Hawken Open Beta
FunkyFungus
Join Date: 2003-09-09 Member: 20691Members
in Off-Topic
Comments
One thing however that irritates me to no end is the jerky movement animation, it just doesn't look right to me.
There's cockpit lag (your 'head' and reticule moves before the main chassis does). This does not affect aiming and firing.
There's walking bounce (well... yeah. Giant robot stompy time) which you need to compensate for and WILL affect your aim.
A lot of new players come in and do rather horribly as it has a number of niche skill-mechanics that need to be learned, compensated for, and practiced heavily; the boost-dodge system is the most obvious (quick strafe-dash is a basic ability of the mechs) with building your ability to anticipate a dodge on your target's part, how far it moves on a given class of mech (A, B, or C) and the general cooldown timer between dodges.
Likewise, it is a game where going rambo WILL get you killed, and the ability of a team to focus-fire is king. Individual weapon damage is fairly low (with some exceptions for burst weapons) and combat tends to be very satisfying... until you get flanked by two buddies of the guy you're fighting. So having someone else watching your back while fighting (or especially so when deploying your repair drone, as you take additional damage if shot while repairing) is important.
Lots of fun with a good team. Not so much when you get lumped together with CoD-kiddies complaining the entire round about how little damage their weapon does, or how long it takes to kill someone, while running around like a moron solo.
There's walking bounce (well... yeah. Giant robot stompy time) which you need to compensate for and WILL affect your aim.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If thats a response to me its not exactly what I meant.
What I'm referring to is the jerky, laggy movement of the other players mechs that I find irritating, its like old movie clay stop motion or something.
Its not game breaking or anything its just a pet peeve.
If so it's a good point well made, in which case I might try the open beta; though I'm sure the delay in 'ending mouse aim' was reticule-based and not just the momentum of the mech (the latter of which I could accept as twitching 180 degrees in a 10 tonne robot would be weird!)
I actually liked the way the cockpit view moves and such as it adds to immersion and gives the impression that your mech has weight.
That said the motion blur that comes with it can be a bit disorientating at first especially when dashing left and right while trying to keep and eye on your hud instruments but you do get used to it eventually.
I think it has fun movement and gunplay but it needs something significant in terms of the core game modes to pull it together, otherwise it feels kinda pointless. At the moment it's like arena deathmatch except you can't beat someone else if you are on low health, so it's not as fun as arena deathmatch.
Another thing that needs addressing is the actual heavy mech tier which is pretty pointless since its weaponry isn't really much more hard hitting or effective against anything besides other heavies and with most playing as lights or assault it means in most cases your simply out maneuvered. To add to that its deployed mode is very impracticable (since you don't even have a hud to tell you what weapon you've selected or weather they're even overweighting or not) and offers no real benefit.
In saying that I haven't played as the heavy since the alpha so things may have changed since then.