Tom Clany’s HAWX

Rating: 7/10

Achievements: 6/10
If you were to play through the campaign (approx. 10 hours) on normal difficulty you would earn approximately 300 gamerpoints. More if you play on the harder two settings. The bulk of the G’s are obtained through online death matches.

Review:
Let me be honest with you about my experience with aerial combat games. I have none. I have not owned a game like this since Top Gun for my NES. For what ever reason I just couldn’t land on the aircraft carrier and I would always crash into the water. This must have been a traumatic experience for me, since I haven’t given a flight simulator an honest chance since. However, I am not sure I would call this a flight simulator, because I find it hard to believe that a jet fighter can carry a couple hundred missiles at a given time. I can also cruise with my afterburners maxed and never worry about fuel. Most importantly I never have to land the plane.

There is a wide variety of jets that are unlocked and they are all fairly newer models, except for the A-10, which is a beast and probably my favorite. The different jets are unlocked by leveling up with experience points earned through the campaign and online. You have the choice between two ways of controlling your aircraft. The default version will take you a little while to get used to and after a few levels you unlock the unassisted control, which I still have a hard time controlling at times. The fact that there is an achievement for a ground kill in the unassisted mode should only further explain. While in the default (assisted) mode you have a few extra on screen displays. You also have the ability to press the X button to show a suggested path to take to avoid a missile that is locked on to you. When on offense this button will show the most direct path to the six o’clock of your predetermined target. The benefit to the unassisted mode is it’s supposed to be more maneuverable and it looks pretty damn cool. You will either love, or hate this mode.

Before each level HAWX will show a breakdown of the enemies you are about to face and give you a recommendation as to what jet you should select. It’s a lot more fun to go through the levels once you have unlocked a bunch of jets. The levels are mixed well between attacking & defending targets. A map in the lower corner will show the enemy locations and sometimes their expected path. Once you select your target you decide what type of missile you want to blow them away with. It's not hard to imagine why the best missiles are the multi-target missiles for ground & air units. Once you have locked on a single target the multi missile will lock onto up to three other targets if near by. Firing four missiles at once was fun to watch. If they were not available I found that climbing to a high altitude and then locking onto & shooting multiple targets while dive bombing was effective. There were a couple of missions when you are tasked to attack a target within a specified time limit. These are tough and can turn into a pretty chaotic scene of launched missiles.

There was a story that I tried to follow, but after so many missions it really didn’t matter. Not to be misunderstood; I don’t mean it was a good story, but didn’t really matter for the total game experience. The story started off good, but quickly turned terrible and monotonous. The game was fun to play, so there is no need to watch garbage when you could be playing...skip ahead.

Tom Clany’s HAWX has some decent online play. There is 2-4 player co-op along with ranked and unranked battles. The best part about the co-op is that the game keeps score on the number of kills each player has, so it basically turns into a competition with plenty of trash talk while you’re skipping past the cut scenes. As far as playing the ranked battles they are enjoyable when you are playing, but there is far too much loading and each player is allowed to select their desired plane. Some people forget that while they are meticulously looking at each plane the other players are waiting impatiently to play.

Brand new this game is going for $39.99, which isn’t a bad price if you plan on playing online matches along with completing the campaign. I beat the game in an extended sitting, so a rental may be a better option.