Mechwarrior Online and Hawken

[Nowhere Man]

So, does anybody here play either one of these two 'mech combat games, now that they're both in open beta?

I've had MWO for a while, and it's a lot of fun. The graphics and sound design are both excellent, and the controls really make you feel like you're steering around a giant war machine. The level of customizability is great as well, provided you're willing to either grind enough or shell out the cash to pay for upgrades. The best compliment I can make about the new Mechwarrior game is that it feels a lot like the old Mechwarrior games.

I do wish they had more game modes, though, and I'm a little iffy on the controls. I've tried it with both a mouse/keyboard and with a joystick, and while the mouse/keyboard is more accurate, playing it without the joystick just feels....wrong. Still, I really enjoy it.

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And then there's Hawken, which I started playing earlier today. Hawken's a more fast-paced, FPS-style 'Mech game, which controls more or less like your standard shooter. It's a lot easier to get into, and so far has been a lot of fun as well. There's a lot more action, you get kill-streaks and a lot of the perks that are expected in shooters these days, and has more game modes than MWO does at the moment.

My only real complaints about it are that it never really feels like you're piloting a 'Mech, but rather just playing more or less a standard shooter where you can take a lot more hits. That, and the weapons just aren't anywhere near as cool as in Mechwarrior-- you start with just a plain machine gun and a rocket launcher, whereas in MWO you can have lasers, particle cannons, big missile racks, Gauss rifles (bigass railguns), etc. It's still a lot of fun, though.

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Has anyone else played these yet?

[Pintint]

Mechwarrior online? This is relevant to my interests, I'm gonna check it out, thanks!

[Tom Guycott]

I heard about Hawken from someone a couple of days ago. I wasn't aware of MWO. Last title I actually played (excluding the MechAssaults for XBOX) was the Multiplayer Battletech: Solaris beta waaaaaayyy back on AOL, and is pretty much the origin of my console gamertags today. I had also played MW2/3 and any expansions my system could actually handle sans upgrading, and I LOVED Mech Commander in spite of being essentially the "Halo Wars" of the series. Could never play any of the MWs online though. I could never configure settings for Battlenet properly. :(

The gameplay graphics of MPBT were utter shit, but 100% tolerable given that you could potentially play 8 players a drop lag-free over 28.8 modem connections... provided it wasn't a peak hour. I still remember that Catapults and Marauders had an exploitable 1-TIC kill point right behind the cockpit, if you could pilot and aim skillfully enough to not actually SHOOT the cockpit. Headshots were possible, but there was an unwritten code of honor about not doing so, since, if it were severely damaged but not destroyed, you were blinded to any in-game action or text, and since you were still active, you wouldn't return to the lobby... malicious headshots done on purpose by someone made aware of this fact were met with merciless jumping/teamkilling of the offending person until they left the game. Hard to believe how far online gaming has come in almost 15 years. Hard to believe how much I REMEMBER about that 15 years later. Talking about this was how Hawken came up.

I should check both of these out...