, all shuddering steel and clouds of debris, and it is exclusively about large robots fighting. There’s no cutscene-laden narrative, no downtime and no pricetag. There are maybe six people in the world who don’t like to see mechs fighting twenty four hours a day so Hawken should be the most popular game in the world. That’s not the case though and, ahead of its full launch, publishers Meteor are moving their multiplayer bot-battler to Steam. Current account-holders will receive codes by the end of this week, allowing them to reinstall through Steam without losing their progress and items. Once the migration has occurred the game will become publicly available, some time later this month.

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Now that I’ve written that headline, I actually really want a Christmas special in which giant robots grapple with issues of strained family ties, unconditional kindness despite all that, and ultimately, the merciless slaughter of the entire human race. Who wouldn’t be able to identify with that? In the meantime, however, I’ll just have to settle for Hawken’s Operation Frostburn, which buries the grimy, gloomy mech shooter under colorful mountains of Christmas cheer. Details and video of the corresponding “Wreckage” update below.

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People were once so excited about Hawken. It looked awesome, it had a wonderful visual design to it, and then...well, then it went free-to-play, and it didn't have singleplayer, and that kinda took the wind out of a lot of people's sails. A shame, but hey, the game still looks great, people are playing it, and the art still looks as good as ever.Read more...

Hawken still hasn’t added any hawks, which is weird to me, but hope remains given that updates keep on chugging along. The latest, titled Invasion, is quite a doozy, with some oft-requested features leading the charge. Most prominently, the free-to-play first-person blast-o-stomper now has nefarious AI bots, who strut their boxy, boxy bodies in both wave-based co-op and offline training modes. There is also a new mech, because of course there is a new mech. The Predator is lithe, canny, and a friend to the animals, but you probably won’t notice its sleek form on the battlefield. It can turn invisible, you see. And now you don’t. See what I did there? See? Go below to end this trainwreck of a joke.

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I have a mild form of social anxiety that manifests itself in a very specific way: I don’t like arriving to parties or events after a lot of people have already turned up. I’d much rather arrive with friends. It’s just one of the many ways I’m like a giant killertronic death-bot from the future, because the recent Hawken update has dropped in a party mode. It allows a borg of mechs to join multiplayer servers together, ensuring everyone arrives as a group and that no-one is left out. Sounds wonderful to me. Other additions include a new map, a new mech, and offline team deathmatch.(more…)

Hawken, the free-to-play mech-based shooter from Adhesive Games, is still in open beta. It's been in open beta since December and, while Adhesive Games' Jason Hughes says the developer hopes to launch the game "sometime this year," and a new update coming "later this month" promises to radically alter the current state of the game.

Pilots will now have their own progression system with a spate of unlocks attached. Last Eco, a new forest map that contrasts the usual industrial and urban warzones of Hawken, will drop in this upcoming update, as will a host of new tweaks for the current line-up of mechs.

This new version of Hawken will retire the current Optimization system, replacing it with a new Tuning system - a more nuanced set of variables attached to each subclass of mech. Before, the Optimization tree had three categories covering offense, defense and movement that players could tinker around with, but now it's been broken down into more common sets of modifications. For example, every mech has the ability to change its armor in the new Tuning system, but not all mechs have the ability to change their hydraulics, which govern movement parameters. "This gives you greater levels of customization," Hughes said. "It helps create a little bit more speciality to those subclasses."

On top of that, a new item slot system will limit what players can equip on their mechs. Each mech has six open item slots, so players can equip as many items as they want within those slots. "Players can't just run in with uber-powered everything, so there is a little bit of a trade-off," Hughes said. In the current state of the game, items were segregated into categories, so players couldn't equip multiple items from the same category. This new system, Hughes hopes, will alleviate that concern.

Finally, this new update institutes some much-requested community features like a party system that will allow friends to group up before jumping into a match. Combined with the new party matchmaking system, friends can now stay together while hopping between battles. There is also a new co-op bot training mode, in case you and your pals don't feel like taking on humans, and an offline team deathmatch mode to help new players ease into the experience on their own.

For the most part, being near- or farsighted today isn't that big of a deal. The only cultural zeitgeist folks like me have missed out on recently has been in the resurgence of glasses-required 3D technology in consumer media. And let's be honest, it isn't a tremendous loss.

In fact, the Oculus Rift is the only thing on the horizon that is as potentially game-changing as it is unfriendly to glasses. That thing straps directly onto your whole face, there's no way a pair of fashionable specs could fit under there.

Well, as it turns out, the Oculus Rift really was accommodating to my Converse frames and their too-old lenses, so much so that for the first time ever I'm legitimately excited about the once-lofty possibility of a virtual reality future.

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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Hawken publisher Meteor Entertainment has a handle on the gender equality gig, with ladies making up a solid half of its executive branch, according to a female employee's post on The Hawkeye Initiative.

"Our gender awareness standards, compared to the industry at large, are top shelf," she writes. "We are talking Amelia Earhart in Atlantis, at a five star resort, getting a mani-pedi from Jensen Ackles. I have it good."

But CEO Mark Long (a dude, if that wasn't apparent) had a penchant for the sexy lady poster above (on the left, if that wasn't apparent), and the writer didn't particularly care for it. It was blown up to poster size and placed in his office so that it was the first thing the writer - and all visitors - saw upon entering, and the last thing when leaving.

"This little lady's undermeats have been the open- and close-parens to my work world for the last six months," she described. "I loathe this picture."

So she did something about it. The writer roped in a co-worker and artist, Sam Kirk, to whip up a gender-swapped version of the poster, which they named Brosie the Riveter. They blew it up to the same poster size, and on April 1, they swapped it with the female one in their CEO's office.

When Long saw the poster, he flipped. But then he came up to the writer and said something truly touching:

"That was a brilliant prank. You called me on exactly the bullshit I need to be called on. I put up pictures of half-naked girls around the office all the time and I never think about it. I'm taking you and Sam to lunch. And after that, we're going to hang both prints, side by side."

And so they did. The end.

An employee at Hawken developer Meteor Entertainment had only one real gripe about her job: Their office featured a poster of a scantily-clad lady mechanic, and it bugged her to death. She says her boss, Meteor CEO Mark Long, loved the poster. She did not. So what did she do? As she describes in a new guest-post at The Hawkeye Initiative website, she pulled a clever prank. First, she convinced her friend artist Sam Kirk to make a second poster, this one featuring a scantily clad dude (named, of course, "Bro-sie the Riveter"). They snuck into the office and hung it up, unsure of what the reaction would be. Their boss was surprised by the prank poster, and shortly after seeing it, tapped the prankster on the shoulder and, according to her, said: "That was a brilliant prank. You called me on exactly the bullshit I need to be called on. I put up pictures of half-naked girls around the office all the time and I never think about it. I’m taking you and Sam to lunch. And after that, we’re going to hang both prints, side by side.” Ha, well played. You can see the side-by-side prints up top, and read the full story over at The Hawkeye Initiative.

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.(more…)

This latest Hawken trailer details the game's newest map, Facility, which is just one of many new additions recently applied to the game. As of press time, no mechs have been spotted wearing short skirts, long jackets or any combination of the two.

No, I think I was right the first time. If you see the new Technician mech on the enemy's team, kill it. If it's on your team, hug it. If it's you, then congratulations, you're a helper. Way to help. Want to see pics of the new map you'll be dying on? Along with various fixes, tweaks, and the mech that's going to blow up a lot over the coming weeks, the Technician Update for gorgeous free-to-play mech shooter Hawken also delivers a little more of that gorgeous I keep going on about, in the form of Front Line. Oh yeah, that's the clean-and-dirty design I fell in love with. Front Line is a sexy new map for all game modes, loaded with wide-open spaces as well as opportunities for the more frugal mech pilot to hide. For instance, this looks like a good place. You'll likely find me there. Or perhaps here. If you're incredibly lucky, you might find me here, on my way to shelter. But you'll never, ever find me here. Because inside of that cockpit is not a safe place at all. Either way, you should play Hawken. It's lovely.

Nvidia's good at blowing stuff up. In this video, we can see them apply that to games—in this case, Adhesive Games' currently-in-open-beta mech shooter, Hawken. From rock chunk-clouds and swirly, shiny particles to full-scale level destruction, it's all there, and it all looks fabulously chaotic (and crazy fun).

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.

Hawken is a multiplayer F2P robot combat game in open beta. Jim Rossignol is a handsome, if slightly soft, games journalist. Together, they are words about a game on a blog, please.

Finally I managed to get some time alone with Hawken. We seemed like we were meant for each other: me a hardened dork with a history of multiplayer enthusiasms and robo-infatuations, him a speedy battle mech multiplayer combat game. We’d have so much in common.

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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.(more…)

#hawken When Adhesive Games' creative director and co-founder Khang Le took the stage during last night's Nvidia press conference to play the free-to-play mech combat game Hawken on Nvidia's Project Shield handheld, I was confused. This was not the PC game. What the hell was that? Turns out Nvidia ran out of time to mention that Adhesive has spent the past couple of weeks building a Tegra 4-exclusive version of the game. More »

Hawken‘s evolution from jaw-dropping, I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-triple-A indie to investor-powered multimedia behemoth has been utterly fascinating. At the end of the day, though, it’s a game about robots rocking, socking, and shooting other robots. The glitz and glamour just won’t stick if the core’s a prime candidate for the scrap heap. So then, how does Hawken’s surprisingly high-speed mech warring fare? I fired up RPS’ patented Judge-O-Tron (it is maybe a washing machine with a very mean face drawn on it) and took aim at Hawken’s open beta.

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#hawken I've been unfair to giant mechs and the people who love them. If you asked me about mechs a week ago, I'd probably make some awful comment about how mechs remind me of little boys clacking their action figures together, which isn't appealing to me. I didn't "get" the love for giant mechs. More »

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 Indie mech shooter Hawken is now in open beta. To celebrate, this very fancy new trailer has just been released. Boy, this game has come a long way. From nine dudes and a love of Maschinen Krieger to expensive-looking cinematic launch trailers in a little over 18 months. More »

Hawken, one of the more flamboyant and high-profile indie games this year, launches today in open beta as a free-to-play mega-mech battle for PC. Don't believe us? Check out the super-sweet cinematic launch trailer above.

Adhesive Games' parent company Meteor Entertainment raised $10 million for Hawken's development and marketing, and part of that went into a series of closed betas leading to today's open launch. Adhesive producer Jason Hughes sums up some changes and patch notes that resulted from the closed trials, noting that there will be no server browser at launch. Eventually Hawken will have that, clan support, dedicated servers and more social features, but not today. That's why this is an "open beta," after all.

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.

We sent Brendan to the Hawken press event in London, and there he caught up with Mark Long, boss at Meteor, the company responsible for publishing the F2P mech combat game. From there it was a journey into alternative business models, transmedia experiments, live-action mech-movies, rivalry between mech games, and the appeal of adult diapers.(more…)

Hawken has begun its third and final closed beta event, starting this week and going through until December 6. Players already invited can download the client from the official website, jump in and start shooting. You won't need to re-install, the developer says, if you've played in a previous closed beta event.

Meteor Entertainment has presale packs available for the free-to-play shooter, with boosts and extra equipment available for those who know they're ready to spend some cash. But if you're not yet sold (or haven't gotten a chance to play), the game will go into Open Beta and become available to the public on December 12.

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.(more…)

Hawken's second closed beta is scheduled to attack November 8 - 13. This expands on the first beta round, which ran October 26 - 29.

To celebrate the second beta, pre-sale bundles of items and customization perks will be on discount for $5, $15, $30 and $60, and if purchased will be in players' garages once the game launches in open beta on December 12. Sign up to play Hawken on the game's main site.

“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!(more…)