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Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X: Pete "Maverick" Mitchell not Included
Review by Jacob Unson
In video games nowadays, it seems like no one wants to fly jets anymore. A glance at most war-related video games these days will yield a plethora of strategy-based combat, squad-based combat and first-person shooters, but very little in the way of aerial combat. What’s that all about? Have gamers resigned the air combat genre to a life of obscurity and written it off as little more than a distraction from their knuckle-dragging, shoot-at-anything-that-moves FPS games?
If this is the case, they should be ashamed of themselves. While having hot lead snap by your head, missing your vital organs by mere centimeters, is very exciting, little can match the thrill and danger of pulling extreme-G evasive maneuvers as missiles fly around you in a deadly, fiery, high-explosive ballet. No first-person shooter can match the satisfaction of outmaneuvering an enemy fighter, hearing the piercing tone of target acquisition known as missile lock, and sending a heat-seeking missile up the enemy’s exhaust. The latest addition to the Tom Clancy video game franchise, Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X, accomplishes this task admirably.
The player starts the game by entering the flight suit of USAF pilot David Crenshaw, a member of an elite Air Force unit known as H.A.W.X, which stands for High Altitude Warfare eXperimental squadron. The very first mission has the player flying close air support just outside the U.S.-Mexico border to assist Captain Scott Mitchell and his ‘Ghost’ team in Ciudad Juarez (from Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2; H.A.W.X is set in between GRAW 2 and EndWar). The mission is successful, but it is Crenshaw’s last as part of the H.A.W.X unit, which is deactivated afterwards. Crenshaw and his wingmen are recruited shortly after by the Private Military Company (PMC) Artemis Global Security. Over the next several years, Crenshaw and his wingmen fly various types of missions for Artemis and its clients, including escorting NATO bombers, intercepting a third-world dictator, and defending an oil refinery in the Middle East.
Playing H.A.W.X has been a very satisfying experience for me. Until H.A.W.X came around, the only other air combat games I have ever played were a PC simulator for the EuroFighter Typhoon dubbed EF 2000 and the PlayStation 3 online-only multiplayer game Warhawk. H.A.W.X is a welcome addition to this genre, with more than thirty licensed real-world aircraft at the player’s disposal. The game also features a unique utility known as the Enhanced Reality System (ERS) which, when active, provides vital battlefield information such as RADAR, ammunition status, weapons targeting, airspeed, altitude, and even a neat feature where the press of a button projects a virtual flight path to intercept your currently selected target or an evasion path to avoid enemy missiles. This is also known as ‘assistance mode’, which makes flying the plane much easier but as a tradeoff, limits your spectrum of movement. A simple double-tap of the throttle or brake buttons will turn Assistance mode off, and you are switched to a much wider view of the battle area. With off mode comes a higher level of maneuverability by ‘drifting’ your plane with a steady press of the brake button and movement of your control stick.
Control-wise, H.A.W.X is easy to learn and not terribly complicated. If it feels like your plane isn’t handling as crisply as it should, you either need to look at its stats when you select one, or put it in ‘off’ mode. Otherwise, you need more practice. Graphically, H.A.W.X is decent, but there are limitations. In mid-air, the explosions of enemy targets are impressive and a sight to behold, as well as satisfying to fly through seconds after launching the missile that destroyed the enemy plane. However, when in Assistance On mode and flying a ground attack mission that requires ‘nap-of-the-earth’ flying (extremely low-level flight, practically skimming treetops), the environment gets heavily pixelated, and the trees are practically cardboard cutouts. Sometimes, you are flying at altitudes where you expect to be taken out by a tree, but instead, you fly right through it! This is a little disappointing, considering the developers worked closely with GeoEye Incorporated, the world’s largest space imaging corporation, to create the environments and locales the player takes flight in.
Despite these little bugs here and there, H.A.W.X is probably the best air combat game I have played thus far. Little else has come even close to the intensity of its air battles, where you and your wingmen can easily be outnumbered yet still shoot down every enemy aircraft in your path unscathed. Mind you, this is only the single-player campaign. An online component is included, and you can choose to either fly a co-op campaign with another player, or take on up to several players at once in the online versus mode, which includes free-for-all and team deathmatch modes. If you want the thrill of Top Gun without the silliness of Tom Cruise, then H.A.W.X is the game for you. Just don’t be surprised if you find yourself humming Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone while playing.
In a Nutshell
Title: Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.
ESRB rating: ‘T’ for Teen
Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, Nintendo Wii
Average Price: $49.99
Grade: B+
In video games nowadays, it seems like no one wants to fly jets anymore. A glance at most war-related video games these days will yield a plethora of strategy-based combat, squad-based combat and first-person shooters, but very little in the way of aerial combat. What’s that all about? Have gamers resigned the air combat genre to a life of obscurity and written it off as little more than a distraction from their knuckle-dragging, shoot-at-anything-that-moves FPS games?
If this is the case, they should be ashamed of themselves. While having hot lead snap by your head, missing your vital organs by mere centimeters, is very exciting, little can match the thrill and danger of pulling extreme-G evasive maneuvers as missiles fly around you in a deadly, fiery, high-explosive ballet. No first-person shooter can match the satisfaction of outmaneuvering an enemy fighter, hearing the piercing tone of target acquisition known as missile lock, and sending a heat-seeking missile up the enemy’s exhaust. The latest addition to the Tom Clancy video game franchise, Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X, accomplishes this task admirably.
The player starts the game by entering the flight suit of USAF pilot David Crenshaw, a member of an elite Air Force unit known as H.A.W.X, which stands for High Altitude Warfare eXperimental squadron. The very first mission has the player flying close air support just outside the U.S.-Mexico border to assist Captain Scott Mitchell and his ‘Ghost’ team in Ciudad Juarez (from Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2; H.A.W.X is set in between GRAW 2 and EndWar). The mission is successful, but it is Crenshaw’s last as part of the H.A.W.X unit, which is deactivated afterwards. Crenshaw and his wingmen are recruited shortly after by the Private Military Company (PMC) Artemis Global Security. Over the next several years, Crenshaw and his wingmen fly various types of missions for Artemis and its clients, including escorting NATO bombers, intercepting a third-world dictator, and defending an oil refinery in the Middle East.
Playing H.A.W.X has been a very satisfying experience for me. Until H.A.W.X came around, the only other air combat games I have ever played were a PC simulator for the EuroFighter Typhoon dubbed EF 2000 and the PlayStation 3 online-only multiplayer game Warhawk. H.A.W.X is a welcome addition to this genre, with more than thirty licensed real-world aircraft at the player’s disposal. The game also features a unique utility known as the Enhanced Reality System (ERS) which, when active, provides vital battlefield information such as RADAR, ammunition status, weapons targeting, airspeed, altitude, and even a neat feature where the press of a button projects a virtual flight path to intercept your currently selected target or an evasion path to avoid enemy missiles. This is also known as ‘assistance mode’, which makes flying the plane much easier but as a tradeoff, limits your spectrum of movement. A simple double-tap of the throttle or brake buttons will turn Assistance mode off, and you are switched to a much wider view of the battle area. With off mode comes a higher level of maneuverability by ‘drifting’ your plane with a steady press of the brake button and movement of your control stick.
Control-wise, H.A.W.X is easy to learn and not terribly complicated. If it feels like your plane isn’t handling as crisply as it should, you either need to look at its stats when you select one, or put it in ‘off’ mode. Otherwise, you need more practice. Graphically, H.A.W.X is decent, but there are limitations. In mid-air, the explosions of enemy targets are impressive and a sight to behold, as well as satisfying to fly through seconds after launching the missile that destroyed the enemy plane. However, when in Assistance On mode and flying a ground attack mission that requires ‘nap-of-the-earth’ flying (extremely low-level flight, practically skimming treetops), the environment gets heavily pixelated, and the trees are practically cardboard cutouts. Sometimes, you are flying at altitudes where you expect to be taken out by a tree, but instead, you fly right through it! This is a little disappointing, considering the developers worked closely with GeoEye Incorporated, the world’s largest space imaging corporation, to create the environments and locales the player takes flight in.
Despite these little bugs here and there, H.A.W.X is probably the best air combat game I have played thus far. Little else has come even close to the intensity of its air battles, where you and your wingmen can easily be outnumbered yet still shoot down every enemy aircraft in your path unscathed. Mind you, this is only the single-player campaign. An online component is included, and you can choose to either fly a co-op campaign with another player, or take on up to several players at once in the online versus mode, which includes free-for-all and team deathmatch modes. If you want the thrill of Top Gun without the silliness of Tom Cruise, then H.A.W.X is the game for you. Just don’t be surprised if you find yourself humming Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone while playing.
In a Nutshell
Title: Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.
ESRB rating: ‘T’ for Teen
Platforms: Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PC, Nintendo Wii
Average Price: $49.99
Grade: B+
posted by The Phoenix Files at
9:21 AM
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