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Hawken Beta Tips

Hawken Beta Tips

Written by Charles Husemann on 12/17/2012 for PC  
More On: Hawken
The Hawken public beta has been one of the most hotly anticipated betas in quite some time.  The game was the belle of the ball at E3 this year and the closed beta has drawn nothing but rave previews from critics (including our own Ben Berry).   With the beta now out and publicly available we reached out to the folks at Adhesive Games about what things gamers should and shouldn't do as they are firing up the beta.  Luckily Paul Loynd a producer from Meteor Entertainment (the game's publisher) had a few moments to share his tips for new players.


What are the three things that players should do when they first get into the game?
  1. Check out the tutorials.  Although Hawken is a First Person Shooter, there are a number of unique game play elements that the tutorials will help the aspiring Hawken pilot to learn and master like using the alternate function of secondary weapons and learning to dodge.
  2. Check out the mech store.  On any given week we have a number of rental mechs available for free so you can try out different mechs and decide what you like before you buy one. 
  3. Check out the mech garage.  This is where you are going to do all your customization on your mechs like changing your primary weapon, items, internals, etc.
Do you have any tips as far as which mechs are best to start with?
The Rocketeer is a really great starter mech.  It has the seeker missile primary and hellfire missiles which are both heavy damage lock on weapons.  At long range, the rocketeer is a deadly opponent and really easy to master, but you will need to watch out in close combat situations as the splash from hellfire and seeker missiles will hurt you and your opponent.


Any tactics that players should master early on that will serve them in the long term? Any Pro Tips around combat or things that traditional FPS players might miss?
Movement is everything in Hawken.  Your mech is a huge war machine that does not move the same way a human being would.  Learning to be efficient with your movement and take paths that will allow you to keep mobile so you don’t suffer the slowdown that occurs during extreme direction changes.  For instance, stopping and strafing left to right seriously slows down your mech, making you an easier target.  If instead you continue to move forward while strafing, your mech will maintain its forward momentum while still making a hard target for your enemies to track.

Are there certain things you should level up over others?
When you level up, where you put your points depends on how you like to play.  If you are an aggressive player that likes to mix it up on the front lines, the defense tree is going to be a good choice for you as it will increase your survivability and make you a much harder target in up close combat.  If you like to hang back and pound your enemies, the offense tree is going to make each of your shots more powerful and make you a real threat from distance.  Lastly, if you are all about movement then the movement tree will have you dancing around your enemies.  You won’t be as tough or hit as hard, but you won’t need to since you will be on them and gone before they knew what hit them.

We'd like to thank Paul for taking the time to answer our questions as well as Shannon for coordinating the interview.

* The product in this article was sent to us by the developer/company.


About Author

Hi, my name is Charles Husemann and I've been gaming for longer than I care to admit. For me it's always been about competing and a burning off stress. It started off simply enough with Choplifter and Lode Runner on the Apple //e, then it was the curse of Tank and Yars Revenge on the 2600. The addiction subsided somewhat until I went to college where dramatic decreases in my GPA could be traced to the release of X:Com and Doom. I was a Microsoft Xbox MVP from 2009 to 2014.  I currently own stock in Microsoft, AMD, and nVidia.
 

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