Ubisoft is probably my favorite publisher right now. When I bought my Xbox 360 I picked up a copy of Rainbow Six Vegas, and it’s been a love affair ever since. It just seems that when I pick up a Ubisoft title it delivers. I don’t mean to say that everything they do turns to gold, but recently even their misses have had moments of greatness. EndWar which was a let down for the most part gave us a quality voice activation system that will hopefully find better implementation moving forward.
With that in mind – when I got the email from Ubisoft that the H.A.W.X. demo had gone live on the Xbox Live Marketplace I immediately got excited. I have never, ever been a fan of flying games and I thought if there was ever a company that could create a flying game that I would enjoy, it’d be Ubisoft.
They did not disappoint.
The H.A.W.X. demo opens with a stunning cut scene. The phrase “ye though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil – fore I am 80,000 feet and climbing” ushers in a fast paced clip of a jet screaming towards a city as radio calls come across that your soldiers are pinned down. I loved this opening because it does a good job of setting up the game, plus as the jet receives the word from the ground the pilot responds “roger that Ghost leader” a nice tip of the cap to another Ubisoft property (apparently the H.A.W.X. game takes place in the same world as the Ghost Recon series).
You’re given two missions to select from in this demo. The first is entitled OFF Certification and it’s exactly what you’d assume – a basic tutorial on the controls to get you comfortable in the jet. The Officer Certification mission is very important so I strongly suggest you play through it first. You’ll be given a quick tutorial on how to use the ERS system (your navigation), how to climb (hold down on the left stick), how to dive (hold up), how to yaw right and left (bumpers), how to accelerate (RT), and how to brake (LT). You’ll also be given a crash course in how to turn off the navigation (tap one of the triggers twice), and how the plane handles without the ERS system engaged.
The tutorial shouldn’t take you too long. I think I played through the entire thing in about 15 minutes, but that includes the time I crashed into the mountain because I didn’t pull up and accelerate enough during a power slide. Oh did I forget to mention the insane slide turns that you’ll learn in the OFF Certification mission? Well just imagine you’re flying an F-16A Fighting Falcon and you need to stop on a dime and turn to face an enemy approaching, you hit the brake and yaw to the direction you want to turn and bam you’re facing right in for the kill. The only problem is that now you’re not going fast enough to stay in the air – so you start an immediately free fall from space. Just slam the accelerator and pull up on the nose. If you forget that down is up (which I did) you will be witness to a pretty spectacular crash. The one down side to crashing is that you don’t do area damage, which would have been awesome to see a building crumble as your jet slams into it at a high rate of speed (although understandable why that was left out of the game).
The second unlocked demo mission is called Glass Slipper and it takes place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (as does the OFF Certification mission). After selecting the mission you’ll be taken through some customization options. You can select your plane – in the demo the only available option is the F-16A Fighting Falcon. You’ll select the ammunition that you’re carrying, your control configuration (Normal/Expert), and the difficulty level (Normal/Hard/Elite). Before the short introduction to the level you’re given a graph that sets out your allies as they stand in the battle. There are different categories including: Fighters, Bombers, Ground Forces, Helicopters, Air Defense and Naval Forces. Next to each name is a percentage to show how they are fairing in the fight. After that you’re brought into a loading screen which is actually a mission briefing. If you’ve played EndWar then you have an idea of how this is set up, but it’s mainly a futuristic looking multiple screen set up where you’re shown information from the ground, given details and elements of the mission and briefed on any other useful information that might be advantageous to you. These scenes are done expertly well, with a nice polish and does a very good job of making you feel like you’re invested in this large scale assault/defense of a city as the case may be.
Now that you’ve gone through all of those steps and introductory materials you’re ready to play. You’re in the air when the mission begins and immediately you’ll notice that this game is beautifully rendered. Hit the trigger twice to pull back to a far away slightly off center camera angle and you’ll see the beautiful detail in the flight of the plane, or just fly low and check out the statute of Jesus on the mountain in Brazil to enjoy the scenery. The year is something like 2021 so you’re far enough in the future that your ERS pointing you in the direction to go in order to avoid enemy missiles that are locked on you doesn’t seem implausible. Basically when someone fires a rocket at you, your ERS system allows you to press X, and a series of gates appear in the sky. If fly through those gates you’ll avoid the missile, or come up behind your enemy as the case may be. This is an awesome feature that I really liked – it’s still difficult to manage so it doesn’t make the game impossibly easy, and there are times when your ERS will be down and provide no assistance at all.
The mission sees you fighting off an enemy incursion which is coming from the land, sea and air. First you’ll fight off the planes with your ERS in tact. This part goes pretty easily as your squadmates and you make quick work of the enemies. You’re then asked to stop a sea invasion (there are still planes buzzing around), this part is a bit more difficult, but not nearly as tough as stopping the troops on land. You don’t want to blow the city to bits (you are afterall defending the city) so you must use your ERS to map out a way to fire on the tanks on city streets without taking out a school.
During the entire battle you’ll be hearing comm chatter from the ground, from other planes, from troops, from HQ and from anyone else with a radio. It makes the entire experience feel very frantic, incredibly fast paced and realistic and becomes very engaging. I died MANY times playing through this level, and there is something to be said about a game being too fast at first. Before I was comfortable with the controls I was having a tough time getting behind enemies, or pulling up in time to not hit the water. This makes the game difficult, which is good because flying a jet at super speeds and firing on a tank on a city street should be difficult.
Once you get a hang of the controls the mission isn’t too difficult. There is a point where your ERS system goes out and you have to switch it off (two taps of the trigger), which allows you to do some insane moves that would make a lesser pilot puke in his mask. However, the dog fights (are they still called those?) are intense, and because you’re battling in the sky it won’t take many hits to bring you down, which adds another element to the game. I generally do not care for airplane based games, but the H.A.W.X. demo did enough to pique my interest in the title.
One feature that I didn’t mention was the voice controls. I did not try these – mainly because when I played through the demo it was during time when my wife (who works overnight shift) was sleeping and the thought of he waking up to me screaming (ON MY LEFT) into an
Xbox 360 headset
was a bit offsetting. However, I imagine that the controls are similar to EndWar in that they work well, and can be seamlessly integrated into the gameplay.
The other major addition in H.A.W.X. is the online multiplayer which is significant. In this game you will be able to jump in/out of the story mode in multiplayer. Basically you’re flying along with a teammate who has to go eat dinner so he jumps out and you seamlessly transfer to non multiplayer story mode. This is a great addition in my opinion because one of the biggest problems I have with online multiplayer is that it’s tough to get together with someone for an extended period of time to complete the story mode. Of course there is also online player vs. player modes which promise to be intense as you engage in dogfights with your friends or strangers around the world.
Bottom line:
Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. is a beautiful game that handles with an amazing degree of precision and provides the type of intense mid air combat that you simply cannot find anywhere else. I am not the biggest fan of airplane based combat games but the amount of polish in H.A.W.X., combined with the responsive controls and frantic pace of the dogfights are undeniably cool and the demo left me wanting more.
My major concern with this game is how the story is going to be told and whether or not it’ll just be tacked on at the end. If I had one complaint about the
Tom Clancy series from Ubisoft it’s that the story sometimes comes off as a bit jumbled. With a game like H.A.W.X. you could very easily lose the story and still have a competent fast paced game, but a strong story could help push this game as a new IP with some staying power.
Oh and for those wondering – apparently H.A.W.X. stands for High Altitude Warfare eXpiremental squadron, which is such a painfully horrible name that I hope to never have to repeat it in this space again.
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