The Front Page - Review: Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X

Single Issue I (Written by Gen. Chris)

Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. (2009)

Tom Clancy's HAWX Tom Clancy’s HAWX sees the player take to the skies as Captain David Crenshaw, a pilot in the US Air Force who later chose to join a powerful private military contractor, Artemis Global Security, upon the deactivation of his unit, the High Altitude Warfare Experimental (HAWX) squadron. But as the player becomes a dedicated member of the contractor over the period of half a decade, world events force Crenshaw to make hard choices in doing what is right and what Artemis wants.

There are many positives about HAWX. For one, its is quite fun, and incredibly engaging. I grew up playing Ace Combat 4 constantly on my PS2, so HAWX felt much like Ace Combat except for being set in the real world rather than the fictional one in Ace Combat. These locations really add a degree of familiarity to the story, and it makes it far more realistic to the gamer, in my opinion, to have these missions in the skies over Japan, the United States, or Brazil. Its missions and plot really drive the hectic nature of aerial warfare, and while it is perhaps not the most realistic example of a combat flight simulator, it is nonetheless highly enjoyable. One mission in particular involved a desperate fight over the skies of Washington DC where you and your wingmen are practically all that are available in defending the capital against enemy air and land units. Constantly avoiding enemy fire while trying to lock on and engage other units is nothing but fun, and in some cases lead to a feeling of accomplishment when you are successful. Another interesting mission involved penetrating an area that was heavily protected by AA units; the mission requires you the fly a strict path into and out of the area three times to take out the ground targets. Deviating from this path, indicated on your hub, will lead to a quick death as the AA units tear your plane to shreds. Some of the missions are not such fun, like escort missions, but I feel the fairly large degree of mission variety has a positive influence on the experience of the game. The plot of the game is also rather interesting, and has some real world parallels involving private military contractors and the limits of their power. While the idea of such an organization achieving the sense of power that it does is somewhat ridiculous, it nonetheless provides an interesting enemy to deal with that has really no allegiances to nation or creed; only an allegiance to whoever has the largest wallet. The game also features dozens of planes and weapon packages that are given from gaining enough experience in missions to advance levels, and since I have certainly not reached the top level by the end of the game there are opportunities to replay and gain more levels and more aircraft and weapons. These aircraft and which you choose during missions can have a heavy impact on performance, as the missions are varied enough to require you to choose your planes and weapons carefully based on if the mission is mostly air-to-ground or air-to-air. The wingmen system is pretty handy as you can have them attack targets or defend you, though their performance capabilities if somewhat mixed, along with the rest of the AI in general. The audio is a bit hit and miss, but the soundtrack is quite good and really adds to the atmosphere and epicness of aerial warfare.

There are of course some negatives. From the skies the game is quite pretty, but when you get in really close the game can emerge as rather ugly in places. While Ubisoft is known for creating fairly pretty games, HAWX’s development at a lesser studio (Ubisoft Romania) likely meant less resources to really polish the game. The textures close to the ground are spotty at best, with trees hardly more than sprites. They are not even solid enough to register to the flying mechanic, to the effect that you can fly right through trees and not crash. Buildings are also not very well done, and there are other cases where textures simply did not load properly. Water is another huge offender, looking more like blue ground than rolling waves or anything remotely water like. The gameplay is also pretty arcadey, but if that’s what you’re looking for that may not necessarily be a negative. A large offender has to be the Electronic Reality System (ERS) that helps you by guiding you to targeting an elusive enemy or avoiding a missile. This is the same system used in the mission mentioned above used to help fly a set path through a dangerous area, and that’s fine, but for the dogfighting portion it makes it too easy and really unnecessary. Related to this is the “assistance off” mechanic. Difficult to describe, but it changes the perspective and slightly changes the mechanics of the battle. It’s cool, but it is somewhat difficult to get used to and ultimately contributes to the game feeling pretty unrealistic. The plot, while interesting, does not make the overall story interesting unfortunately. There was simply not enough character development to really make me care much about the people on the screen, and little personality overall. The sound was also lackluster outside of the music in my opinion, with uninspired voice acting and sometimes glitchy sounds. This was particularly problematic when there was a lot of stuff happening on screen and in game and with the dialog going on and no subtitles meant that a lot of the conversations happening were lost. Explosions were cool, but lackluster sound hurt the idea of fighting in the skies in large and powerful aircraft.

Perhaps my views of the fantastic Ace Combat 4 have created a huge standard that simply could not be met, and if so that is not fair. There is nothing really bad about this game, especially since it is now a six year old game, but there is nothing really great about it either. The gameplay is fun, but everything else, from the graphics to the story to the sound, are simply lacking in many respects. The obvious tie-ins to other Tom Clancy games were a nice touch, though unfortunately lost on me as this is the first game I have played in the whole franchise. I shall have to rectify that, but what remains is this: HAWX is a decent, but very flawed, game. It’s fun, there is no doubt about that, but it simply could have been more. There was not a moment, outside of the odd frustrating mission, that I was not having a blast, and when it comes down to it that is really all that matters in gaming.

7.5/10

Extra Hello everyone.

From now on, barring any special occasions (like Christmas), the Gamer's Gazette will be a mostly single-issue edition like this. So make sure that you stop by and check this area out frequently as reviews will be posted as soon as the writers are satisfied.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to leave a comment or PM me or another member of the team.

Sections of TWC

Ad

Article Categories

Review: Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.

Gamer's Gazette Staff

Gamer's Gazette Categories