Munkeh111

User Score
8.4

Presentation - 7.0
Gameplay - 9.0
Value - 8.5

H.A.W.X. High Altitude Warfare eXperimental squad is about PMCs in the near future, like so many other things these days, and so you can guess the plot, you can see the plot twist coming miles and miles off, and frankly the story does not excell. You are initially part of the oddly name HAWX squad as part of the US Air Force, helping our old friend Scott Mitchell (though I don't remember getting that much air support in the corresponding GRAW mission), but that closes down, and you join Artemis Global Security, the not ever so slightly evil PMC. You go around global locations fighting for Artemis before the not-so-schocking twist, and then your fighting in the USA again. The pre-mission cut scenes are slickly presented as you would expect from a Tom Clancy game, and you get updated via a picture in picture system that does a good job of telling you what you need to know.

The game looks good when you are high in the air. The game uses GeoEye satellite images (basically a higher resolution version of Google Earth) portrarying real life locations. When you are high in the air these look good, but when you dive down close to ground level, you notice some flat buildings, but most of the time things look good, and there are some very impressive things to look at on the ground. Some of the water effects leave a little to be desired, in particular there are several cut-scenes of overhead views of fleets, and the wakes of the boats look awful, but without disturbace, the water does look nice. The detail of the planes is also fantastic.

However, when you dive down to tree level, things don't look so great with the trees themselves looking very pixelated. Now this should not really be a problem, except one mission forces you to follow a precise course, taking you through the trees! Yes, the developers decided to make you fly through the trees, something that really should not be happening, there is no logic why they would make you look at the worst part of the game for 1 whole mission, just crazy!

1 minor annoyance is a 5GB install, especially as there are still some decent loading times, but nothing too bad, just slightly annoying after you die, and unskippable cut scenes are also a pain.

The main factor differentiating HAWX from the crowd is the ERS, and assistance off mode {there is no crowd on the PS3 though}. The ERS, Enhanced Reality System, prevents you from stalling your plane, or flying too wildy. It can also plot interception routes for air, or ground attack route to ensure you avoid hitting buildings. You can turn this off by a double tap of the trigger, and the camera zooms out and allows you to go wild. You can stall, but pull of more dramatic turns, and it is great to look at. Personally, I really loved the assistance off mode for dogfighting, and I discovered that I did not make a single aerial kill using the ERS's interception mode. It does take some time to get used to, but after a while it just feels great for tight dogfights, and really adds a great cinematic feel to the game. The ERS is very useful for bombing runs, and radar guided missiles, but when there are 5 missiles heading to you, assistance off is the only way to play.

The gameplay itself is very varied, but it does feel a bit like Ace Combat 7. There are the missions where you have to fly under a certain altitude, avoid radar circles on your map, protect bombers, provide air support for various different ground units. However, there are all very well done, and I have no complaints about the quality of the gameplay, with the game done structured in a way that means that all your missions types will be varied, so you won't be doing the same thing over and over again. I did find it easy on Elite, and while the easiest difficulty is normal, the game did just not challenge me as much as I wanted it to, but I have played about 4 Ace Combat games before this.

You have 2 wingmen, who you can either tell to attack a target, or just guard you. They are effective, and you can just select an enemy, and they will go and kill them, but you actually have to actively tell them to go and kill them, most of the time they will stay passive. Also, if you direct them to go and kill a tank, they won't kill the 1 or 2 next to him, they will return to you, which can be annoying if they are 2 groups of tanks that you need to kill.

There are many, many planes to unlock and also plenty of different weapons packs for each of the planes.

The game, like previous Tom Clancy games, uses an XP system, so as you make kills in any parts of the game and complete levels, you get XP. These unlock new weapons packages and planes, and so levelling up is rewarding. There are also challenges in the game to give you extra XP. These vary from things like completing the missions, with bonuses for completing it on harder difficulty, and making X numbers of kills with certain weapons, with bronze, silver and gold rewards avaliable as you progress, to much harder ones, like flying upside under 40 meters for 2 minutes. These are certainly a good addition to the game, and will have people coming back to the campaign.

The game features co-op and online multiplayer. I played 1 co-op game, and it was quick to join (you can join mid mission) and it was fun to play, with more enemies appearing, but it is still easier than single play. It also keeps track of who has the most kills, so it adds a competitive aspect to the game. As for online multiplayer, it seems to all be team deathmatch. The main problem for me was that the game seemed to be empty, with it taking some time to find a game, and they were all 1 vs 1 or 2 vs 2. Once in the game it seems to be good, with support options avaliable for doing damage to the other team, such as radar suppression and more. These are good, but I did feel that once the team gets on top of you, it is quite easy for them to just keep on pilling on the pressure by continuing to supress you. There is no matchmaking system in place, so I struggled as all my opponents had much better weapons for their planes, even flying in an F-22, the most manouvrable plane in the game, I struggled to get kills because the standard missiles just aren't manouvrable enough, so you either have to level up offline first, or just get used to struggling through games.

The campaign is a good length, probably 10-12 hours, and the in-game challenges give good scope for replayability. The co-op is also a good addition, and the multiplayer could provide more longevity if they were more people. Several times while searching for a game, it gave up and put me in an empty room waiting for more people.

The trophies are heaving favouring the multiplayer side. In single player, you get a bronze trophy for completing all but 1 of the nearly 20 levels, plus bronze, silver and gold trophies for completing the game on the different levels, which will give you around 35% of the trophies if you complete it on Elite. Only 1 other trophy is avaliable in single player, the rest being saved for multiplayer. The trophies are interesting, and some, such as recovering from a stall below 30m, will be challenging, but they look like most of them are just going to take a lot of dedication to the multiplayer mode, and you'll just have to hope that you get lucky for many of these trophies. Nearly all off them can be gained from player matches, allowing you to boost trophies with a friend.

Overall, HAWX is a good game. The gaemplay is top-notch, but it is held back by issues with the story, minor graphical issues and some small issues with the multiplayer. Ulitmately, it is a game that I have to reccomend as it has no competition. The only other flight games on the system are the underappriechiated Blazing Angels games, also by Ubisoft Romania, so if you are a fan of flight games this is the only place to look, after the desertion of Ace Combat. It is a good game, but it could have been great if they had created a decent story and not made you fly at tree level.