Depending on your level of interest in comics and/or female representation, you may or may not have heard of The Hawkeye Initiative.

For those that haven’t, the gist is to essentially reveal how hyper-sexualised female characters in comic books are by replacing images of them with their male counterparts, usually Clint Barton, in the same position. So you might end up with something like this. Have a look around while you’re there, there are some real doozies.

Earlier today, an email came to The Hawkeye Initiative from the offices of Meteor Entertainment, makers of free-to-play mech-shooter, Hawken. Inside was a tale most uplifting, about gender equality in the office. Head over here for the full story, but I will summarise below.

It seems that Meteor CEO Mark Long was a huge fan of this poster (which in any other office would be deemed inappropriate) and had it blown up and hung on the outward facing wall of his office. The emailer swallowed her indignation, gritted her teeth, and came up with a cunning plan.

Borrowing the talents of fellow Meteor-ite Sam Kirk, they devised an alternative male Brosie, blew him up to poster size, framed him and at 7:30am on April 1st, replaced the offending poster with her new counterpart.

Long enters. The entire office hears an explosive, “What the hell is this?!” and then… silence. For more than half an hour. The anonymous emailer began to worry about her future at the company, until finally Long approached her.

“That was a brilliant prank,” he said. “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.”

The ending is what really makes it for me. It’s not Mark Long grunting and saying, “Hmph, I see what you’re saying” and continuing to do it anyway. It’s his eyes really being opened, being made aware that this is a problem and working to make a better future for everyone.

Source: The Hawkeye Initiative

April 18 will bring a big update to free-to-play mech shooter Hawken, with the new Technician-class mech and the Frontline map both going live.

The Frontline map is a re-skinned version of the Valkyrie map, which long-time players may remember from the alpha test. It’s a large-scale map suited to open warfare and will support all game modes — you can learn more about it here.

Meanwhile, the new Technician-class mech is described by Meteor as a “big addition to the game,” and one that will “obviously change the way some of you play”.

“For others, it’ll mean you can have increased sustain to rush in head-first. Don’t mistake the Technician for a harmless medic: heat management, a dual-mode secondary weapon, and an always-available primary weapon means the Technician plays very differently than what you might expect. It’s fun!”

Find out more at the patch notes.

Source: Hawken

Another PhysX tech demo has surfaced out of GDC, showing some beautiful environmental destruction taking place in F2P mech shooter Hawken, powered by GPU Rigid Bodies. How much of this is feasible in game and how much just showing off is not really known — but damn if that doesn’t look great.

Source: VG247

Free-to-play mech fighter Hawken has dropped a massive new patch, bringing with it a whole new mech class, improved matchmaking, and the return of the server browswer, as well as a slew of tweaks and balances. The hard details behind the server browser and matchmaking algorithms are available in this Producer’s Letter, as well as a committment to continued improvements.

The update also brings PhysX support to NVIDIA card users — you can read more about that and watch it in action (it’s very pretty) over at NVIDIA’s site.

Check out all the huge patch notes below.

Mechs

• NEW Mech: Raider
  • A medium class mech geared toward tactically closing those pesky gaps.
  • Lore: Once known as “Armed Merchantmen”, Raiders were originally used by freelance pilots as escorts for energy corporation shipments. Though they functioned primarily to load and unload cargo, their utilities were also applied offensively against the occasional, petty thief en route. As resources grew scarce however, so too did contracts. Hard-working, honest folk modified strong clamps and nail guns to tools more suitable to their needs. Raiders emerged, outfitted with the traditional M5 Muller model, but armed with weapons of war and the knowledge of every commercial trade route by land and sea.
    • “When we first spotted ‘im, he looked like yer typical Merchantman hailing, ‘Hellooo there, friend’! Then the sun flared… and I blinked. As my eyes peeled open, I caught a glimpse of ‘im, charging straight at me, guns blazing. But by then it was too late.” — Captain S. Daunders
  • Class: B
  • Chassis: Muller
  • Difficulty: 4.0/5.0
  • Summary: Very Short-Range Burst Damage
  • NEW Ability: Blitz
    • Increases movement speed and allows firing while boosting for a short duration.
      • Level 1 Upgrade: Increases duration by 1 second.
      • Level 2 Upgrade: Increases movement bonus by 5%.
      • Level 3 Upgrade: Reduces cooldown by 5 seconds.
  • NEW Primary Weapon: ReFLAK-35
    • A rapid-fire shotgun with ricocheting flechettes (projectiles), ideal in tight quarters.
    • Specs
      • Damage: 3/6
      • Rate of Fire: 3/6
      • Accuracy: 2/6
      • Effective Range: 1/6
      • Heat Generation: 3/6
    • Upgrades
      • Level 1 Upgrade: Reduces heat generation by 3%.
      • Level 2 Upgrade: Reduces maximum spread by 5%.
      • Level 3 Upgrade: Reduces spread increase per shot by 5%.
  • NEW Special Weapon: Corsair-KLA
    • A dual-mode short-range weapon that fires airburst MIRVs or slung grenades. Use the ALT Fire button (middle mouse button by default) to switch modes.
    • Specs
      • Damage: 5/6
      • Rate of Fire: 1/6
      • Accuracy: 4/6
      • Effective Range: 4/6
      • Heat Generation: 5/6
    • Upgrades
      • Level 1 Upgrade: Reduces mode change time by 0.25 seconds.
      • Level 2 Upgrade: Increases airburst mode range by 10%.
      • Level 3 Upgrade: Reduces heat generation by 5%.
  • NEW Alternate Primary Weapon: T32-BOLT
    • A versatile, quick-loading trinity shotgun that can be charged by holding down the fire button.
    • Specs
      • Damage: 4/6
      • Rate of Fire: 3/6
      • Accuracy: 1/6
      • Effective Range: 2/6
      • Heat Generation: 4/6
    • Upgrades
      • Level 1 Upgrade: Increases effective range by 5%.
      • Level 2 Upgrade: Reduces heat generation by 3%.
      • Level 3 Upgrade: Reduces firing spread by 7%.
  • Prestige Primary Weapon: EOC Repeater
  • Starting Item: EMP

Maps

• NEW Map: Facility
  • Game Modes: Team Deathmatch and Missile Assault.
  • This work-in-progress map will be in an unskinned or “whitebox” state. Try it out and let us know what you think!
  • This map will not be part of the normal map rotation. There will be servers dedicated to this map specifically which can be accessed via Server Browser.
  • This map will also support Deathmatch in an upcoming patch.

Matchmaking

• Server Browser: We’ve seen significant improvements to matchmaking, but it’s still not ideal so we’re bringing back the server browser.
  • The server browser will not have a requirement tied to its availability. Meaning, a first time player will be able access this tab right away.
  • Matchmaking servers +/-300 points outside your player rating will be grayed out and you will be unable to join. This restriction does not apply to custom servers.
    • Joining through friends is still possible even if the server is outside of your rating.
  • These are not servers separate from the ones we use for matchmaking, they’re all from the same pool. We will also be running Custom Servers.
  • Server names will be unique so it’ll be easy to find specific servers. The name of the server a player is on will appear on the TAB screen during gameplay to make this process even easier.
  • Your Player Rating will appear on the Server Browser so you can see where you fall on the scale in comparison with available servers. The purpose of this system is to both identify and track the skills of gamers in order to be able to match them into competitive matches.
  • Servers will be labelled “Beginner”, “Medium”, or “Advanced”, dynamically based on the average rating of the players currently on the server. Empty servers will show as “Unranked” until at least 3 players have joined.
  • Game mode lock restrictions previously applied to Matchmaking also apply to Server Browser. Players will need to play a requisite number of Team Deathmatch games to unlock other game modes.
  • The server browser will show populated servers and one empty server for each game mode.
• Matchmaking has been renamed Quick Match.
• The “All Regions” filter has been removed.
• The Asia server regions have been merged into the Oceania server region.
• The “Custom Servers” filter has been added. Servers in this filter will be set up to run “test” maps such as Facility or work-in-progress game modes. If you use Quick Match, you’ll be put into one of these servers most closely matching your Player Rating.

Customizations

• NEW Holo Taunts: Use “H” to toss a holo-puck that projects the Holo Taunt of your choice during a match.
  • Holo Taunts can be swapped out during a match by clicking on Holo Taunt icon in the Staging area.
  • Holo Taunts work similar to Countermeasures in that all Holo Taunts are available and they share a single consumable inventory of uses. Unlike Countermeasures, this inventory can be refilled using HAWKEN Credits or Meteor Credits.
  • Our first Holo Taunts include:
    • POOR BEARCITO
    • OMG VICTORY!
    • BETTER CLUCK NEXT TIME
    • LORD OF THE DASH
    • NONONO
• NEW Mech Taunts: Use “G” to execute your selected Mech Taunt during a match.
  • Each mech class starts with a default Mech Taunt. Even though the default Mech Taunt may be used during a match, in order to visually equip the Mech Taunt in the store, the player must unlock it for free to add it to their inventory. This is due to technological limitations.
  • Our first Mech Taunts include:
    • Class A Mech Taunts: THE PLEASURE WAS ALL MINE (Default) and DIRTY DOG
    • Class B Mech Taunts: THAT JUST HAPPENED (Default) and THE ROOSTER
    • Class C Mech Taunts: GLHF (Default) and THE SHOTGUN
• NEW Camouflages: WOODLAND-GRN, HAZMAT-Z10, BRAIN-WAVE
• NEW Thruster: JT-H0TSH0T
• NEW Repair Drone: RD-QU4TERNION
• NEW Chassis: Muller (Class B)
• Check out how all of these new customizations look!

Weapons

• Balance Overview: We’ve done some significant updates to explosive weapons to help balance their viability versus bullet (trace) weapons. Specifically, players will find that most explosives now feather damage more aggressively than in the past. In some cases, such as with the EOC Repeater and the Hellfire Missiles, players should find explosive weapons more viable for their intended purpose.
  • About Feathering: All weapon damage in HAWKEN uses a damage falloff system. For explosive weapons, when you shoot it at an enemy they take less damage the farther away they are from the explosion impact, but if they’re in the radius of explosion at all then they will take what we refer to as explosion “minimum damage”. Basically, if you hit near a player, you are guaranteed to do at least this much damage. Previously, this damage value was very close to the same damage you’d do if you got a direct hit. Say a weapon does 100 damage when you hit someone directly and if you don’t hit directly it does between 60-80 damage depending on proximity. We’ve reduced that minimum damage value, so in this example if you don’t hit directly it would now do, say, between 20-80 damage.
• Heat Cannon
  • Decreased non-charged explosion minimum splash damage by nearly 50% to prevent massive damage to enemies at the outer edge of these explosions.
  • Decreased charged projectile damage radius by about 15%. Level 2 and 3 Upgrades are affected by this.
  • Decreased charged projectile minimum splash damage by about 40%.
  • Level 2 Upgrade: Decreased damage radius bonus from 10% to 5%.
  • Level 3 Upgrade: Decreased damage radius bonus from 10% to 5%.
• EOC Repeater
  • Increased mine proximity distance by 100%. Players should be able to lay mines and have targets hit them more often.
  • Slightly decreased mine max damage radius.
  • Level 3 Upgrade: Changed from increasing damage radius by 15% to increasing mine lifetime by 1.5 seconds.
• Rev-GL
  • Decreased explosion damage radius by about 15%. Level 1 Upgrade was affected by this.
  • Decreased inner damage radius size (maximum damage area) by about 50%
  • Decreased minimum damage damage by about 30%.
  • Slightly increased rate of fire.
  • Increased heat generation per shot by about 15%
  • Level 1 Upgrade: Decreased damage radius bonus from 10% to 5%.
  • Level 3 Upgrade: Decreased projectile speed bonus from 10% to 5%.
• TOW Launcher
  • Decreased minimum damage by about 10%.
  • Decreased explosive damage radius by about 20%. Level 2 Upgrade was affected by this.
  • Decreased inner explosive damage radius by about 20%.
  • Level 1 Upgrade: Decreased projectile speed bonus from 10% to 5%.
  • Level 2 Upgrade: Decreased damage radius bonus from 15% to 5%.
• Seeker
  • Decreased inner damage radius by about 10%.
  • Decreased minimum damage by about 50%.
  • Level 1 Upgrade: Now correctly says “homing strength” rather than “homing time”.
  • Level 1 Upgrade: Decreased homing strength bonus from 10% to 5%.
  • Level 3 Upgrade: Decreased projectile speed bonus from 10% to 5%.
• Hellfire Missiles
  • Decreased inner damage radius by about 10%.
  • Decreased minimum damage by about 25%.
  • Increased initial missile speed by about 25%.
  • Increased missile acceleration rate by about 20%.
  • Decreased missile max speed by about 15%.
  • Increased homing strength by about 30%. Level 3 Upgrade was affected by this.
  • Increased rate of fire by about 12%.
  • Decreased missile damage by about 15%.
  • Decreased spread by about 30%.
  • Decreased time to lock-on by about 15%.
  • Level 1 Upgrade: Changed from decrease time to lock-on by 0.1 second to increase time to lose lock-on by 0.1 second.
  • Level 3 Upgrade: Decreased homing strength bonus from 10% to 5%.
• Grenade Launcher
  • Level 1 Upgrade: Decreased damage radius bonus from 10% to 5%.
  • Level 3 Upgrade: Decreased projectile speed bonus from 10% to 5%.
  • Level 3 Upgrade: Now correctly applies bonus to projectile speed rather than damage radius.
• SMC
  • Increased starting falloff range by about 30%.
  • Increased ending falloff range by about 30%.

Items

• EMP: Decreased effect duration from 5.5 seconds to 4.5 seconds.
• Repair Charge: No more “dud” charges! There will be a very slight delay before healing begins, but the charges will now always heal.
• Detonator: This item will no longer penetrate a deployed Shield.
• Shield: This item’s description has been updated to reflect what it actually does: “A projectile that creates a magnetic sphere of defensive particles, forming a shield. It prevents all trace or projectile fire from passing through it from the exterior; keep that in mind when firing explosives.”

Abilities

• Class C Heavy Turret Modes: Decreased amount of time to switch into and out of all heavy turret modes.
• Power Shot: The Sharpshooter ability now has a unique icon.

Gameplay

• Suicides: When a player suicides, credit for the kill will be given to the last player who dealt damage as long as they are within the time limit to get an assist (10 seconds).
• Internals: Can now be unequipped by selecting “EMPTY”.
• Countermeasures: Can now by changed during a match by clicking the icon in the Staging area.
• Gameplay Tips: Viewable in Staging area to provide valuable information. If you’re already a pro, these can be disabled via the Settings menu.
• PhysX High Option: PhysX particles can now be set to High in the Video Settings menu. High (NVIDIA Only) Option will be grayed out if your computer does not meet required specifications. This setting will add APEX Turbulence effects to the energy collectors, mech death, healing orbs, and weapon impacts on the shield. Click herefor more information.
• Nemesis System
  • Dominate a foe by killing them three times without them killing you to gain bonus XP. When dominating or dominated, you will be marked by a skull or target icon (respectively) next to your name. While being dominated, you can end the domination to remove your target icon and gain bonus XP by earning a kill against the foe who is dominating you.
  • Become a nemesis of a foe by killing each other three times each in a match to gain bonus XP.
  • Become an underdog by killing or assisting against a mech at least five levels above yours to gain bonus XP based on level difference.
• Kill Messages
  • Assists for which you dealt most of the damage are now displayed as critical assists.
  • When the requisite action for dominating, dominated, nemesis, or underdog status is achieved, it will be reflected in the kill message.

Modes

• Team Deathmatch: A new win condition has been introduced. The first team to 50 kills or the team with the most kills after 15 minutes wins.
• Missile Assault & Siege
  • Get to the action faster by disabling the Missile Assault and Siege rules screen by marking the “Don’t Show Again” box. They can also be disabled in the Settings menu.
  • The user interface for these modes is now visible while zoomed or in heavy turret mode.

Miscellaneous

• The Friends List and Message windows now scale with your set resolution.
• The XP gained by max level mechs is now shown on the progression tab during post-match results.
• Removed redundant text for expired test drive mechs.
• Swapped “Yes” and “No” dialog options to match PC consistency.
• Added tooltips to most items slots in the Garage.
• The profanity filter has been adjusted to be less aggressive.

Bugs Squashed

• The radar should no longer occasionally disappear.
• Hellfire Missiles will now lock-on properly while in heavy turret mode.
• Projectiles fired at point blank range will now cause damage.
• Heavy turret mode HUDs no longer partially disappears after an Overheat debuff resolves.
• Post-match results tabs should no longer display as a text field.
• Sirens should no longer play at inappropriate times in Missile Assault and Siege.
• Spaces can now be used in the login window.
• Pressing ENTER on an error dialog no longer affects the underlying screen.
• Pressing ENTER while searching for a match no longer sends the request again.
• Button prompts in the Garage tutorial are now centered.
• Fixed double headers on windows causing mouse pointer issues.
• Fixed Game Chat window graphics appearing corrupt if collapsed and uncollapsed.
• Corrected a grammatical error in the H.E. Charge item.
• Fixed inability to select resolution if mouse wheel is used to scroll drop-down menus.
• The incorrect text no longer is displayed when a player is depositing EU while an enemy battleship is at their base.
• Mech audio no longer plays every time a repair drone is previewed in the Garage.
• Radio buttons no longer shows when Game Chat is minimized.
• Scrolling the lore text box for a mech in the YOUR MECHS tab no longer scrolls the lore text box for all mechs.
• Repaired some mechs missing polys on Low Settings.
• The SWITCH TEAM button no longer cuts off text in some languages.
• Items can no longer be deployed while boosting using the 1 and 2 keys.
• Fixed purchased rentals not updating the mech details after purchase in the YOUR MECHS tab.
• Fixed unselected focus state of social feature buttons.
• The low health alarm beep now plays while in heavy turret mode.
• Fixed a typo in the “Decrease All Damage Received” Optimization in the Defense tree.
• Fixed overlapping text on player currency display.
• The HUD no longer disappears if the camera mode or view target changes while the pause menu is open.
• Addressed an issue with flashing polygons on the Origin map.
• Some mech and weapon text has been reformatted for improved legibility.

If you’ve ever watched Neon Genesis: Evangelion or any other giant robot anime, you’ll know that the only thing better than a giant robot is a giant robot with a giant melee weapon, wading into the fray to beat up other giant robots with giant melee weapons. As such, developers of the mech-based Hawken are keen on adding melee weapons, and according to co-founder and lead animator at Adhesive Games, Chris Lalli, they are experimenting with the idea of adding them “in a controlled way that fits into the Hawken universe”.

“We wouldn’t want to see every mech running around punching or swinging swords at each other,” he told PC Gamer “or have a long-range sniper class staying in close to melee. I’d like to see specialized mech classes or balanced weapons that incorporate melee, but at the cost of ranged attacks or something along those lines.”

As well as melee weapons, Lalli talked about adding the ability to add decals and clan insignias but has said full-customisation is too much trouble at this point. “At the moment I think it would require too much oversight on our end, to avoid offensive material.”

Source: PC Gamer

When we took a look at Hawken, our major complaint was that its lack of Australian servers meant that nobody could reliably enjoy a game.

And then they went and added Australian servers! Just like that! Now that closed beta is finished and open beta is go, there’s no reason left for you to not be playing. Head on over to the official site now.

See you in there!

Unfortunately, when you set your release date 10 months in advance, chances are it’s going to slip. That’s the lesson the Hawken dev team are taking home this Christmas, as they have announced that they will not be able to make their December 12 launch. Instead, December 12 marks the beginning of the Open Beta period.

“Open Beta is our chance to implement all the good feedback we’ve gotten from closed beta players on the forums, and deliver the changes the community wants to see,” said Co-founder and lead animator, Chris Lalli. “The community will really have the ability to shape the game and be part of its development.”

With this, they have also announced that the game’s pre-sale Vanguard Initiative will be ending tomorrow, so if you want in on that special release, now is the time to pick it up.

There is no new release date for the final version.

Source: CVG

When we looked at Hawken, we found a great game that was desperately in need of lag-free Australian servers — so much so that we named the whole article to reflect it. Now, it seems that our prayers have been answered.

Ausgamers is reporting that the deployment of the Australian server is now complete, and players can choose “Australia” in the region drop-down box from the game’s multiplayer menu.

Local servers have also been deployed to Japan and Singapore to allow players there to experience less international lag. A closed beta event is on now until December 6 — if you haven’t already, sign up the official site.

Source: Ausgamers

Meteor Entertainment, publisher of Hawken, are certainly expecting their little mech-combat game to do well — and private investors are as well, with venture capital firms dropping a cool $18 million on the development of Hawken. In fact Meteor’s CEO Mark Long believes the game might even go so far as to overtake League of Legends in the F2P market.

“That’s the plan,” said Long to Geekwire, when asked if he believed Hawken would overtake Riot’s offering. “You can play the entire game for free and unlock every single thing in the game. But, if you are like me, and you don’t have a lot of time and want to play over the weekend and have a good time, you might spend some money on a robot so that you don’t have to grind away for a month to unlock that.”

Two of the investors backing the game are firms which have formerly backed League of Legends as well, indicating that the People With Money see some great potential in Hawken. Our recent impressions from the Hawken closed beta found that the game was great fun, but really needed local servers if it was going to succeed in Australia.

Source: Geekwire

Indie darling Hawken has been the talk of the town ever since its fantastic trailer first released, showing a lovely, almost anime-style take on the hectic jet and thrust of modern mechanised combat. This weekend marked the first closed beta, and we were lucky enough to score an invite. So, how is it shaping up? Let’s break it down.

PC support

Hawken uses DirectX 9 and, to be fair, even with settings pushed to maximum, it isn’t exactly going to blow your mind. The art direction is beautifully slick and duking it out in the chunky, industrial slums or across the arid desert is great, but visually Hawken is not ambitious and seems to aiming for maximum install base with lower requirements.

I’ve taken a screenshot of the available options, which you can see below. Hawken provides motion blur, depth of field, post-process MLAA, anisotropy and PhysX particles, as well as field of view (up to 90 max, although you can edit the .ini file to make it higher), mouse smoothing, and others.

In action, Hawken is impressive. Mech animations are lovely and powerful, with soaring jets and clomping great feet. Watching a duel between two suits as they glide back and forth, lauching rockets and trying to lose each other in the smokestacks is great, and the cockpit HUD may seem cramped at first but after a while it becomes an essential part of the game.

Gameplay

Here’s the first thing to know for Australians: Hawken needs local servers. Badly. Depending on your location you can get pings of up to 250 ms or more, which leads to rubber banding, awful hit detection, and being killed before you even realise you’re under attack. The west coast of the US generally resulted in the best ping, but hit detection still felt sloppy even when compensated for with significant target leading. This is a shame, as the lightning-paced nature of Hawken combat means that snappy ping is an absolute must for a proper game experience.

When the game works though, it’s great. Hawken has of course been naturally compared with MechWarrior Online (which just went into open beta today), but the truth of the matter is that Hawken plays much more like a traditional FPS than a mech game. Sure, it’s important to watch your radar, conserve fuel and be aware of your surroundings, but even the heavy mechs like the Berserker have a speed and reaction time that makes twitch gameplay and tactics more important than loadout, deployment and strategy.

Verticality plays a huge part in Hawken’s gameplay. With towering skyscrapers, jump pads and steel canyons to navigate through, the radar can only help you so much. Jetting from tower to tower or activating your cloak and dropping into a shaft to come around for a rear-armour missile strike is marvellously fun.

Speaking of missile strikes, Hawken‘s siege mode deserves a special mention — you and your friends must use your suits to collect energy and return it to the base, all the while trying to stop the enemy from doing the same. Once enough energy has been returned, a battleship is launched which begins to bear down inexorably on the enemy base. At this point the game switches to a frantic take-and-hold battle, with the enemy desperately trying to maintain control of the AA guns so they can shoot the battleship down, and you trying to keep them off it. It’s delightfully tense.

Levelling and customisation

Playing matches earns you experience points in each class of mech, which you can then use to make various ‘optimisations’ in either offence, defence, or movement. Interestingly, this is entirely separate from physical customisation of your mech: swapping out different makes and models of cockpits, legs and repair bots is purely visual and has no in-game effect on your performance.

Each class of mech has a different, unique ability and multiple options for primary and defensive weapons. Infiltrator mechs rapidly became my favourite: with the ability to cloak and disappear from radar for a few seconds, their small size and mobility made for the class most able to take advantage of Hawken’s propensity for vertical combat. The default Assault class has the ability to deploy weapon coolant, instantly removing all heat buildup to allow for spectacular sustained fire — it’s a great starting class and playing with it makes you feel solid and powerful, although its default box cockpit is a tad on the ugly side.

Beta issues

Unfortunately, this is a beta, and it shows: customisations sometimes don’t stick visually, requiring you to toggle them on and off a couple times to make them stay. Each daily patch across the course of the weekend also forced me to rebuild my mech’s appearance (as well as reset all my graphics options). All these things will doubtless be ironed out before launch, but another thing that’s more concerning is texture pop: entering the mech garage and swapping mech models gives a second or so of blank textures before they properly load in, even on my GTX 670 with 16GB of memory to spare.

Other than that — and the fact it took anywhere from five to twenty repeated matchmaking attempts to actually get a match rather than an error – Hawken is shaping up to be a lot of fun… for overseas players. Without local servers, Hawken runs the very real risk of not being able to deploy successfully in Australia at all, which is worrying.

In just two weeks time, Hawken will have its first closed beta phase. The beta, which will run from the 26th to the 29th, will not include a non-disclosure agreement like the current alpha — so participants should feel free to share screenshots and game footage with their local gaming news purveyor.

Participants in the alpha will automatically receive invitations to join the closed beta. Others who are hopeful to join in can register for the beta here. Codes will also be given out via their Twitter and Facebook pages, so if you are keen keep at least one eye glued to those as well.

After its closed beta phase the game will go into open beta on December 12, when it will become compatible with the Oculus Rift, if you happened to pledge over $300 in the game’s Kickstarter to gain access to the early dev kit (like our very own Cas Bitton). Good times.

Source: Eurogamer

I don’t know about you, but teaming up with my friends to shoot the hell out of some AI controlled enemies is generally a good time — especially when the AI controlled enemy is a giant beast and we’re all sitting pretty in a bunch of mechs.

That’s the idea behind the planned future PVE mode of Hawken in any case, as revealed in an interview with the games’ creative director Khang Le. “We really want to expand once we have more time and budget and everything, to expand the PvE aspect of the game. I really love Lost Planet, you know, a bunch of players fighting together to destroy a giant beast. We’re really pushing for that because I think PvE is a lot of fun.”

Hawken will launch with a mode where players can shoot “dumb robots” to get used to their weaponry, but the proper PVE experience is planned for later.

Source: PCGamesN