Are you a flyboy?
Format: PS3, Xbox 360 (version played), Wii, PC Dev: Ubisoft Romania Pub: Ubisoft
Out: 06/03/09 Players: 1, 2 online
The year is 2014 and private military companies have been legalised. You are an elite pilot who formerly worked for the government of the United States of America, due to military cutbacks you are now employed by one of the military corporations, Artemis Global Security. You are the captain of the HAWX (High Altitude Warfare eXperimental Squadron).
This new combat flight sim is the latest game in the battle-waging Tom Clancy franchise. It has a fairly solid storyline with some interesting twists and turns. Battles are fought over the skies of Washington D.C., Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo Bay and involve protecting targets such as Air Force One, striking ground defences to pave the way for bombing runs and aiding ground attacks. Although the missions are restricted to a few different types, there is enough variety to keep you interested.
You can fly a choice of 50 different planes, all are equipped with ERS (Enhanced Reality System). This system helps locate enemies and allows you to lock-on with your missiles. Most interestingly ERS can also be used to generate flight paths to give you the edge in dogfights or to get the right angle for bombing runs. ERS can be turned off allowing daring manoeuvres, however, turning off the system makes your plane harder to control, and this is represented in the game by a change to a very distant camera perspective.
There are a variety of different weapons that are slowly introduced throughout the campaign. You start with basic missiles and a machine gun and get introduced to multi-lock missiles, free-fall-bombs and radar-guided missiles. The game is very easy to pick up, even to a complete flight-game novice, and the gradual introduction of your plane’s abilities means you won’t be overwhelmed.
One frustrating part of the game is the ineffectiveness of your squadron. Although they were effective at following my commands they were laughably bad at taking down enemies. This problem is extremely visible during escort missions were, at times, you face multiple flights of fighters, whilst you attack one it’s sensible to send your squad to engage the others. Often the case is that you will have killed your targets before they have destroyed a single enemy plane.
Graphically HAWX is pretty generic, it is by no means the best looking game out there, but by the same merit, it is not the worst. The use of satellite imagery for ground textures is a very good idea and certainly adds to the game’s realism. One problem is that the ground textures look pixelated close up (however, when you’re that low down you’re probably about to crash).
HAWX also has multiplayer modes allowing you to play co-op through the campaign missions or face each other head-to-head. Unfortunately, it only supports online or LAN play, so you can not challenge your friends to a game with a single console.
Although, Tom Clancy’s HAWX is a flight game it aims for a wider audience due to its uncomplicated nature, but that said, flight fans will enjoy it, as will fans of the Ghost Recon series. It has a good array of missions that will keep you occupied and also online play modes to tackle once you’ve finished the campaign.
Adam Dixon
[Originally published on Friday, 24 April 2009]
Tags: action, hawx, sim, tom clancy, ubisoft
