Today David and I were treated to a demo of Hawen. This is a free-to-play first person shooter massively multiplayer online game (I guess FTPFPSMMO would be easier). It centers around mech combat set in a dystopian world where giant robots piloted by humans rain ballistic hell upon each other.
This isn’t an average run-and-gun FPS though. There is a sturdy RPG element attached to Hawken where players earn experience points they can spend on leveling up certain branches of a skill tree. SR Marketing Manager Mark Tanjutco explained to us that no matter the level of the player, most people are fairly evenly matched because each skill leveled up in the game also features a negative effect. Essentially, the game is designed in a way that a level four player would be evenly matched with someone that is level 25.
There is a lot of typical current-gen sepia washing in Hawken, but given the world the game is set in it is appropriate.
The free-to-play aspect of is nicely designed. There are microtransactions available, but all items that you can purchase with real-world money are asthetic changes to your mech and don’t offer any advantage to the player. That is a refreshing change from typical microtransaction fueled games which are designed so that the only way one can win is to pay money.
If you’re going to be at C2E2, you should stop by Hawken’s booth (#1019) and check out the game. Or simply go to playhawken.com and check out their open beta that is currently in progress.
The storyline for MindJack is confusing to say the least. You are given almost no information of who you are fighting, why you are fighting, and what your ultimate goal is. (SPOILER ALERT) From what I understand, the player is the mind hacking essence of Andrew Gardner who, having attempted to bring his daughter back to life, has discovered how to take over people’s minds using what is called a mind hack. Unfortunately, none of this crucial information is revealed until the final scene of the game. Gardner is controlling anyone and anything to reach his goal, specifically Jim Corbjin who is our main character playing through this game. As players we are killing random agents who seem to be awaiting us everywhere simply to reach the final destination and destroy the mind hacking machine. This plot might make sense if it wasn’t for the way in which it was presented to the player. It’s depressing because it has the foundations of an incredible story.
Another hidden gem is the music. The sounds generated in the game including the voice acting are less than sensational, but the music used in the game is convincing of something spectacular. It inspires interest, concern, and excitement. Unfortunately the beautiful music is dismissed when surrounded by repetitive noises and crappy gaming that is bound to make the player throw his controller at the wall.
The multiplayer ability would make gameplay incredibly fun, that is, if playing the campaign mode were fun. If mind hacking were an available gameplay for Halo: Reach it would be the talk of the industry and every developer would be scrambling to implement the same gameplay style. However it wasn’t placed in a fun campaign, it was placed in MindJack, and so its value is severely diminished. Luckily, there is also a second replay value addition of “plug-ins”. This little gem of adding plug-ins is very smart as it allows you to power up or slightly adjust your game using plug-in rules to change your characters abilities in the game. Unfortunately once again, the game is not fun to play so replay is definitely not what I want. Also, I was seriously unhappy with the plug-in choices. There were some good ones allowing stronger armor, better aiming, faster hacking, but half the plug-ins had to do with gaming difficulty and other basic choices that should be available in the regular options menu. I think this is a quality idea that was once again poorly implemented. This game is full of fantastic opportunities gone awry.