Hawken Beta Performance Analysis







Product: Hawken

Company: Meteor Entertainment

Author: Sean Ridgeley

Editor: Eric Amidon

Date: January 16th, 2013

Introduction, test setup

The open beta for the free-to-play mech game Hawken has been going on for about a month. Unlike the recently covered MechWarrior Online, this one is arcade-style, meaning some simpler mechanics and more action, though not necessarily at the expense of depth. If it sounds like your thing, you can download it now on the official website.

Hawken is a high quality title with superb graphics and a reasonably well-designed PC interface. Of course, all that is more or less wasted if performance doesn't fare well, so in this article I'll be measuring just that, and with some fairly in-depth methods beyond the usual framerate benchmarks.

Test setup

Note testing was done on maximum settings with PhysX off and VSync off during the first portion of the training mission, before it fades to black -- this is all for consistency's sake (and in the case of PhysX, for inclusiveness' sake as well). The mission is a little over two minutes long and features an industrial area in broad daylight.

Test Setup