Finally, the mech game of the year is available for all of us to play on PC! That’s right – we’re talking about Adhesive Games’ Hawken, which was previously available on Steam Early Access but has now gone free to play.

Interestingly, the game is still very much an Early Access game with the full release to happen later this year. The difference is that now that it’s become free to play, you’ll be paying full price for content bundles rather than getting them at a discount. The Nemesis bundle has also reportedly been discontinued.

Hawken started out as an open beta in December 2012 before transitioning over to Steam to become an Early Access title. The game will be published by Meteor Entertainment later this year and unlike certain other mech-based games, Hawken focuses purely on mech vs. mech combat. Interested? Check it out here and let us know what you think.

Published by Meteor Entertainment, Hawken is a free to play first person shooter at its core, but one that has you piloting giant mechs. It features more action than your typical MechWarrior, and entered into open beta on December 12th 2012. Developed using Unreal Engine 3, Hawken features three mech types – namely the light type, heavy type, and all-around type – along with four multiplayer modes when it releases.

The ground trembles as giant mechs are marching across North America to spread the joy of HAWKEN. Meteor Entertainment and Adhesive Games, along with industry leaders such as ASUS, Logitech, and Machinima will be setting up HAWKEN matches at various booths at PAX East and GDC. Various merchandise will also be on sale at these venues.

Those who visit the Meteor Entertainment booth 1080 at PAX East will find themselves overwhelmed with a impressive setup that include:

• Twelve Alienware X51 game stations, decked out with Logitech headsets, gaming mice, and G710 gaming keyboards, with graphics optimized on NVIDIA GPUs, playing head-to-head HAWKEN deathmatches.
• Free HAWKEN/Machinima beanies and HAWKEN postcards with codes for 5000 HAWKEN Credits.
• HAWKEN T-shirts and the HAWKEN: Genesis graphic novel on sale.
• Stamps for your Alienware PAX East Scavenger Hunt card at our reception counter.

Attendees will also be able to play the game at various other boots from third parties, including: Asus in booth 762, Logitech in booth 1056, Machinima in booths 613 & 712, Gunnar in booth 374, and finally NVIDIA in booth 862.

PAX East ain’t the end of the road. The mechs will be making its way to the Moscone Center in San Francisco for GDC, where the game will be playable at Kiosks 18 and 47. HAWKEN is also one of the few games to be awarded the coveted “Best in Play” award at GDC.

Mark Long, CEO of Meteor Entertainment will be discussing the topic  of launching Games in emerging markets at the Rixty Panel which will be held at at 11AM in Room 3018 in the West Hall on Thursday. So be sure to pay that panel a visit if you’re on the show floor.

If for some reason you’ve been living under a rock  for the past year and haven’t heard of Hawken, then you’ve been missing out on one of the best free to play games to ever come out of the incubator. HAWKEN is a multiplayer mech combat game which features some of the most frantic action in the multiplayer arena. It’s  developed by indie developer Adhesive Games who has done a stupendous job so far. And despite being a indie game, HAWKEN boasts visuals that put most AAA releases of today to shame. It’s currently in Open Beta and if you’re even remotely interested in the notions of giant robots beating the scrap out of each other, then you need to look it up.

About the game:

Developed using Unreal Engine 3, Hawken looks fantastic, putting players in the cockpits of lethal mechs, each with their own weapons, loadouts, and perks. Through kills and match victories, players will rank up and unlock new items for their mechs, opening up new tactical opportunities and new play styles.

Being a free-to-play title, players also have the option of speeding progress along through the use of real money transactions, though these do not grant additional power or a competitive edge over players who progress through exclusively through the use of experience.

The game is developed by Adhesive games.

Source for 3rd image.

Check out the full interview below.

Kartik Mudgal: Hawken looks absolutely wonderful; can you guys tell us about the engine you are using?

Jon Kreuzer: Hawken is using Unreal Engine 3 from Epic Games. We started development using the freely available version (UDK), then upgraded to the licensed engine. A lot of the look is credit to the artists, but of course using a top-quality engine like UE3 doesn’t hurt.

Kartik Mudgal: What made you guys think about creating a mech game? Because it’s not something that most studios would readily make.

Jon Kreuzer: At the time we started Hawken there certainly weren’t any mech games in the news. We chose a mech game for a few reasons. We were a small team and the sci-fi environment with mechs was quicker to develop assets for. But mainly it was just something we were interested in working on.

Kartik Mudgal: How big is the studio and have you guys faced any difficulties while creating Hawken?

Jon Kreuzer: Adhesive games, the development side, is at about 30 people now. There are always difficulties creating games. Early on deciding direction, pursuing business opportunities, and growing the team took away from development time. Beyond that there are always a surprising amount of things that need to be done or should be done on a big released game, even if they go pretty fast there is always a backlog.

Kartik Mudgal: I know you have probably been asked this question to death, but can we see a console version in the future?

Jon Kreuzer: Currently we are concentrating on the PC and there is no console version in development. But that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t love to see one. It’s just a matter of resources, opportunity and fit into our current plans for Hawken.

Kartik Mudgal: Tell us something about the Oculus Rift support, did you guys had to alter the code or build the game with it in mind or does Rift work by default with the game? Is the experience drastically different with the Rift?

Jon Kreuzer: I’m actually not directly involved with Oculus Rift support myself so I don’t have an answer yet, but we are excited about the possibilities of Hawken on the Rift.

Kartik Mudgal: Do you guys think you can monetize the game effectively to generate significant revenue?

Jon Kreuzer: The first step is building the user-base and building out more of the features we want to see in the game. If you have enough dedicated players revenue will start to take care of itself. We of course think we can monetize well, as there are other games with similar models that are doing well.

Kartik Mudgal: Tell us about the challenges of creating a free-to-play game? How do you guys develop the business model for the same?

Jon Kreuzer: Free-to-play does open up some question related to fairness and balancing. Any game items or mechs in Hawken that you can purchase can also be earned by playing the game. We always offer free time-limited rental mechs too. We are still in the early stages but we will listen to player suggestions and look at analytics to see what people want. While going free-to-play does introduce design challenges, it also means everyone can try Hawken before spending money, and we can hopefully expand the game and support a multi-player community for a long time.

Kartik Mudgal: The action looks really fast and intense, why did you guys go with a design choice like that instead of the usual mech games where the action is a bit slower

Jon Kreuzer: We wanted Hawken to maintain dodge, cover, and twitch action for multiplayer combat. Although at the same time it’s slower in many ways than a lot of non-mech FPS games, so it does take some getting used to. Also our mechs aren’t building-sized behemoths, but closer in size to regular vehicles.

Kartik Mudgal: What is your personal view on the current generation consoles? Do you think developers feel restricted in their creativity if they develop for the PS3 and Xbox 360, especially considering how PC Gaming technology has advanced?

Jon Kreuzer: There is definitely a widening gap between modern PCs and the current consoles. At the same time there is a pretty big gap between high-end gaming PCs, and older or lower-end gaming PCs. Still PC development means less emphasis on certain things, eg. memory-usage, and you can created better visuals and do more interesting things on high-end GPUs and CPUs.

Kartik Mudgal: What do you guys think about DRM? Some players think that it is too intrusive and it eventually spoils the experience. What is your take?

Jon Kreuzer: Luckily as a free-to-play game we want as many people to have Hawken installed as possible, so DRM isn’t something we spend time thinking about. In general I’m not big on most types DRM, but I understand the desire to reduce piracy.

Kartik Mudgal: Is there anything else you want to add about the game?

Jon Kreuzer: Instead of me saying anything more, I encourage everyone to go to www.playhawken.com and try the game.

Special thanks to Aidan and Shannon from Meteor Entertainment for setting this interview up.

Speaking to VentureBeat, LiveGamer president Andrew Schneider stated that the company’s growth “is indicative of the projects we’ve been working on for the past year in growing our global payments capability. We can deal with the more complicated issues around payments, from start to finish. These relationships are thrilling for us, and they keep us busy.”

“LiveGamer is the trusted industry solution and their global reach made them the obvious partner for our Hawken open beta event. Using their platform we were able to add robust features and functionality as well as payment coverage on a global scale in a short timeframe,” according Meteor Entertainment CEO Mark Long.

Developed by Adhesive Games, Hawken is currently slated to enter a global open beta on December 12th.

Source: GIBiz

Hawken starts you off in your garage with some basic mech machines. It’s outfitted with your basic run of the mill guns. The game isn’t complete rocket science and you could really start the game, grab the mech and get into into battle in almost no time what so ever. Of course being the standard mech, you’re bound to get your gears stomped on since there doesn’t seem to be a balancing system. So don’t expect to top the leader board against high class mechs, but all in all, you can at least stand your ground.

The view from cock pit is pretty realistic.

The game works on a point system with major points for kill, assists and wins. The scoring can help you level up your mech and in turn advance your weapons and skills. At any point you can buy more mechs and weapons. You can either earn points to cash in or you can just use real money in your traditional micro transaction way.

The magic to this game comes from the strong art, which is all encompassing. The mechs have some pretty cool designs and the HUD displays are different in each mech. The HUD design is also real nice with a pretty neat targeting system. The icing on the cake really comes down to the post processing. With all the static and screen distortion, it gives you the feeling that you are actually looking through a monitor screen on a battle mech.

Hawken doesn’t break any new ground however. It follows the exact same formula to World of Tanks and World of Planes. Both World games are fairly successful, so much to the point where the company actually bought the developers who created the engine. If Hawken is successful and even takes away profits from them, I would not be the least bit surprised of Hawken gets bought out and becomes World of Mechs.

Hawken has the potential to be a hit.

Hawken has the potential to be a runaway hit. The art rivals its competition and there’s a lot of fun in the game. It has similarities with World of Tanks but there should always be room for mechs in our world.

You can hit up the first preview “Prelude to Ruin” here. The series will be available through comiXology’s digital comics platform available available across iPhone, iPad, Android, Kindle Fire, and more.

Meteor VP Wes Harris stated, “Adhesive Games and Meteor Entertainment have developed such a unique and enticing war-torn future. This digital release is a great way to expand our transmedia partnership with Archaia through comiXology while providing great opportunities for our fans to get access to the closed beta of the game.”

The mech combat game is set to debut on December 12th 2012.

They’re be featuring a multiplayer demo, free autographed card, exclusive silk-screen poster, special access to the closed beta and two fact-filled panels for highlighting the graphic novel tie-in (also serving as a prequel to the property), the presentation of which will be held on October 10th.

Mel Caylo, Archaia Marketing Manager stated, “It has been amazing to work with Meteor and Adhesive this past convention season to get the word out about the HAWKEN game and graphic novel, so it is only fitting that we go out with a bang in the best city in the world, New York! Play the game, get free swag, learn some cool info — what more could you want?”

New art for an accompanying graphic novel was unveiled by Francisco Ruiz Velasco -concept artist on Hellboy 2 and The Hobbit- as well as a web short by Jeremiah O’Flaherty.

A Warner Premiere -the straight-to-video arm of Warner Bros.- series for HAWKEN was elaborated upon, now set for a 2013 release, as well as the announcement of a HAWKEN feature film, to be directed by Scott Waugh and produced by Bandito Brothers, Waugh’s production company.

Meteor Entertainment stated: “The goal is to make a killer game with a back-story that can be told across multiple mediums.  Each segment of the transmedia approach: the game, web shorts, digital series, original graphic novel, and feature film all tell a story about Hawken in a specific time.

“Each piece is so well told that it could stand-alone but they all work perfectly together.  This can only be done thanks to some very talented folks who have brought together the vision of Hawken.”

Hawken is set for a 12th December release date on PC.