Great arcade flight combat experience, with a solid online community to back it up.
The Tom Clancy money train continues to roll on for Ubisoft, and after the moderate success of EndWar comes this title, Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. I'm not even entirely sure what the acronym stands for, but I don't think you need to. You just need to realize it sounds cool. I mean, they spelled Hawks with an X, what else do you need to know?
But really, silly names aside, HAWX is a pretty fun jet fighter, and while I suppose it does have some sim aspects, it's definitely in line with an arcade style shooter more so than an actual flight simulator, which is really the right direction to go with this type of game.
Like other Tom Clancy games, this one revolves heavily around government conflicts in a future time, about a decade or so ahead of now, but featuring storylines that might not be all that factual, but I think we could certainly see something similar happening in the future. The use of PMC's (private military) features pretty heavily into this storyline, where you play the part of a retiree that has joined up with an upstart PMC company, and then you're forced to make some difficult choices along the way. One thing I do want to point out about the story, is that I wished they had given me the option to choose which way I wanted to make a particular moral choice when it pops up a little before the halfway point, it would have made the entire thing far more interesting to me as a player.
If you enjoy the story in Tom Clancy titles, I see no reason why you'd be disappointed here. Personally, it's not my cup of tea, but the voice acting is all really solid, so it's not an entire wash. Just listening to military commanders and other high up types drone on about future fiction world affairs doesn't keep me interested, but thankfully you can also skip all of that and go straight to the fighting if you choose to.
One thing that did surprise me about HAWX was how complex the flight mechanics were, which I had assumed early on were going to be somewhat simple in an effort to keep the game accessible. In the first 8 stages or so (of 18) they are constantly throwing in new techniques, weapons types, and even a completely different type of flight your way, and while there is a lot to remember if you're just looking at it all on paper, the developers have done a solid job of presenting this to you over time, and giving you just enough time to acclimate yourself to the controls. I won't say that they're particularly easy for a newcomer, but by the time you finish the campaign mode you should have a pretty good grasp on everything, and be ready to enter into some multiplayer dogfights or whatever if you want.
And yeah, the game does feature a pretty heavy multiplayer component. There's a ranking and experience system in place, which you can earn points for either through the campaign or online play, and as you rank up you'll unlock better planes and weapon systems to outfit them with. There's actually quite a bit to unlock, with 40 levels or so to go through. Also, there's a co-op selection for the campaign, and you can fly around with 3 other players, and really, that's the best way to play the game. That's not to say that the partner AI is dumb, but your ability to direct them feels pretty limited. You can have them watch your back, or send them after targets, but choosing targets and cycling through each one can be a bit of a pain in the middle of a dogfight, so obviously having human players available to make their own decisions takes some of the work off of your shoulders.
As far as the flying goes, it's actually pretty simple to get into, and definitely responsive. All flight is mapped to the left stick, right and left buttons, and the triggers for braking and acceleration. If you haven't played a flight game in a while, it can be a bit daunting getting used to the idea of moving around wherever you want, I constantly had to catch myself from trying to sway my body and head with the pitch of the jet, kind of like playing racing games when I was kid. After a bit I nixed that problem and settled into the controls just fine, and managed to keep my plane from nose-diving into the ocean or mountains ever again.
Combat is a little more involved, but it still progresses in a way that doesn't overwhelm the player. When you're flying around and there are available targets, they all have a little yellow highlight or circle to them. You can press Y to pick a specific target, which will change the highlight around them, and you'll see a visual representation of your target (along with a name) in the top left corner of your screen, something that was definitely useful to have during some of the missions that involved dozens of enemy units. Once you have your target, you simply fly within firing range, and since there's a variety of weapons to choose from you'll have different things to look for that will let you know if you're locked on or not.
The big, unique aspect of HAWX combat comes from the ability to turn off the restrictions on the controls, which is done by double tapping a trigger button. This takes you away from the camera view of being behind the plane, and pans the view out a bit, which at times kind of makes it resemble a side-scrolling shooter, at least from first glance. What this unrestricted mode does is it makes your plane far more maneuverable than it normally would be, but it also turns off aids like the missle lock evasion or the interception mode. This unlocked mode requires you to really dodge and weave to not only get out a missle lock but to also evade and tail enemies in the air, and it's particularly useful in one on one dogfights against a skilled opponent as opposed to the random AI drones that usually show up. Basically, this is the most visceral action you'll get out of HAWX, and it works really well.
Visually, HAWX has some really impressive vistas on display, but getting in close to objects or cities makes everything look generic and bland. Then again, you should be more focused on blowing stuff up, so it's a pretty minor thing to take note of. The massive variety in the aircraft you can pilot is well represented, and while I'm no aviation expert, these things look really nice in the air. Cutscenes are mostly populated with talking heads and maps moving about, so there's not much to look at outside of the actual gameplay.
All together, HAWX was definitely a fun shooter, and while it's not something that I would see appealing to every FPS/third-person shooter fan out there, it's certainly worth checking out. Online is fun, and there's still a decent amount of support out there, and I had no real issues with co-op. There are enough missions to the campaign to keep you busy for a bit too, and obviously unlocking everything through the rank system is going to take you quite some time even outside of the story. I'd at least give this a rental to see how well you take to the controls, especially if you've not played a air combat game before, but for fans of series like Ace Combat, I'd say you could definitely give HAWX a spin.
