PC Gamer - I want to turn to Khang Le, creative director on Hawken, and reassure him that I’m enjoying myself. As I explode for the fourth time, he leans in and politely recommends that I switch classes to something with more armour. He’s worried; Hawken has a learning curve, and, despite the instant allure of being free-to-play and visually breathtaking, its mechanics are not going to appeal to everyone. He’s probably worried that I’m not killing enough people due to control issues or misleading mechanics. The truth is I’m having too much fun clomping about to worry about the finer points of shooting.
Expect the game to only work offline right now.
As we trend ever deeper into a world of games that require servers maintained by the developer or publisher, we see more and more games disappearing from the world. What happens when these games are shut down? What does it take for a game to survive beyond this point?
Most modern games that have online components like destiny rely so heavily on co op between players that even if you had a full disc version popping it in and playing won't be a fun experience as you can't play the actual game after hitting a wall with difficulty levels of they even boot
But classic titles like vice city will still be the same in 2049 as they were in 2001 provided you play on a disc not stripped down digital versions that have the soundtrack cut out ten years later
Hawken, the free to play mech shooter has had its servers closed on Steam, but it will remain live on consoles.
This is exactly why only online multiplayer games won't last very long. It's important to have a single player campaign (a good one, not a throw-away trash story) or some kind of offline multiplayer mode.