In the world of free to play games, Hawken really does shine among the rest. However, it’s promises of being strategic and fast-paced seem to be unfounded. With Hawken all you really get out if it is the chance to play with massive machines in alien landscapes equipped with heavy artillery. If that’s all you’re looking for then you’ll be thrilled.
Platform Used For Hawken Review: Dell XPS 17, Intel i7 2.00GHz, 8GB Ram, GeForce GT 555M 3GB
Developer: Adhesive Games, K2 Network
Genre: F2p Online Mech First Person Shooter
Rating: 
If you’re looking for an online FPS that provides you with true strategic gameplay, I don’t think Hawken is for you. I’ve played my fair share of online FPS. Good old Call of Duty, Battlefield and Blacklight Retribution are a few to name. Every FPS seem to follow the same path: play a few matches, earn currencies, purchase new weapons and play again.
This is a tried and true formula but with Hawken you have MUCH more to customise. Mechs are split up into three different groups: Light, Medium and Heavy. Each mech plays a certain role. Light being a speedy but weaker type, Medium acting as a good all rounder and Heavy having much better defence but sacrificing speed. With every mech type, there are at least four ‘classes’ to pick from. For example, the Medium mech’s Sharpshooter is your sniper class whilst the Heavy mech’s Vanguard acts as your tanking class.
The different classes to choose from definitely provide quite a bit of customisation, but I’m not too sure if a massive amount of customisation is what makes a game.
The HUD of your mech is rather impressive but a third person view would be quite handy.
Combat
This is where we come to the combat. In general, the controls for Hawken are very smooth and make for a slight learning curve as opposed to a steep one. You can get into Hawken and follow it’s short tutorial, then jump straight into a match and outmaneuver other players with ease. However, they will also easily outmaneuver you as well. The controls for Hawken almost seem a bit too easy to get the hang of.
Holding the Shift key whilst pressing A or D (set by default to strafe left or right) will activate your mech’s side thrusters, sliding you sideways quickly to dodge incoming projectiles. Pressing and holding down the Space key (set by default to jump) will initiate your mech’s lower thrusters which will launch you into the air and allow flight for a short period.
Keep in mind that all of this is regulated by the amount of fuel you have. Sprinting, dodging with your thrusters, hovering in the air will all drain your fuel. In order to recuperate the lost fuel, you only need to stop using fuel consuming techniques and it’ll refill in no time.
Continue reading on the next page…
[schema type=”review” url=”http://store.steampowered.com/app/271290″ name=”Download Hawken” description=”In the world of free to play games, Hawken really does shine among the rest. However, it’s promises of being strategic and fast-paced seem to be unfounded. With Hawken all you really get out if it is the chance to play with massive machines in alien landscapes equipped with heavy artillery. If that’s all you’re looking for then you’ll be thrilled.” rev_name=”Hawken Review” rev_body=”In short, Hawken is quite a promising game but due to the lack of imagination when it comes down to the nitty grittiness of combat, I feel the developers have failed to create a true imagining of mech vs. mech battles.” author=”GameReviews AU” pubdate=”2015-04-20″ user_review=”3″ min_review=”1″ max_review=”5″ ]