Customer Reviews

Tom Clancy's HAWX

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

HAWX is a game with an interesting moral dilemma. Realism or arcade. Which one to be?
Flight sims are more at home on a PC, where you can assign a million different functions to the keyboard. On a console, you've got a lot less buttons. The developers decided to balance the entire spectrum of realism vs arcade flight sim aspects and wedge it all onto a console.
With that in mind, we have HAWX. The controls are not perfect, but I feel they are a good balance for a flight sim that is decidedly more arcade that "real." The control layout is as intuitive as you can get. Throttle and weapon selections are spot on for a flight sim. It is the gameplay package that surrounds the controls that many will love or hate. I mean you only have so many buttons, how much control can you really have?
HAWX main hook is its assistance modes. You can turn them on and off by double tapping L2 or R2. Most of your time will be spent with assistance on. In this mode you are in a third person view of your plane. You can maneuver and engage in general combat fairly well.
It is the assistance off mode that will separate the fighter jocks from the boys (i.e. the rest of us). Trigger this mode and the camera pulls way back. With this mode, your point of view is oriented relative to the target you are locked on to, but your controls are not. This will disorient some gamers. But, this is where the magic happens. You can make your aircraft perform some truly amazing acrobatic feats, like somersaulting over a missile or instantly reversing course to get the drop on your enemies.
Combat is very enjoyable. It is exciting and fast paced. Your wingmen earn their keep. If you order them to attack a target, then they will almost certainly take it out.
The only thing that is truly "broken" is the sense of speed. I never felt like I was truly zipping along at Mach 2 in an F-14. It is made even more frustrating by the fact that your wingmen seem to be able to fly much faster than you can. This is a shame considering all the times I was racing from one furball to the next.
The missions are good, but the lack of secondary objectives will bore some gamers. The story unfolds during combat. It just does not feel "fleshed out." If anyone remembers all the storytelling done during gameplay in the old TIE Fighter game for the PC, then you know what I mean.
The graphics are incredible. There are times I almost forgot I was playing a game and not watching a movie.
At the end of the day, HAWX is a very worthwhile game. Flight sims are a very much underrated genre on consoles. Most gamers overlook them for FPS and racing games. Fortunately, HAWX does not disappoint.

UPDATE:
I have tooled around in multiplayer mode. For the most part, it works well. There is some occasional lag during an online death match. This is frustrating when you have an opponent in your sights only to have him jump to a different position. The game assumes you will play multiplayer when it comes to experience points. Your ability to earn XP in the campaign is basically over when you finish it. Players will need to turn to multiplayer to obtain higher ranks to unlock new aircraft and weapon configurations.

As many other reviewers of this game, I'm a long-time fan of the AC titles and was also disappointed when they decided to drop Sony. Very few flight games have found their way onto the PS3 and I think that this game missed a golden opportunity to really shine. As I mentioned in the title, this game is good, but not great. It may have gotten a few extra bonus points for being the first modern jet game for the PS3, but you'll have to judge for yourself.

The Good - This game has an amazing selection of aircraft, including some pleasant surprises. The cockpits are all well done from what I've seen (I've used about 20 different aircraft thus far) and the aircraft themselves are also look pretty good. The missions are slightly more reality based than many in the AC series (real jets, ships, tanks, etc), and is, overall, a lot of fun. The game is easy to get into with a fairly low learning curve and is quite addicting. Also, GeoEye did an outstanding job of integrating real imagery, even though it isn't the highest resolution and really starts to pixelate at less than about a thousand feet.

The Bad - For starters, this game is S-H-O-R-T! With a grand total of 19 missions, none of them lasting more than about 15 minutes, you can easily beat this game 2 or 3 times on a Saturday afternoon. The experience points process is an interesting approach, which does help with replayability, but I would rather have seen the accumulation of money instead since you are, essentially, a mercenary. I enjoy unlocking planes and being able to purchase what you want. As good as the graphics are, they are lacking in a few areas as well. The aircraft are pretty good, but I don't think they took advantage of what the PS3 is capable of. The jets in Ace Combat 6 on the Xbox definitely look better, which is sad considering the game is almost a year and a half old. One thing that especially bugged me was the afterburner flames - they are essentially orange ellipses. I think a few old PS2 games, including Aero Elite, did a better job of rendering them. Not just that, but some jets, most notably the A-10 (I haven't used any of the other sub-sonic aircraft) don't even have afterburners, so I found it a little ridiculous. Also, they got at least one name wrong - the "Mig-25", is actually a Mig-31. I know this is nit-picky, but come on! There is also no real sense of speed, which is particularly evident with low-level flying. The ability to land aircraft would also have been a nice option, but oh well.

In conclusion, when I first started playing this game, I might have even given it five stars. After 4-5 hours of gameplay it would've dropped to 4. Now that I've beaten the game and started reflying missions just to accumulate XP, it's dropped to a 3. I still own Aero Elite and Ace Combat Zero for PS2 and in 6 months will almost certainly prefer playing them to this game. Ubisoft gets a B for effort and a C for delivery. Maybe next time...

I hate to be a debbie downer, but I was really unsatisfied with this game. Its the same ole thing, mission after mission - the only thing that changes is the landscape.

If I were smart enough to be a game developer, I would have a flight game that includes take off and landings, take off and landing from an air craft carrier; take off and landing with a harrier jumpjet; airstrikes that get called in from ground personnel; joint strikes with helicopter gunships. I mean,the list goes on and on, and this game fell short on just about every level.

The only thing this game gets good marks for are the graphics and dogfights. But really, how many dogfights can you do before you're wicked bored.

I've always loved flying games. Ever since NES i'd played flying games. These games usually offer a lot and end up dissapointing. The best flying game ever is definately Flight Simulator, but this is a great approach to combat flying.
This is definately not a sim game, but thats made on purpose. It's waaay more fun. I'll evaluate different aspects of the game:

The GRAPHICS are great. Good enough to get you inmerse in the battle. It seems they made a bigger effort detailing the planes than the cities though. These look amazing from the skies, but so so when you fly low. Particularly the black smoke looks very real when you fly through it.

The GAMEPLAY is excellent. Just start the mission and you're already in the battle!!! Push the throttle and start shooting misiles.

The SOUND of the game is very good. Youll love the whistling of the misiles passing through you, and the sound of the turbines flying at top speed. The only thing id "improve" is the volume of the explosions.

I have been waiting for a long time for someone to put together a great flight sim utilizing the latest technology. I have a 46" HD flat panel and a ps3 and I could not find a good flight sim. It drove me crazy. I tried renting a few that were out, but I didn't find anything that couldn't have been run on a ps2. HAWX is exactly what I wanted.

The graphics are just amazing. I don't know how many other people get flight sims almost solely for the purpose of flying around amazing looking terrain as low as possible. That's me though. This game is just right for that purpose.

I love the dogfight/mission aspect as well. I see no problem with the XP system or difficulty of the levels. To me it's all trimmin's. The guy who mentioned that there are only 19 missions forgot to mention that there are multiple difficulty levels which multiplies the fun and allows you to really get good at the game.

I've already got 2 friends to purchase it and I look forward to playing co-op online. I will be playing this for a long time. It reminds me of getting "Chuck Yeager's Air Combat" all those years ago for Christmas. Thanks Ubi Soft.

I found HAWX quite a short game, very well made, beautiful, beautiful graphics, random storyline (I tend to skip through game stories to get to the bad guy bashing anyway). The main problem with the single player mode was that it was very short, the game is pretty intuitive and you can complete it in around 5 hours of play time. That said though, the online multiplayer is awesome and totally makes the game worth buying. Dogfights are fast and exciting scrambles that really give you that adrenaline buzz that great games do. Tactical formations and a little bit of organisation with team mates gives big rewards over other less organised teams too. Different weapon and plane selection enables a variety of strategies. The usual XP earned for completing challenges and downing foes goes to earn you more planes and weapons, as well as increase your ranking amongst other online players. If you like online gaming and are into planes or flight sims, you won't be disappointed in buying HAWX.

Me and a friend have been playing this game a lot recently, and we both can't get enough. Even though this game is one player and we both swap controllers between levels, its fun enough that you enjoy watching the other guy play the game.

On my top 5 list of games to play and own.

the game has good graphics and a good level of action.
a major problem for those who like simulators is that the maneuvers "high level" can only be performed with the wizard mode and enabled in the third person. Or I have not found the option to change camera.
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boa diversão
o jogo possui bons gráficos e um bom nível de ação.
um dos grandes problemas para quem gosta de simuladores é que as manobras de "alto nivel" só podem ser executadas com o modo assistente ativado e em terceira pessoa. Ou eu ainda não encontrei a opção de mudança de câmera.

The missions are exciting at first, but get old really fast. Each mission is very similar to the next, not to say it is boring but it is not something you keep on playing from the beginning till the end. In other words, it is not a big attention grabber. The graphic is good, but the controls are pretty messy. The missile does not fire within my command. Sometime they just fire automatically, which frustrates me. During missions, when I point straight at the enemy within the right range, but they missiles just won't engage, AGAIN frustrating! Other than some little problems this is a pretty decent game. CAN NOT COMPARE TO ACE COMBAT in anyway.

After playing ace combat for years then when it became x-box 360 only, i was starving for some air combat,I had purchaced an PS3 and when i found out it wasnt rewind compatable i was really dissapointed, I missed my ace combat. So i bought a copy of hawx and when you compare it to ace combat it doesnt even hold a candle to it, all i can say is that i hope hawx 2 is better!!