3) Hawken
Perhaps I’m being a little too hasty. There is one game that surprised a few people more recently, with its unusual mixture of triple-A sensibilities and a small production team. Hawken is still in beta, as it has been for the last 200 years or something, but as mech games go, it wins my lauded accolade of being “not that terrible.”
A production team that barely stretches to double figures managed to turn out this very pretty little game quickly enough (up to the beta stage) and that’s undoubtedly an achievement, but it’s the few criticisms it received that are the warning shot for Titanfall.
And what are those criticisms? It’s too much like Call of Duty. Too ‘run and gun-y’. Too much like every other shooter, just with a mech skin over the top. And if a small, indie team with nothing to do with Call of Duty made a mech game that’s drawing comparisons to it, how will a more sizeable, mainstream team with direct connections fare? There’s too many actual Call of Dutys as it is, and this kind of thing hardly leaves one with a lot of faith about getting the fresh, totally new gaming experience we’re being promised.