The developers of Hawken, a game I'm going to post quite a lot in this blog, have finally released their new patch called the Ascension Patch! They're introducing quite a lot of new features in this patch, but for me to list out all of the new features would really cut it short. I will explain more about this later further in this post, so continue reading.
After you log in and enter the game, you will be immediately prompted to go through a tutorial. I'm glad they spent the effort to make it easy for new players to get used and be introduced to the new features Hawken brings to the genre of the first-person mech shooter. But after playing through the tutorial, the AI and stuff they explain to you really do give a full tutorial, so no complains about that, and I'm not sure whether you skip the tutorial so I can't really say anything more than that.
The layout they make now looks much more streamlined and clean. In all honesty, it actually reminded me of android layouts on smartphones. And also, they customisation options that have been added are much more interesting, also the colour editting is more solid (like this the most in a way) ~
They have also added mech ranks apparently, and I really appreciated that you could upgrade your ability more than before, and while I played the first game in the new patch, I really noticed the added effectiveness and longer duration. Unfortunately, you have to purchase each upgrade, but these upgrades don't cost that much, if you play regularly, it shouldn't be a problem purchasing them, unlike me who have left this game due to a public holiday (kind of two things that should go together) and because the internet I had back then was not stable enough to play on other servers (I get bored only playing on Asian servers, no offense, just they have the 20 player maps and also last I checked, very few players on them).
It's nice that they made the primary weapon selector more of a comparison type. Compared to before where you had to select each weapon before being able to view its stats. They new layout is just, just COOL MAN!
The new 'tuning' system, where you can change or add minor tweaks to the performance of your mech. Well, ok, not really minor, but you can add more of what you want now, before the patch, you had to go through upgrade you didn't really want, now you can go for what tweaks you want purely. Might shake the balance a bit, but they will work on keeping it balanced, so I think this will go well.
They have added more items and also something they completely changed which are the internals. The internals, which your mech (depending on the mech too I think) has a limited space, for my mech, 6 slots, and better internals take up more slots. This done, basically for balance, but I do like the new internals they have added. For example, an internal to allow you to side boost in the air and also one that adds regenerative health.
This was the first game I played, this first 30 seconds are before the patch and the later 30 seconds are after the patch, I'll let you find the new additions to the dashboard of your mech, I like some, an example being how clear your fuel is and also hitpoints, but I do miss how they integrated the health of the mech and other important information in the dashboard. I am still exploring the patch, also noticing it does run more smooth compared to before. This is not a complete explanation to the patch, that is widely discussed in the forums of the official website. That is all, finish!!
UPDATE 14/9/13
I played on continuing a little after playing a bit more, and apparently, you need to pay a small amount of meteor points to convert any experience to universal experience and enable it to be shared with your other mechs. I also found out that you could not change the position of the map layout in game, which at first was a bad thing for me, because I was so used to glancing up to view it, but now I have to glance down. However, it is a logical choice because the lower screen area is covered a little by the dashboard, so putting the map down there is understandable. I do wish they added a setting in the menu to change the position of the map. I played a lot more games than I thought I would, and more of a confirmation that they really optimized the code more, or my new graphics driver is so much better, either one.
I also managed to play on the new map, Last Eco and it is one of the most beautiful jungle maps I have seen. The map is also less straight and organized as the other maps on Hawken, logical because it is a jungle. This is one of the really big changes to your gameplay experience because the map is so... different. Well, that's all for this new update.
Also posted a 2 minute video of the map, I did participate in fights, didn't be a bad team mate and just move around in game to look at different parts of the map. Enjoy~
Farid
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