The physics acceleration revolution may have failed long ago, but Nvidia's keeping the dream alive for romantics by cramming its PhysX tech into games whenever it can. A new Hawken trailer shows the effects of PhysX in the in the free-to-play stompy mech shooter, much the same as any other PhysX game: a big confusing mass of particles which look out of place.

Yes, if you play Hawken with PhysX enabled you can look forward to shields giving off turbulence particles which conceal what's behind them, explosions raining particles which don't fit with the rest of the art, and huge lumps of debris littering the battleground. You need an Nvidia graphics card to see any of this, of course, unless you hack past the arbitrary block PhysX has against AMD cards.

Hawken is currently in open beta, slated to officially launch early this year. Hit the official site to register and play.