If you have an nVidia graphics card, love the idea of PhysX and were wondering when it might be possible to download a cool game, free of charge, that utilises all of the latest programming tricks available – then your wait is over. Hawken is ready to download and costs nuffink. Nice.

While ATi might have claimed the ‘we got there first with DX9' crown in August 2002, nVidia was already well under way with the GeForce FX 5000 series and, when that launched, it enabled the market by pushing through DX9 titles like Mech Warrior for very little money. nVidia also launched ‘The Way Its Meant To Be Played'. Alongside SLi, these pushes by nVidia really moved part of the market over to their side of the GPU fence for some time to come.

Also in 2002, Manju Hegde (now Corporate VP with AMD) launched Ageia as a fabless company to design and create specialist physics processing units. nVidia would buy Ageia in 2008 and begin integrating the technology into the GeForce series.

Which brings us to today's announcement from Jen Andersson – PR guru with nVidia. She told KitGuru, “Last night, we uploaded a new PhysX video trailer for Hawken, an action-packed, fast-paced, free-to-play, mech-based, multiplayer first-person shooter, set in a visually-rich future setting destroyed by corporate greed”.

“Developed using Unreal Engine 3, Hawken looks fantastic, putting players in the cockpits of lethal mechs, each with their own weapons, loadouts, and perks. Through kills and match victories, players will rank up and unlock new items for their mechs, opening up new tactical opportunities and new play styles. Being a free-to-play title, players also have the option of speeding progress along through the use of real money transactions, though these do not grant additional power or a competitive edge over players who progress through exclusively through the use of experience”, she explained.

And what about inside?

Jen told us, “On the tech side of things, Hawken is a tour de force, sporting the aforementioned, advanced Unreal Engine 3 graphics, but also GPU-accelerated NVIDIA only PhysX effects that add destruction particles, extra, and realistic weapon effects. This video also demonstrates a soon-to-come PhysX feature in Hawken: APEX Turbulence. APEX Turbulence is a PhysX feature which uses velocity fields to simulate particle motion. You will see this in action inside of Hawken with energy collectors, mech death embers, deployed shields, and mech health orb embers”.

Which was nice.

Here's the trailer and, if you like what you see AND you have a graphic card from the nice people at nVidia, then you can go get a copy from here… http://www.playhawken.com [yframe url='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGVXfvA_-fA']

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KitGuru says: Free is always nice. So is a company that carries on adding value AFTER you have purchased their product. We think a small round of applause is in order.

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