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 | Website | Twitter | Discord | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDWn9VlAeaI What is Hawken? Hawken is(/was) a free to play, indie developed Mech FPS that released in open beta in late 2012. It spent a very long time in beta, raised a ton of money, teased a movie, released a comic compilation, and fell apart. Then, it was bought by 505 Games, who attempted to revive Hawken - now subtitled Ascension, which then fell apart until the PC servers were taken down in 2017. The PS4 still has it running though, I believe! Hawken is like a lumbering, mech-interpreted version of Quake, but being a mech game, it has some game play changes in the service of the feel. What is Hawken Reborn? After Hawken died a slow death, 505 began working on a reboot, which is what we have here. Hawken Reborn is still free to play, but it's now a PvE looter shooter. There is no PvP yet, but the developers say that may come down the road once PvE is in a good place. When will it be done? Hard to say - in interviews and on the website, they indicate that their current plans extend approximately 18 months out from early access release on Steam, but whether that will mean "1.0", or if ongoing feedback changes those plans dramatically is hard to say. How is it? At time of release - not great. Tons of AI art everywhere, floaty movement and combat in a 'series' whose primary selling point heavily featured "weighty, grounded gameplay", weak combat feedback, and worse graphics than the original 10 year old game. In short, they released way too early. At least being this early means there's a lot of room to iterate on feedback, but as a starting point: not great. Tell me more! More will appear here once we all know more for sure! All I can say for now though is it's semi-story based, a looter shooter (think Borderlands), but it's free to play. They claim there'll be a story, featuring the cast of corporations and such that you may or may not remember from the game and comics (Prosk, Sentium, maybe even Crion?), and some of the same mechs as last time, and some new ones. Most of the information that is currently available out there can be found in an article on PCGamer. Luigi Fusco posted:It's a bit of a pivot, too. While the original Hawken was a multiplayer, PvP affair that saw you pilot your 20-foot steel contraptions across a variety of game modes, Hawken Reborn will be a purely single-player experience when it releases, with a co-op multiplayer mode "planned for a later date". Is there a roadmap? There is!  Is there any reason to be worried this'll suck?  Yes. Saturnine Aberrance fucked around with this message at 16:10 on May 17, 2023 |
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May 15, 2023 20:07
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I thought the original hawken was neat but it didn’t really feel like you were in a big mech.
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May 15, 2023 20:20
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Neat, wishlisted on Steam.
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May 15, 2023 20:55
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I wonder what the monetization structure will look like? Hawken was long ago, was it cosmetic? I remember bobbleheads on the dashboard (which was a good idea lol)
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May 15, 2023 21:11
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I loved Hawken in its original form. I wouldn't ever play tons of it, but a couple of matches here and there were great for breaks from other larger games. I'm even more interested in PvE as I'm garbage in competitive forms these days. Bonus points if it plays great on a Steam Deck.
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May 15, 2023 21:17
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I would probably enjoy a PvE weighty mech shooter but it being a number-go-up game instead of something tighter is disappointing.
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May 15, 2023 21:26
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Revitalized posted:I wonder what the monetization structure will look like? Hawken was mostly about cosmetics, yeah, and you could also use the currency to unlock mechs and upgrades (though iirc that shifted back and forth a lot due to the competing draws of more money and making players happy enough). Here's what the PCGamer article said on it PC Gamer - Joshua Wolens posted:It's in the crafting and upgrade system that Hawken Reborn makes its money. Your new mechs, weapons, and other enhancements have to be crafted from schematics, a process that requires materials you'll gain during combat or—if you're so inclined—by purchasing them with real money.
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May 15, 2023 22:06
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I very much love Destiny and Warframe so another one of those would be cool, especially if it features stompy bots and gets coop. Very limited content on beta launch is a little worrying I guess? But we'll see. Since there's no buy-in I might as well try it out on Wednesday.
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May 15, 2023 22:23
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I liked Hawken but a big part of it was its visual stylings which this seems to have very little of. All the maps in the screenshots are generic brown landscapes as opposed to the also-brown megastructures you were fighting through. Also the HUD isn't as diegetically clunky and obstrusive, which is a big downgrade imo.
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May 15, 2023 22:30
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Hawken was fun when I played, it curious to see how this evolves.
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May 16, 2023 02:42
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PvP Hawken is technically still availablw if you have a playstation.
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May 16, 2023 03:45
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This is going to die even faster the second time around lol
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May 16, 2023 04:47
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Why did the game fail the first time? I always hear nothing but positive things.
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May 16, 2023 06:46
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I said come in! posted:Why did the game fail the first time? I always hear nothing but positive things. The number of people who fondly remember arena shooters and the number of people who actually play arena shooters when someone makes a new attempt are very different. Hawken suffered similarly, just never enough people or money coming in.
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May 16, 2023 06:48
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I said come in! posted:Why did the game fail the first time? I always hear nothing but positive things. Just never gained traction since there wasn't a huge market for what it offered, combined with slow updates, lovely borderline-P2W monetization, expensive ugly cosmetics, and long grinds Hawken was a great core game and a terrible product, what they're turning it into looks like an asset flip cash grab
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May 16, 2023 07:47
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Also keep in mind market saturation. There are literally more free to play or cheap games out there than there are people alive on earth (or possibly who have ever lived on earth combined) and so if you can't get your name to be a household one either by quality or marketing, you're toast. There are a lot of battle royale titles in the last 5 years that have been of allegedly amazing quality, but they just never attract the base to get enough whales to keep them afloat. As good as I heard Hawken was every single time it came up, it was from the same couple of people and no one else, and I rarely ever saw it mentioned anywhere else.
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May 16, 2023 13:36
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It's kinda rough this is arriving in a a similar time frame to Armored Core VI, the established mech franchise from a developer that's currently the games industry's sweetheart. These guys couldn't foresee that but... yikes.Dark_Swordmaster posted:Also keep in mind market saturation. There are literally more free to play or cheap games out there than there are people alive on earth (or possibly who have ever lived on earth combined) and so if you can't get your name to be a household one either by quality or marketing, you're toast. There are a lot of battle royale titles in the last 5 years that have been of allegedly amazing quality, but they just never attract the base to get enough whales to keep them afloat. This is still a F2P product, it's just that they've done a 180° on what sort of players they're targeting. It's now all about solo PvE (with co-op coming once it leaves Early Access, supposedly within 12-18 months). Updates will include new missions and mechs, so I don't know what they'll charge money for other than the obvious cosmetics.
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May 16, 2023 14:17
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I want an extraction shooter with mechs.
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May 16, 2023 14:56
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Honestly the lore of battletech kind of works for that even though the mechanics don't....
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May 16, 2023 15:03
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Hawken probably suffered by looking like a stompy mech game but playing more like Unreal Tourney, I loved it to bits and have zero faith 505 isnt going to spike this baby into the ground super hard. Like at least wait until you have some pvp poo poo guys, what the hell.
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May 16, 2023 15:35
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Updated the OP with the roadmap they just posted:
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May 16, 2023 18:21
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What a useless roadmap. I hope this game is good, I didn't play Hawken very much but I did enjoy it. I think the shift to a PVE focused game is a good one, there is already a million F2P PVP games that it would be hard to compete with.
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May 16, 2023 18:30
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My biggest concern with this, based off that roadmap and the info so far, is that this is going to launch with a pretty massive dearth of content and unless they've either got a wealth of it mostly completed in the pipe or have figured out how to make content much faster than any other developer these days this is going to be dead before coop even launches. That said, Warframe launched in a fairly similar state and look at it now, one of the best F2P games out there of all time.
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May 16, 2023 19:10
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Game's out, yo. Edit: There are infantry but you can't step on them. 0/10 dead game. raverrn fucked around with this message at 10:17 on May 17, 2023 |
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May 17, 2023 10:00
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 Game is very self-aware, it even has a lore reason for why the protagonist is silent. Story/Cutscenes are comic-book slideshows, the way they did it reminded me of Everspace 2 in a way. Performance is good, it's UE4 after all.
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May 17, 2023 10:38
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Trip report: Hit an infinite load screen in the fourth or so mission? Killed the process and relaunched, and now it launches into a tutorial I already completed and softlocks immediately.
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May 17, 2023 12:32
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 Apparently the cheapest MTX pack gives 1100 currency but the cheapest mech is 1179. Just really making the nickle and diming obvious.
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May 17, 2023 14:56
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Reviews I saw said that it had equipment and in mission revives available to purchase with real cash. In a single player game.
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May 17, 2023 15:02
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Charging real money for stuff in a prerelease state is pretty lol. Give people virtual currency per diems if you want to gauge the cash flow.
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May 17, 2023 15:12
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I'm not surprised in the least. Hopefully the game itself is good I guess. Saw some of reviews stating they burned through most of the content in like an hour? Hopefully those are exaggerations.
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May 17, 2023 15:48
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To be devil's advocate, it's also literally day 1 of an early access game. To advocate less for the devil - they'd've been better served referring to it as the alpha that it is, and let it cook for at least a few more months before putting it on Early Access - but it's not like this is intended to be final content. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they felt like they had to move the timetable up because of Armored Core 6, but I can't imagine waiting till, like, AC6 had been out for half a year wouldn't have been just as good or better.
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May 17, 2023 22:10
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I have not played AC but I did watch a 2 hour retrospective on the series and beyond stompy bots I honestly don't see them competing in the same market if you're familiar with them. But I could totally see that.
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May 17, 2023 22:19
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Saturnine Aberrance posted:To be devil's advocate, it's also literally day 1 of an early access game. It’s day one of an early access game from a studio that, I don’t think, has done anything else since the previous version of this game collapsed years ago. If this isn’t just one or two people with the rights trying to shovel out a quick buck they have massively wasted their time not releasing with more than a couple hours content.
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May 17, 2023 23:04
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this is actually worse than i expected, and i only installed it to see how bad it could be it legitimately feels like a fuckin mobile game lmao
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May 17, 2023 23:06
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Phrosphor posted:Reviews I saw said that it had equipment and in mission revives available to purchase with real cash. In a single player game. yeah never mind i'm not even going to give this game a chance.
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May 17, 2023 23:25
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the menus don't even work but you can already spend real money for revives and equipment
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May 17, 2023 23:34
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Mobile Mechstiny 2
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May 17, 2023 23:40
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 only the finest quality AI generated art for our game
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May 17, 2023 23:44
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Wheeee posted:
Gross, could you have scripted a worse EA launch than this? 
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May 18, 2023 00:20
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It looked kind of bland so I was gonna pass but now I kinda wanna give it a try to see how bad it is.
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May 18, 2023 00:24
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