Mechs, explosions and a TV with legs, all for free as this episode takes on Hawken

Hello to all our new readers, and welcome back to those who have been following ZAM's bi-weekly column, The Free Agent. Our mission, as always, is to answer the question "Can gaming REALLY be free?"

Last time on the Free Agent we brought you coverage of The Banner Saga: Factions. Despite an unfortunate breach in security and a mild concussion induced from a hefty sack of quarters striking the back of my head, it was great experience. So if you missed it be sure to check it out.

A few weeks back I had the distinct pleasure of trying out the Oculus Rift VR headset at PAX Prime. It will stand out as one of the most distinctly mind-blowing and horizon expanding moments in my over 25 years of gaming. Not only that, but the demo I played through also encouraged me to finally try a free-to-play game that has been on my list for quite some time. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Hawken.

Anyone who played the same demo will likely agree, the Oculus Rift and mechanized war machine FPSs (aka Mech FPS) make for a deadly combo and I'm absolutely thrilled to see developers like Adhesive Games  including support for such devices. And while I may not have a VR headset this time around, let's be clear I still really enjoyed playing Hawken. So VR aside, let's hop into one of these sweet heavily armed mechs and blow some crap up already.

Wow! I don't suck and neither does this game

If you follow the Free Agent column you'll know by now that I make no excuse for my borderline pathetic FPS skills. However, something about piloting a mech seems to be more forgiving than traditional FPS. Perhaps it's simply that I can't be one-shot every time I go around a corner due to the lack of a head-shot game mechanic. Whatever the reason I found I didn't suck at Hawken near as much as I figured I would.

In fact, depending on the particular mech I was playing, I discovered I actually wasn't half bad at it. I started the game off in the basic CR-T Recruit mech, which looks sort of like an old school tube television with legs, and while it wasn't elegant it certainly got the job done. After playing through a quick tutorial I was ready to start duking it out with other TVs with legs.

It wasn't long before I was looking for something that didn't scream "haha look at that silly noob" and lucky for me the next mech I unlocked was a little more my style. The Rocketeer was a bigger, beefier and came with a host of medium to long range weapon options. Not only that, but, with a single button push, I could transform my Rocketeer into a slow moving heavy defense turret with advanced targeting capabilities that could soak up a ton of damage and provide cover for my team mates.

After spending the majority of my time in my heavy hitting Rocketeer I decided I needed to branch out a little. As a result I logged some hours on a light mech called the Berserker, perfect for those situations where you need a little speed on your side, and then later on had some fun with the Sharpshooter, the mech equivalent of a sniper.

Regardless of which mech I played I found the controls to be fairly responsive and quite natural. I think they did a great job of matching the physics to the size and function of each mech. When I was in my big beasty Rocketeer it felt appropriately sluggish compared to my light and agile Berserker.

Cover, aerial maneuvering, resource management and team work all came together as key components to victory, and Hawken provided for each of these generously using the Unreal Development Kit. From the moment your mech fires up and you explore the interface to the last shrapnel inducing explosion that wins or loses you the match, Hawken looks and feels like a mech shooter should.

Hawken comes loaded with four different match types, including the classics like Deathmatch and Team-Deathmatch modes, as well their take on capture-and-defend with Missile Assault. There was nothing earth shattering (besides the explosions) about any of these modes but they're entertaining to play. My only real complaint being that some of the maps seemed to be less than optimized for specific match types.

I was most impressed with the fourth match type, called Siege. Here Adhesive got a little creative, requiring each team to ferry energy units from contested resource nodes back to their base (seen below) in order to charge up their battleship. Once fully charged the battleship is launched and can be seen lumbering along overhead toward the enemy base.

The nature of the match then changes as both teams fight for control of a single AA battery that can quickly shoot the enemies battleship out of the sky. Without it, it takes a great deal of concentrated firepower to bring a battleship down and if it's not destroyed before reaching the opposing base the game ends fairly quickly.

I really enjoyed Siege matches as I found that I swapped back and forth to different mechs throughout the match in order to best tackle the task at hand. With objectives ever in flux it was a little chaotic at first, but once I figured it out, it was hands down my favorite match type.

Well Free Agent, it sounds like you pretty much  have only good things to say about Hawken

That's not entirely true, I just cover the good stuff first in hopes that any haters will stop reading before I get to the bad stuff and post nasty comments. The truth of the matter is that Hawken is not without its flaws.

For starters the match making system seemed rather bug ridden. It wasn't so much that it faced me off against higher level players, in that sense it was balanced, it was more that in some cases it just seemed to hang up and not work at all. Most times I would just log out for a few hours and come back later. But it always left me a little hesitant to leave a match as I was never quite sure if I'd get back in again and this was especially frustrating because of Hawken's Garage feature.

What is the Garage and what does it have to do with Matchmaking you ask? Well naturally the Garage is where you go to purchase, upgrade or customize your mechs. The interface is not entirely intuitive, but with help from your in game personal assistant LAILA, it's at least manageable. The real issue is that it cannot be accessed once you're in a match.

I suppose that's reasonable enough when you're in the heat of battle. However, after the match ends and you discover you just leveled up, LAILA encourages you to go check out all the new upgrades you unlocked. The problem is that you can't. There you are sitting in the match lobby; with a generous timer ticking away, being taunted by LAILA about upgrades, with no button or command to actually access your garage.

Nope, if you'd like to do that you need to leave the match entirely, go back to main menu, access the garage there and then pray that the match making doesn't bug out when you try to join another match. Even more frustrating, leaving a match to go to the Garage boots you out of any party you may have been in with friends. This was the most consistent complaint I heard from those that I was grouped with.

On the plus side at least it's a very tangible shortcoming that theoretically should be easy to remedy. Of course that begs the question, why hasn't it been fixed yet? Until it is I guess I'll just have to be content with the catch phrase, "Okay guys I have to leave the match now because I want to go to the garage, can someone re-invite the group once I'm done?"

Don't worry we're not going to end on that note, check out Page 2 for more