Tom Clancy’s HAWX

Tom Clancy’s HAWX

High-flying thrills and spills if your stomach can handle it.

More than most, make that any, previous aerial combat games, Tom Clancy’s HAWX comes closest to fulfilling the modern flyboy fantasy. Guys who pore over each new edition of Aircraft Illustrated and visit air shows to marvel at billions of dollars worth of military jets will recognise kindred spirits in Ubisoft Romania, the team behind the WWII dogfighter Blazing Angels. HAWX conveys a lot of passion for its theme.

The Tom Clancy angle is a bonus, but for us not the draw. It isn’t that the storyline holds relevance to EndWar and Ghost Recon 2 that holds us captivated. After your first flight over Rio de Janeiro, perfecting your first stall turn and nose dive, that’s when the bug hits you. Signing up for duty with the High Altitude Warfare Experimental Squadron (H.A.W.X.) comes with a genuine sense of excitement.

It is the storyline, however, that helps introduce the varied mission types available and at one stage turn your whole world figuratively upside down. But any excuse to throw more tactical demands and associated real-world aircraft our way is always welcomed. There are 19 single-player missions all told, and they all leave you feeling like Top Gun…they’ll take your breath away (old timer reference there, sorry).

As ex US fighter pilot David Crenshaw, your role is to defend the US government against the designs of malicious Private Military Company, Artemis Global Security. Since this is the year 2014, technology is that little bit more advanced than what’s (publicly) known in AD 2009. Hence Crenshaw – or rather the player – has access to some nifty onboard technology to assist with aerial combat.

The headline act where gameplay is concerned is the Enhanced Reality System (ERS) that plots courses for you to follow whenever you need guidance. A series of waypoints are displayed, kind of like riding a virtual rollercoaster, providing optimal lines of attack or evasion. ERS basically makes the game easier and can spoil the fun or frustration of figuring things out on your own – for example, how to take out the anti-aircraft guns nestled between skyscrapers below.

When flying with control assistance on, the default mode, the views from the various aircraft are often spectacular. Similar to most racing games you have a choice of perspectives that take you from outside the plane to inside the cockpit, from where you can look around as though piloting for real. Barrel rolling as cities that include Los Angeles, Chicago, Tokyo, and Rio spin giddily around you never gets old. Famous landmarks and skylines are faithfully rendered thanks to GeoEye satellite mapping technology. It’s only when you’re flying at extreme low levels that the detail starts to suffer.

Our major let-down with HAWX occurs when you choose to fly with Assistance Off. This leads to refined control, allowing for idiotic stunts such as the aforementioned stall technique that lets you plummet out of control for a few heart-racing seconds. Visually though it deflates the whole experience – it isn’t possible to fly from the cockpit view, or even from close behind. Instead Assistance Off represents the aircraft as a tiny, flimsy-looking model that flips around unconvincingly. Sadly, then, there’s no chance of pretending you’re in full command of an F-14D SuperTomcat or AV-8B Harrier, Dassault Rafale… indeed any one of the 60 real-world aircraft.

And that takes the edge off the desire to collect-em-all; especially since handling and weapons capabilities seem to make marginal difference to the missions. Even though there’s a sound gameplay mechanic to encourage number of kills and objectives complete, rewarding players with XP to purchase new wings and weapons upgrades.

As a tool to enjoy aerial combat, however, HAWX still counts when it comes to multiplayer. Wannabe Top Guns are sure to welcome the drop-in, drop-out co-op mode that lets you assign your real-life pals as wingmen. It’s a terrific sensation knowing that the other guys in the sky are people you actually know and you’ll worry for their safety while at the same time cursing if they don’t got your six. 16-player Deathmatch is chaotic but impressive in that there are no frame-rate issues.

All things considered, HAWX delivers most of what you’d dream of finding in an aerial combat game designed for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. It looks the shizzle, and there are plenty of stand-out moments to enthuse about. Despite our reservations in some areas we can’t wait to see how Ubisoft responds with a sequel.

4 out of 5