Welp, I thought I'd try the patch after two years of not playing Hawken.
Reinstalled Hawken via Steam, launched the game and it crashed after showing the red logo splash screen (is that new?). Didn't get to open a game window. I tried following the steps for working around crashes in the FAQ, it didn't help.
The crash report includes these details:
Failed to find shader map for default material DefaultMaterial! Please make sure cooking was successful. Address = 0xfccda06d (filename not found) Address = 0x41d095c0 (filename not found) Address = 0x2f8 (filename not found) Address = 0x41b823a0 (filename not found) Address = 0x41b823a0 (filename not found)
I saw other players on the Steam forums were having this same issue.
Here's to hoping I can get back on my mechs soon