H.A.W.X. Review PS3

Unlike most of the Tom Clancy games that have quite an interesting back story for the conflict at hand, H.A.W.X., has a forgettable and convoluted story about a squadron of pilots that, after being dismantled, create their own mercenary team for hire to the world called Artemis. After the United States interferes in a conflict in Brazil that the Artemis organization is handling, they eventually end up attacking the United States on American soil, which is where most of the remaining game takes place. The game has an arcade After Burner feel to it, but never quite feels as fun or easy to handle even on normal difficulty. Much like Tom Clancy’s entry into the real time strategy game, H.A.W.X. also fails as an entry into the flight combat genre.

Graphic and sound:

H.A.W.X. is a beautifully rendered game when the player is flying way up high looking down at the massive world size, but up close, it gets ugly and requires beer goggles to blur the line of acceptable. H.A.W.X. uses satellite imagery to create accurate and authentic environments, but fails to create any geometry up close. When the player flies low, the terrain is mostly flat and devoid of any geometry with pixelated textures. For a game that is devoid of millions of polygons, one would expect a frame rate of 60 at least and instead constant frame rate issues are apparent when multiple enemies are on screen. Voice animations are basically talking heads that are not even in sync with the dialogue, which makes it seem like the player is watching an old Kung-Fu movie. Sound effects such as gunfire and missile explosions sound reminiscent of the 16 bit era instead of 5.1 surround sound. In addition, some of the aircraft models are exactly the same even though the aircraft revision is different in real life.

Gameplay and controls:

H.A.W.X. is the first entry by Tom Clancy into the flight combat genre and it shows. The difficulty for the normal mode is absurd, with a ridiculous amount of enemies and a fighter jet that handles like a commercial airliner instead. The story is boring at best, which leads to the dismal multiplayer as an escape. Multiplayer consists of online coop with individual difficulty levels for each player or deathmatch with XP gains for wins that unlocks weapons presets. The game has 19 missions, which coupled with the enhanced difficulty of maneuverability and amount of enemies on screen with lag, will cause the gaming agony to last longer than it should. The game also provides an assist with radar and incoming missile detection, but it barely helps when the frame rate issues are the real problem.

Overall thoughts:

H.A.W.X. is a game that has come into a genre that already has an established aerial combat game that has been perfect for years called Ace Combat. There is no need to attempt to enter a genre that already has a polished series dominating it unless one can improve upon it and that is where H.A.W.X. fails. Nothing in H.A.W.X. is redeemable, which leads us to believe that there will be no sequel thankfully. Rent this game if the need arises to play another aerial combat game or just avoid it altogether.