On the radar: Hawken

Mecha have entrenched themselves fairly deeply into sci-fi lore, and for good reason. Any potential future without giant robots that you can drive/do battle with isn't really a potential future worth imagining. Video games are a natural extension of anything involving giant robots, and the human-piloted aspect of mechs make them particularly susceptible to appearances in video games.

That said, video games have a fairly uneven history with giant battlesuits, with mech-based games ranging from simplistic but good to financially exclusive to just kinda meh. With Hawken, Adhesive Games have thrown their hat into the frenzied mech-combat arena, and from the looks of early gameplay, they may have a winner.


The problem that has traditionally plagued mech combat games is intrinsic to the giant, lumbering mechanical beasts at their cores. Mechs tend to control as if they were on a planet whose atmosphere was 95% pudding; they're slow, cumbersome, and awkwardly controlled. While this may be a reality of actual mech combat, there is no reason a video game should be infuriatingly difficult to maneuver.

Hawken aims to bring mech combat to the masses by instilling the fast-paced, ADD-enhanced gameplay that makes Call of Duty so popular. The gameplay seems to reflect that, but what really stands out is gorgeous graphics and wonderfully realized world on display. Sure, it may lean heavily on a standard video game setting like Post-apocolyptia, but it's beautifully rendered.

Then the bomb drops: Hawken will be free-to-play and Adhesive Games is a 9 person dev team. Holy shit. We can barely run a blog with more than half that number .

Check out a teaser trailer highlight Hawken's story, and sign up for the Hawken beta here.