Earlier this month, the gaming world was delightfully surprised with the reveal of a brand new mech combat game titled Hawken. Its apparently fast paced combat was showcased in a video that was captured using a spectator view during a network matchup, but the third person footage left many wondering how the first person shooter was going to look and feel in first person.
Indie developer Adhesive Games isn’t wasting any time either now that the cat’s out of the bag. Making good on the promise that a gameplay trailer would be coming out “soon,” they’ve just released a trailer which showcases what Hawken and its combat will look like from the cockpit of the game’s mechs.
The trailer looks fantastic, and clearly shows that the game so far seems to be on the right track towards being an excellent product.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udEAEARD-Fo
There’s a whole host of new gameplay features that have become apparent from this video. First and foremost are the turrets that can be activated in the environment to attack opposing players who enter the turrets’ line of sight. These are accompanied by turrets which can be carried by the player to be placed in more convenient locations. No doubt these will be important weapons in helping to ensure victory against your opponents during multiplayer matches.
We were only able to make quick predictions about the weapons systems of the mechs based off the last trailer, but this time we can gather more detailed information. It seems that mechs will have a standard body with the ability to be customized. The cockpit is the same throughout the trailer despite the player wielding different weapons. We can see mechs firing from two weapons, one for the left arm and one for the right, which would imply separate control of each weapon.
It appears that weapons will not have ammunition so much as they will have energy indicators that operate differently for different weapons. Being smart with your weapons will be important as we see a mech overheat when firing its Gatling gun until its meter turns red. Overheating disables the weapons systems, leaving your mech vulnerable to attack without retaliation. Slower moving projectiles like rockets seem to trigger an “INCOMING” warning, although its not clear how this works – perhaps it only appears when missiles that home in on a target are fired.
When the last trailer was released it was claimed that the mechs were going to be slower turning to keep the feel of being inside a mech, but so far it looks like the cockpits turn plenty fast enough. Controlling the mech will hopefully be a breeze as they seem to have a full range of motion, including strafing, and even the ability to hover for short periods of time. How long you have left to hover is indicated by an orange circle in the HUD which gets smaller as remaining time decreases, similar to Shadow of the Colossus’ grip meter. A dash move is shown as a means of making a quick escape in dangerous situations, but hopefully this will also be useful in closing the gap when close quarters combat is preferred. Whether or not this uses the same energy as the hover ability remains to be seen.
Speaking of the HUD, there’s an indicator for health, hover time, support weapon, and a number to the left of the hit points which seems to be linked to an item dropped by destroyed enemies. The only support weapons shown in the trailer are the turret and grenades. A radar shows you your enemy and ally locations in the top right corner of your screen.
The top left corner is populated with a counter for “Team Energy Units” and “Opponent Energy Units.” What these numbers mean is not clear, but they can apparently be negative as well as positive, and at one point in the trailer you can see the number for Team Energy Units rising rapidly, which could indicate a king of the hill mode, or control based objectives.
Target indicators help to distinguish foes and allies, as well as see the health of each. This will no doubt help you easily see which targets may be of the highest priority. In a 2v1 battle, you will likely want to take out an opponent that is nearly dead before his ally who has full health, and this clarity will help with that. Meanwhile, indicators for your allies will make it easy for you to identify when you have help nearby and whether or not they’re in danger of dying.
Environments aren’t just there to look pretty and apart from turrets, it seems there will also be other dangers to watch out for. In one short segment of the video we clearly see a battleship in the sky firing rockets at an opponent mech. Its health is shown in the corner where Team Energy Units is displayed, which may indicate that it can be destroyed if its health reaches zero. Meanwhile, the color being the same as Team Energy Units could indicate that it is player activated and not just a computer controlled environmental hazard.
We here at Game Rant are very excited for Hawken and can’t wait to get our hands on the game. What do you think of Hawken now that you’ve seen the gameplay from inside the cockpit?
Hawken will be released whenever its ready – and hopefully soon – for whatever platforms developer Adhesive Games can secure a release on. Adhesive has stated before that intended platforms are the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.
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