Personal Opinion for...

Hawken!!! This is kinda new for my blog, but ever since I had got a new computer, there were so many games I wanted to try out, one of them being Hawken, a currently in open beta first-person mech shooter. A little back story. As you know of how much I like Gundam models, you could say I have the same liking towards Mecha or robots and that kind of stuff. And since I had played Virtual On : Operation Moon Gate or Armored Core, there had never been very good Mech games on the PC. I knew about Mech Warrior, but it did not seem as appealing because I was more for futuristic and cool looking robots compared to the realistic kind (Armored Core runs a very fine line between both).

Though this is just my personal liking, I wanted a Mech game on the PC. Armored Core was sadly a console exclusive, and team that made Virtual On had stopped continuing the series so nothing exceptional came to the PC other than other first-person shooters.

So when a friend of mine showed me the link to the in-progress video of this game called Hawken, I was intrigued, and also I liked how the game gave you that bulky feeling.



(Above) The footage that told me I wanted to try this game!!

 Another reason I had quite a little more faith with the game was because I watched a video of in interview between Angry Joe and the creative director Khang Lee. And he mentioned one of the games they based Hawken on was Virtual On. I was excited, cause the game would be something of it.

So, what did I think of the game? It might be early for a complete review, since its still in the beta, but I can say this, the game is a first-person shooter, its online, and it plays completely different than your average first-person shooter. They really give you the feel of how heavy the mech is, but at the same time, you are allowed to quickly slide left and right to avoid attacks or rush to cover. Is this game a fast paced game? Quite fast actually, but at the same time lies in between that and strategical approach, which I will explain below. In my personal opinion, the fastest paced mech game would be Virtual On : Oratorio Tangram. The pace of Armored Core depended on the player, meaning if you know Armored Core well it is possible to obtain fast-paced gameplay.

One of the major differences I discovered, mostly the hard way (by getting killed in game of course) is it pulls away from personal expertise quite a lot. To explain myself, I played other games like Blackshot and Blacklight : Retribution, also spent a little time on Call of Duty MW3 and Battlefield 3, and in each game, you are capable, and its not impossible, to kill maybe a group of 3 or maybe 4, some really good players can maybe take out a group of 6 (with a grenade) single handed. I did manage it too, for example, 3 enemies in a room, I rush in and with a little luck (headshots) and well placed aim, you can take all 3 of them out before they can fully retaliate. But in Hawken, this is impossible.

There is no way, you can rush in, BY YOURSELF (meaning your allies are some where else) and kill all 3 (or 6) of them. Reason why, there is no instant kill from one source, meaning a group have to fire at the same target and hit to get that almost instant death, and it takes a lot of bullets and hits to actually kill another player in the game. I'm talking about team battles, not a Deathmatch. One of the only ways is that you are either really good, or they other team is really bad. In Hawken, a Grenade or a Tow Missile can, at maximum take away half of your hit points.

Another big difference in Hawken is that in fire fights, everyone is moving around, jumping, sliding in and out of cover, so actually hitting them completely for a whole 10 seconds is very hard, if not extremely HARD. And you can't sneak behind some poor guy and do a backstab instant kill. In some cases, you might end up getting killed even though you attacked first. This is also one of the only games where it is possible to have not died at all in a single match (this achieved not by hiding in your base, but even if you take part in encounters and fire fights) cause you can repair yourself, which at the same time leaves you vulnerable.

So, in most ways, Hawken is no where near your average first-person shooter. But on of the good things about this kind of play is it really encourages teams to stick together. The very reason a team can win is also mostly because they stick together, and gang up on lone enemies, which if happens to you, have almost zero chance of survival.

So, if you are used to the fact that it is possible to kill a group of people by yourself, you might want to change your mindset a little when trying out Hawken. Also bare in mind that there's no real telling you that you are hitting the enemy other than seeing their life decrease.

(Above) Just some screenshots of the game in its, if I'm not mistaken 2nd Beta. Had quite a lot of fun playing, but didn't focus on it too much.

Did I like playing Hawken? Yes, I did. I finally had the PC based Mech game and also it was pretty fast paced. One of the few things I didn't like is some of the designs of the Mechs made available, and also that most weapons are pretty limited, but its in beta, so all this might change. But so sum it all up, its something new which should be tried out, no questions about that.





Farid

What I should have Posted a long time ago...

If you had noticed, I never really posted about how I finished some of the SD soldiers in the picture at the right corner of my blog. The fact is, I actually had forgotten to blog about this specific soldier because I had tried a lot of new things, well I consider them to be a lot at least. Some of the new things which I had tried was, my first fully painted model, this was before my Heavyarms, if I'm not mistaken I did this either early this year, in January or last year. Secondly was adding extra panel-lines to the model, I had never really changed much on a model before other than sanding it or painting certain parts.

But anyways, lets jump to the model, I initially started looking for this particular model after spotting the different looking Military Unit at a shop in Sungai Wang, KL. So, when I went back home, I attempted to find it only because it was different. So after looking around for a while, I found out that this model could only be obtained by buying the individual Military Unit packs, so after looking around for, and trying my best to see whether the model inside the plastic was different, I bought 1, my bro bought 1. And the very reason I started fully painting a model was because I had to for this one, in the pictures below you can see that it is originally red in colour.

I started off my painting a base colour of white on the face, ribbon and legs. But I later decided that they would be grey, to make them, darker than the standard Military Unit, and also just to show that these guys are the bad guys. I had also etched onto the forehead and sanded it flat. I tried my best to make it look like the original picture of it in the anime. Quite a rough job, my first time anyways.

Just a comparison between mine and my bro's, mine was red, my bro's was orange, as show in the pic above. And you can see the pencil drawing on where to etch the panel-lines on the forehead. You can also clearly see on the orange one, the forehead looks different.

The arm, or arms, were quite a pain to paint, cause they had at white colour in the joint area, which so happens to be one of the smallest and hardest to reach areas of my paint brush, but managed to pull it off, with a lot of re-painting.

The base colours are painted on, and as you can see, with much spill over.

Painted on the green colour for the main body colour. This did not need a base coat, cause I was pretty sure the dark green would stick well to the plastic, also, the whole model it red anyways. Thankfully, I did not need to mix and paints for this colour, it was readily available.

The above images were after some initial paint-overs and some minor panel-lining to the head area. You can see the gold which I painted on, and how messy of a job I did on the first few coats of paint on. You can also see the grey colour I painted on the the legs and face area. The ribbon, however, I maintained pure flat white.

After a lot of cleaning up, and some finishing touches to the body area, and panel-lining, the body was finally finished, but the eye visor and eye had yet to be painted. At that time, I was still thinking of what colour to paint the eye, I was thinking of a light yellow, bright red and light pink. But I went with light pink cause that was how it was in the anime.

And this is the final product for the main body and head, they're pretty much the same part anyway. I painted the visor glossy black to give it a shiny look. And you can see how rough my painting was.

A comparison between my bro's Military Unit and my almost finished model. I was going to use my Military Units, but they were quite messy, so I went with my bro's much cleaner models.

The finished model with my bro's finished model. The arms took quite a while to paint and clean up because of how small they the grey areas and the hands were.

And at last the model was finished!! Took me a while for the entire model to be completed but in the end I was quite worth the time. However, this was one of my roughly painted models, look at the texture on some of the area, you can clearly see how I didn't mix enough thinner into the paint to give it a smooth texture. Nevertheless, a great piece I added to my collection. I should have posted you on my blog earlier, forgive me model...

Farid

Just to keep it going

Its been a while since the last post, and I did say I was trying to keep updating regularly so here's a post. Anyways, quite busy with classes recently and also having a hard time keeping up with the system, I'm lagging behind while others go on with their normal lives.

Well, nothing relatively new has been happening with my gundam models, and although I have quite a few to build, they are not here with me and the ones that are here, I am thinking about whether or not to go with it. And to those of you who don't know, I'm not back home, and I had a hard time looking for hobby shops that sell tamiya paint, most sell Mr. Hobby.

But while I was in this state of laggy-ness, a lot has been happening around me. Nintendo had just launched a new console, the Wii U, quite a few free-to-play games have been released, and example would be Blacklight : Retribution and also the soon to be in open beta, Hawken, which I have been excited about. Sadly, finding the time for games, has always been a problem, and oh how I yearn for a holiday. And speaking of holidays, I recently finished my 4 weeks of holiday. And throughout the holiday, I finally managed to get back to my old hobby, which I have neglected for almost 5 months, and no, I'm not talking about gundam modelling, its drawing. Strangely throughout the past 5 months, starting from, either it was June or May, I hardly drew anything. But suddenly during the holiday the feeling cam back!! It was nice doing it again, and I managed to get some really nice drawings done, but all still need touching up. If any of you who currently follow my blog, and check on every update (not sure if you exist) you might have remembered seeing a picture on the right side of my blog titled MFR. Well, that was actually a comic I was planning to work on, but after I tried starting on the first few pages, I realized, I needed to get so many things done. The story line, the dialogue for the characters, character design, and collecting samples to draw parts of the city have yet to be done. Then I was like "What do I start with first?" I started with character design. And since the comic will have robots in it, I did a little research on robots as well. And only now do I appreciate the trouble Manga Artists go through to give a good and at the same time easily remembered story for their Mangas. So, its still on going, and I think you can imagine how long a comic that is done in free time will take if a dedicated Manga Artist can take years to finish a single manga. I'm not starting big, just wanting to squeeze out 1 manga, 1 volume for my story.

Well, that's pretty much it, was gonna talk about the world of pokemon, but maybe for a different post.




Farid