More MECH Mayhem and a RIFT reality

With the third closed beta of HAWKEN wrapping up soon, I am writing this post while sitting in a team death match lobby waiting for enough players to start a match locally. The low population numbers are mostly due to the fact that the game is in closed beta and accounting for the fact that,  while the battle of the mech's rages around the clock, players (both local and abroad) tend to populate games whenever they have a free moment. To give credit where it is due, the devs have done well by removing server browsers to force us beta-testers to actually test the matchmaker system and while I am disappointed in the removal of the "all regions" tab when matchmaking a games, forums seem to indicate that this has been done temporarily so that players don't get dumped into games with high ping times. Having given the matching system another chance at redemption recently, it now seems a whole lot more balanced - pitting like-leveled mech's against each other. The earlier beta's did have issues which Meteor openly admitted to and thanks to this approach with the community, things are much better now. While mech-level doesn't influence the game a whole lot, there are upgrades available in both the skill tree and load-outs. This way, in a game that has numerous mech-level's on the playing field, it doesn't automatically mean that the high-level mech's can simply overrun a map.


Still, with practice, my rusty FPS skills are gradually improving. A familiarity with how the gameplay elements work in general helps builds a strong foundation, while knowledge of the different load-outs and choices of mech's and the skill-tree-like upgrade path, make customizing your mech into the ideal machine easy. Meteor have wisely kept the freemium elements entirely cosmetic (atleast as of CB3) and i am looking forward to when this game goes open-beta so that i am able to find local matches easier. There are still a few bugs, however, these are relatively minor glitches and i have experienced far worse in commercial and patched releases, which goes to show you how it should be done in this day and age of DLC. While there are still elements I would like to see, at this point I feel confident this game will be a strong competitor for many gamers.

Target practice on an empty map and familiarity with the areas definitely helps

use holograms to practice weapon lock

team dm should be played as a *team*

fuzzy bunny ;)

<#std.mechs> (closed beta 3)

(*please note: <prtscr>'s are all on medium graphics settings, i did this so that my GPU wouldnt melt in this heatwave ;)

Unfortunately, the inevitable has occurred recently and its with a slightly sad-face ( :( ) that i report that the Oculus Rift devkit ship date has now been pushed back to March-April 2013. This has been somewhat expected, given the overwhelming success of its Kickstarter campaign and issues with upgrading many components for significant gains. Not only is the Oculus team supplying nearly eight thousand devkits, they have also decided to  upgrade the screen (thus eliminating most of the motion blur) and to build their own sensor system which will now include a faster refresh rate (1000hz) *and* magnetometer (along with the accelerometer and gyroscopic sensors (accessible via the SDK)). Oculus has also indicated that the plans for the consumer version are well underway with more features planned after the dev-kits ship. While its frustrating that the manufacturer chosen for the job will shut down for four weeks over the Chinese new year,  its still only a month out of the four months it will be before i can get my hands on my very own dev-kit. For something this awesome, i am quite happy to wait :)

The latest RIFT prototype @OculusVR

For those of you out there who are mech-warrior fans, this next announcement will please you no end. The mech-warrior licence is getting a fresh reboot from Pirhana Games in the form of MECHWARRIOR ONLINE. Whilst I missed out on the closed-beta on this one, open beta has just commenced (October 29th in fact) and from the media I have watched on their website (whilst downloading this F2P), I am slightly disappointed that its been built on the CryEngine3. This is purely because the RIFT is fully compatible with the Unity engine and will soon have Unreal engine support as well. While the CryEngine is certainly a great engine with its own merits, it would have been nice to experience mechwarrior online through the RIFT. Especially seeming you can look around your own cockpit without torso rotation, by holding a key bind down and moving the mouse). Here's hoping the community get on board an engine integration for this because it would be simply stunning in SS3D.

Last but not least, there is some free in-game items to be had if this information is accurate. I wont be able to verify this until after I have downloaded and installed MECHWARRIOR ONLINE, however this is how to get some free-stuff for the open-beta...

     1. Pick up a copy of December's PC Gamer for a unique paint-scheme and bobble-head.
Update: while i am yet to get my hands on a copy of the mag, you can redeem the code here

     2. Nvidia has a promo code on their Facebook page for a "Dawn Fury" bobble-head.     
 Update: the link on FB does not work, which is most likely because it was a "limited"promo.