Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. 2 Review
A wing and a prayer.
Version tested:
Air combat games are contradictory beasts. They offer the most freedom of movement of any game genre, and yet are constrained by the emptiness of their aerial arenas into gameplay that can quickly become monotonous if you're not passionately excited by military technology. Fly to waypoint, shoot down enemies, rinse, repeat.
H.A.W.X. 2 seems uncomfortably aware of its limitations and so goes out of its way to break up the aerial dogfighting. The trouble is that in doing so it risks alienating the niche audience that is perfectly happy with lots of aerial dogfighting, without offering enough to attract a more mainstream audience.
Following on from the first game, which had a rather bumpy landing back in March 2009, the game takes place in the near future setting shared with several other Tom Clancy titles. There are references to these overlapping events, though nothing that will confuse anyone unfamiliar with the tangled web of Clancy gaming, but the fidgety story still boils down to an unsatisfying hodgepodge of stolen nukes something something insurgency something Russia something Middle East.
Much like brawny Clancy wannabe Modern Warfare 2, you hop between story strands as the plot hiccups along, following American, Russian and British pilots as they run missions that are clearly supposed to stop a Very Bad Thing from happening, even if you're never entirely clear what that Very Bad Thing will be.

Pungent Jet Fumes, the new fragrance for men from Michael Bay.
Despite this narrative fog, the early levels do a great job of building pivotal moments into a flight game framework, putting you in the cockpit for scripted events that slip seamlessly into gameplay. It doesn't take long for this creativity to subside, however, and before long you're following waypoints and engaging bogeys like every other air combat game.
The game uses Clancy's obsession with technology to break things up, so at various points you'll find yourself engaged in aerial espionage. Hovering over cities and battlefields with unmanned recon drones, these remote spybots cast the world in grainy green and black night vision, and ask you to scan buildings to locate prisoners, fire IR tracers to mark targets, track cars belonging to arms dealers, or rain rocket death down on insurgent positions. In gameplay terms, it boils down to fairly simple point-and-click stuff, but when used intelligently this shift in perspective moves the game along in a way that shooting down five more enemy fighters never can.
One good example comes when you're placed in control of the weaponry on an AC-130 Gunship and supply aerial cover for a rescue mission on the ground. So, yes, it's a turret mission. And an escort mission. But it works. You can zoom right in and see the tiny figures you're helping, and the level strikes an excellent balance between giving you enough firepower to feel confident in your chances of victory and throwing enough complications into the mix that it never feels like it's handed to you on a plate. Fending off convoys as tiny soldiers make a desperate dash for freedom, on foot and in vehicles, is surprisingly exciting stuff.

These point-and-shoot aerial interludes are shallow, but surprisingly enjoyable.
It's essentially a military shooter from an RTS viewpoint, and these sporadic interludes may well annoy those who prefer their flight games to focus entirely on flight. They're certainly most fun the first time you encounter them, becoming more intrusive and less novel with each replay, which suggests H.A.W.X. might not be the best franchise to use them in.
Enemy AI has been greatly improved from the first game, which is both a blessing and a curse. It makes each engagement all the more rewarding, as even on the easiest setting you still have to compete with enemy pilots who will dodge, swoop and use flares and chaff to escape your attention. That, in itself, is fantastic. When you're up against a strict countdown, and still have 10 more enemies to down, it becomes a problem.
"Get better at dogfighting," is the obvious retort, but the game skews its missions too far in the later stages, leaving little room for all but the most brilliant pilots to succeed. While enemies are much smarter, the same can't be said for your allied wingmen.
Late in the game you finally get the ability to designate targets for them - an essential feature, given the sheer number of enemies you face and the need to split your attention between clearing the skies and defending troops on the ground. Yet they never seem to get the job done. As wave after wave of tanks and other ground forces converge on a vital allied airbase, you're ping-ponging from one threat to another while your flight team seemingly piffle about elsewhere, dogfighting with the same handful of fighters.
Since each checkpoint puts you back in the same position, with the same catastrophic damage and overwhelming odds, progress can feel like a grind, where quitting out and starting the whole multi-tiered mission from the start is the only option.
Handling, at least, is crisp and responsive, and you don't have to worry about stalling even on the highest difficulty. The only way sim fans can get that level of realism is to activate the OFF Mode, retained from the first game. This makes flying a more challenging part of the experience, but still restricts you to a fiddly external "dynamic" camera right when you really want to be in the cockpit. Those hoping H.A.W.X. might become a more serious flight game are bound for disappointment.

Is it just me, or does HAWX 2 sound a lot like Spit the Dog's catchphrase?
The game also looks stunning thanks to the use of high-definition maps provided by GeoEye satellites. It's a good thing there's a Free Flight option, since it's worth taking a plane for a spin just so you can appreciate the near-photoreal scenery. Admittedly, the illusion doesn't hold up quite as well once you dip below 500 metres, but combined with impressively detailed plane models and Tom Salta's evocative score, the result is impressively cinematic.
It's in the supplementary options that H.A.W.X. 2 shows its eagerness to please. Missions can be replayed with your own choice of plane and weapon loadout, while success unlocks variations in Arcade Mode, where variables such as ammo and enemy skill are tweaked to give the hardcore more of a challenge. There's also a self explanatory Survival Mode, which is playable in online co-op mode along with all the story missions.
It's here that game really takes flight, as the inclusion of fellow flesh-and-blood pilots smoothes out the frustrations of the aloof allied AI, and even allows for more wriggle room in what role you play. In single-player it's all painfully prescriptive - you go where you're told and engage targets based on what the disembodied voice says. Try anything different, attempt a different approach, and failure is never far away.

Autopilot takes over while you manually aim bombs, but there are missiles that can be controlled directly.
That's how the military works, of course, but for gameplay purposes it can get a bit repetitive. Flying alongside three other players, you can devise strategies of your own, divvy up the targets in more interesting ways, and generally feel more like you're engaged in a dynamic battle even though you're still plugging away at the same scripted waves.
Is it enough to make H.A.W.X. 2 essential? Sadly not. It's really only the one-on-one thrill of a dogfight that makes the pulse race and those moments are sandwiched between fun-but-slight shooting gallery sections and solo mission design that quickly leads to frustration. It's a game that works best as a straightforward arcade air combat game, but seems determined to exceed the framework of its genre, often to the detriment of its best features.
There are certainly enough improvements to make this a worthwhile flight for anyone who enjoyed the original game, but there's still plenty of potential left untapped. For all its sheen, H.A.W.X. remains a curious sideshow in Tom Clancy's murky world rather than a star player.
7 / 10
Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. 2 is released on the 10th September for PS3, 30th September for Wii and Xbox 360, before finally being available 1st October for PC.
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Comments (43) Latest comment 1 year ago
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I am not quite sure I can follow - surely the "Off"-mode was the most unrealistic part of the first game, or am I just confused?
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Here?
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Is this better?
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Now that was a great game. Amazing.
Where's jaxon58, that guy worked on the game. He deserves a pat on the back...
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I prefer helicopters though - Tomahawk on the Spectrum started that, and Gunship on the ST cemented it. Gunship 2000 and Longbow (by Digital Integration, the guys who made Tomahawk) were also great.
Nobody makes games like that any more, and to be honest, as much as I loved them, I am not sure I have the time to dedicate to them any more even if they did.
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As for HAWX2, it looks like it's the same misfired nonsense as last time. An amazing and innovative AC-130 level (which sound identical to the one in MW2), the same ridiculous hand-holding flight model and unwanted shifts to an exterior view, and jesus tittyfucking christ, you don't get the ability to issue orders to wingmen until late in the game??? From the sound of things, Ace Combat 2 (yes, on the PS1) is vastly superior, never mind the fantastic 6.
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Is that right? Must say hello at some point, was (and still am) a massive fan of all of those DID games. Still fire up TAW on the odd occasion. AWACS strategy with F-22 ADF combat was a stroke of genius.
I still remember my first successful landing on EF2000 back when I was a lad. I didn't know what the key was to drop the landing gear, so instead I fired off all my rockets, jettisoned my fuel and belly flopped on the runway at the slowest speed possible!
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PC version is delayed.
I think the Wii version is also coming later.
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For older planes European Air War, Il2 Sturmovik 1946 and Flying Corps. Those are the real air sims.
Blazing Angels series and HAWX are pure arcade, not bad for passing time, but you can't really attach to those titles.
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So you knew the jettison fuel key, but not the undercarriage one? Weird.
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Actually, 5 = average.
7 = good.
There is a whole scale of numbers you know, they don't start at 5.
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Its tame arcade efforts like Hawx that brings the pain of today's gaming scene into focus. We aren't all dumb Shock and Awe attention-deficit can't-read-a-manual slackers you know, there might actually be a market for a game on a console that doesn't appeal to the lowest common denominator.
Bah.
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If this gets a 7 then it must be fucking fantastic
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Fuck you EG
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HAWX2 runs at 30fps
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I was a kid, I didn't read manuals - just pressed keys until I found out what they did. Unfortunately, that didn't work too well with the landing gear as you had to be below a certain airspeed before they would deploy when you pressed G. Didn't give me much time to experiment!
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http://ww w.gamingshogun.com/Article/7060...
Far better graphics, to boot.
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impressions of hawx 2 from the demo:
- runs so, so much slower! makes dogfights a bit more visual and exciting (you're not firing at high-speed specs), but ruins the sensation of being in a jet.
- the refueling/taking-off stuff is unnecessary. if you're going to make an arcadey flight-em-up there's no point in including such sim-fare (even if they are distilled to some sort of abstract mini-game representation).
- missile warnings don't seem as clear, as i found out to my cost 10 seconds into the opening level.
- the plot is still so enormously ridiculous that you cannot concentrate on it even if you really, really try.
that said, i imagine it's still a perfectly entertaining co-op game.
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If you want realism you play something else, HAWX is supposed to be about arcadey hollywood-style dogfights and non-stop action. I'm saddened that they apparently listened to flight sim fans when they added all the mundane crap. HAWX is supposed to be like a movie and there's a reason movies never spend 5 minutes on seeing the hero carefully maneuver into the refuel hose. I was really relieved when I learned that I didn't have to deal with fiddly stuff like that in the original and could just focus on pulling off unrealistic maneuvers while firing missiles in all directions. It was a shoot 'em up with guided missiles and 6 degrees of freedom.
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He makes a lot of video games!!!!
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hehe. Lovely stuff.
A small Baileys for Mr. Whitehead...
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Now all the fans of the original HAWX (both of them... only kidding) bitch about the stuff that's been added as it detracts from their fun.
I can't help but get the feeling that HAWX occupies an uncomfortable niche it's trying to make for itself between Afterburner and Ace Combat. Afterburner providing the quick, fun 'blow stuff up' thrills while Ace Combat gives more sim elements. (note that to go beyond this, you are pretty much PC only unless you have Superman's eyes to spot the enemy planes in Sim mode in IL-2:BoP)
Back in the day, you had stuff like Ultimate Air Combat on the NES (about the same realism), Turn And Burn on the Game Boy (more realistic!) and of course, F-22 Interceptor on the Genesis (more realistic too). The potential for a game which looks like the real deal but is shallow as hell didn't really exist.
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I haven't asked for that, in fact I was glad HAWX1 never made me do that. But yeah, it's pretty much After Burner without the rails. That's how I like it.
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