Meteor Entertainment and Adhesive Games are ready to allow gamers to get their hands on the much-anticipated free-to-play online Mech action game HAWKEN. PAX East attendees will be the first in the world to play the new game – even before media (although media will be able to play it at PAX East as well).
"We're really excited to finally let fans play HAWKEN," said Jason Hughes, producer of the game. "We've been working so long on this game and it's really all leading up to this game's debut. We're looking forward to hear what gamers think about the game."
The December 12th debut of the game will be preceded with an online beta. But PAX East gamers will be able to check out the game in a variety of multiplayer matches in Boston throughout the weekend. Since the game's still in development, Adhesive Games will be able to utilize the feedback it gets from gamers to help improve the experience leading into the beta and, ultimately, the final release.
I was able to get an exclusive hands-on with the game at the Game Developers Conference (GDC 2012) last month and the game definitely lives up to the hype that has surrounded the release of multiple YouTube gameplay trailers. I was able to play the new Siege mode, which creative art director Khang Le explains in the video below, on a level called Andromeda.
The game currently offers three different Mech sizes, each of which impacts the strategy you'll use in the unique mode. While there will be traditional deathmatch and team deathmatch modes, in Siege mode the size of your Mech correlates with your ability to collect energy. Energy is crucial in order to launch your warship to destroy your opponent's base. The multi-tiered battlefield also has gun turrets that can be controlled to defend your base on the ground. Up to six players can now join per team (although that number can increase as the game's fine-tuned). Bigger Mechs can collect more energy and are better armored, but they're slow. Smaller Mechs navigate the playing field better, but come up short on defense and energy capacity.
It's best to team up with a larger Mech collecting energy and a medium and/or small Mech serving as protection against enemies. At least, that's what I did while playing with Le against Hughes and another developer. The game's skirmishes were focused on the two bases, allowing for some interesting gameplay. Navigating the world was easy to do, especially with the ability to leap from one tier to another quite easily. Getting from Point A to Point B requires constantly having to jump or navigate around walls and obstacles.
"That's not only for gameplay reasons but it's also part of the world and feeling of HAWKEN," said Hughes. "Every single map has some sort of verticality to it, instead of it just being horizontal. And some maps focus on that in different ways. There's one map that we have shown in videos where the map primarily is vertically. It's a vertical map and a lot of the same design that you saw with Andromeda, not only is there sort of an over path that's there, but a lot of in the basic buildings and the different structures that are there, the kind of blocked feeling that you see around the map. The maps have that, but just running around on the ground doesn't give as much of the experience that we want. Adding verticality to that is very important as well as keeping within the look of the world, which is part of what's unique for the game."
The heart of this game is going to be this cool mode, which borrows elements from other game types but fuses them into something fresh and fun. Now gamers will get a sneak peak of this new Unreal Engine 3 game.
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