Discount Hawx - Xbox 360

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First and foremost, Tom Clancy's HAWX is an "Air combat game" (at least that's what it calls itself) so if you are looking for a flight sim, this isn't it. That being said, my review is based upon the game itself, not the virtues/vices of it being a sim or "arcady"

Graphics: This game looks phenomenal. I have a 56" 1080P LCD and my jaw is constantly dropping. You will be flying over a variety of terrains and locations. Different times of day will skew color palettes, weather can affect visibility with clouds, and targets can be obscured by smoke. The terrain is incredibly detailed and looks wonderful even at close range...after you have unwittingly crashed your jet into it. Aircraft and missile contrails have that "puffy" look to them and flying into the sun is a great way to blind yourself.

Flight Mechanics: As I mentioned above, this is not a combat simulator. Hard banks and climbs do not kill speed. Depending on your difficulty setting your aircraft will take a number of direct missile hits. While this does take away from the realism factor (something Clancy games have been known for) it does make for a fun game. Even rookie pilots will quickly be flying low level and diving into "bandit" infested dog-fights. After several "training" missions which are used to introduce the player to the different aspects of the game (defend, escort, bombing, weapon types, etc) the game introduces the "Limit OFF" system (or OFF) in which the game is played from a zoomed out third person perspective. This mode allows players to "slide" their aircraft around, effectively making them much more agile (makes dodging missiles easier too). Opinions abound on this mode, but I found it a fun break from typical game play although lining up on a specific target can be more difficult. I recommend using OFF mode for evading missiles and getting your nose around on your adversary and then going quickly back to regular view mode.

Gameplay: This game uses a level scheme to unlock new aircraft and weapons load outs. Ever kill and achieving certain feats gives the player experience. Luckily the levels come fast and new aircraft abound. The aircraft themselves are beautifully rendered. Again since this is not a sim, most craft can (and do) hold several hundred missiles. This is a good thing since HAWX is a target rich environment and the player will be constantly tasked with prioritizing which targets to take down and in what order.

Since no one flys alone, the player has two wingmen who love to clutter the radio with chatter. They typically are talking about the plot and the mission, but will occasionally during a dog fight announce things an aware player had already seen a few minutes earlier. Not to say that the wingmen are useless, they just talk a lot. These wingmen can be given simple attack my target or defend me commands. My only real issue is that they seem to move at mach 10 whenever they feel like it and perform bizarre maneuvers to get back on you wing. While they will take down opponents if left to their own devices, it is best to take on important objectives yourself and let them cover your tail.

Each aircraft has individual stats and "bonuses" (if you will) some are good at engaging ground targets, others are limited in their weapons payload, each aircraft has a unique feel and a few moments of thought before selecting an aircraft for a mission will pay dividends. Trying to fly an escort mission in an AV-8 makes a mission a challenge, where a Mig-29 makes it much simpler.

The game give the player plenty of options to chose from, whether in aircraft, load outs, or how to approach a mission. The visuals are fantastic, and the fast paced gameplay will keep you glued to the screen. While OFF mode and the wingmen could have used a bit of tweaking I still feel this is an excellent game. But hey, that's my two cents. See you in the skies!

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This arcade style flight combat game (as the review about me also pointed out, its not a "flight simulator") is incredibly fast paced and engaging. Though there are a few slow moments as you recieve a briefing while heading to the destination at hand, once there you will be engaged in constant dogfights, dodging missles and out-manuevering(sp?) the other bandits. The missions do range from Defend, Escort, Bombing runs but so far I found the majority as defend and escort, which is fine as it offers enough diversity in those missions to keep you both challenged and entertained.

The wingmen, in my opinion, dont do much other than keep the com line busy, shooting down targets on their own time. It's decent AI but nothing to write home about. I have yet to play this in coop mode, though I do lok forward to that and should remedy any problems you have with the AI wingmen if you have a buddy along side you.

The experience system (which reminds me alot of Call of Duty's EXP system) gains you EXP for every kill and in game challenge you complete and works for both off and online modes giving you new ranks (up to lvl 40), weapon packs, and planes (the box says there are "over 50 liscensed planes").

Which brings me to the second(the first being coop for those of you who were paying attention) and last online feature: Team Deathmatch. I havent thoroughly explored it but clocked in a few matches to get a feel for it (wanted to unlock more planes and hone my flying skills before I really hit it). From the matches I played I have to say that this is one of the game's best features. Its fast paced, balanced, and alot of fun. The TD consists of 2 teams of 4 locked in a dogfight. The twist is the match bonuses you get for a certain amount of kills (EMP burst, limiting them to a certain altitude repair-bots, locking their missles, and radar jamming) that can turn the tide of battle for either team.

In closing: I am extremely pleased with this game. The graphics are amazing the gameplay is immersive and engaging, the online capabilities offer immense replayability and the story, though predictable, is a decent Clancy story. I didnt give this game a 5 of 5 because I dont usually give any game a perfect score (a flawless game? Doesnt exist IMO), but this one came pretty close. I recommend this game to anyone who likes fast paced action titles (and doesnt mind being in a plane the whole time).

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Let me say first and foremost, this game is very good. The graphics are very well done but in my opinion they're not up to par with early videos I saw of this game, which obviously weren't using game play.

As other reviews have noted, this is NOT a flight sim. There are weapons and missions in this game that don't happen in real life. But if you don't approach it looking for a complete 100% realistic experience, it's a lot of fun. Although, having said that, the realism is pretty close. It does give you a sense of what it's like to fly between buildings in a major metropolitan city at high speeds as well as dodge missiles coming at you from all angles.

The storyline of this game was supposed to follow the storyline of the most recent Tom Clancy game, Endwar. But it appears the developers decided to go a different direction. Gamers who have played previous Tom Clancy games will recognize CPT Mitchell from Ghost Recon leading a team of ground troops in the game. That little addition I really liked. I wanted to really make sure I helped out the Ghosts during each ground mission they were in because I'd previously played the Ghost Recon games.

Now, the bad, and the reason I rated this game only three stars. Ubisoft did not do a good job with the quality control on this at all. I experienced NUMEROUS freezing problems with this game, and they've been reported by a lot of gamers. It usually freezes on the title screen right when you press start to get into the game. I've also had it freeze on me during a mission briefing. Secondly, sometimes the audio during a mission briefing doesn't match the text, and I've also seen grammatical mistakes in the briefings, as well as minor things like spelling "defense" as "defence". To an American audience that's noticeable and the grammatical mistake I found is inexcusable. There are also game play issues that cause problems. In a heavy dogfight sometimes you will find your "fire" button unresponsive for 5-10 seconds after launching a missile. This would be no big deal and could be chalked up to an attempt at realism, but it's not consistent. Sometimes it'll happen and sometimes it doesn't.

On balance this game is a lot of fun but it could have been a truly amazing, great game had Ubisoft put some more polish on it. The graphics are good but don't live up to the jaw dropping graphics from early game play videos released after the game was originally announced. The freezing issues are just totally inexcusable and really color my opinion of the game.

Honest reviews on Hawx - Xbox 360

Walked into the game store for another game, saw this, played the demo and was hooked. At 42, I don't normally stand in stores and play demos, but this one just caught my attention. There are three in-game viewpoints outside, in cockpit and first person. The graphics were very realistic (in this case, scenario surrounded an oil refinery and the ground objects were quite detailed, as well as the opponents in the air), maneuverability was very lifelike with the controller (can also be used with a 360 flightstick, which wasn't available at the demo), layout of where everything was on the controller didn't take rocket science. I was blown away. I grew up playing flight simulators like the original Jetfighter and early Microsoft Flight Simulators and I must say that if you're a buff of simulators, you owe it to yourself to at least check this one out.

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Only on mission 9 so far.

Just so people can identify with my perspective and my motive when purchasing games. I don't buy every title that hits the shelves, I'm frugal. However I do tend to own nearly all of the best sellers for the 360 platform. I'm a tremendous Gears of War 1 & 2 fan (1 better multiplayer because 2 makes the shotgun unrealistically bb-gun watered down), anyway, I loved Assassin's Creed--one of my favorites. I appreciated the new Prince of Persia, it's a rental though, I love the Call of Duty series 2, 4 & 5. BioShock...okay so now you see what types of games I like. If you like these, you might like this.

I've owned some Clancy titles, mostly the spinter cells and the first GRAW. I liked the 2&3 splinter cells on original platform. That being said this game follows suit for attention to realistic military detail, it's not flawless but it's pretty accurate. The story is pretty engaging, I'm prior military and love all things military, this storyline included. It's a stark prophecy of what could happen in the near future, makes it gripping like that.

Okay, the game itself. Initially, I HATED IT!! I am a huge fan of crimson skies and found the combat system extremely intuitive and very very advanced when performing maneuvers. This game is very close to a combat sim in the way the planes handle, the planes' flight mechanics operate on all three axises (X, Y, Z for roll, pitch, and yaw respectively). Yaw control is something new to me, but I've learned to appreciate it. So if you can get past the first mission and learn to appreciate the manual yaw control--you might find yourself really enjoying the game as it progresses.

Game play is pretty cool, there are different modes of piloting (2 categories described Assisted -ON or -OFF). In Assisted -ON (which you can think of like autopilot--the game assists your control of flight. I don't have much experience, I set expert mode from the onset of the game. In Assisted-ON mode there are three sub-views:

1st-person in the HUD-only view

1st-person in the cockpit view

or 3rd-person trailing view

Assisted-OFF

ONLY 3rd-person but it's not always trailing it could be from the side view, this is very difficult to which to become accustomed. I usually excel at games, any genre and found this learning curve exceptionally difficult to master. That being said, if you do master it--you will become extremely rewarded as your ability to perform potentially-unreal and agile maneuvers becomes a possibility. Dog fighting in this mode is difficult as another review already commented. With practice I could see this giving gamers a massive edge over online competition.

I found these aspects to be the most standout qualities of the game and I find the diversity to choose your mode of flight, weapons platform (you can select unique weapons packages/loadouts for each plane), and style of piloting (-ON & -OFF mode), to make this game stand out a lot.

I did not try using the voice-commands yet however I could see that being advantageous if it works properly. I took a cursory glance at the voice-command list and noticed that you can verbally select your missile or bomb type, this avoids the need to look at the corner and manually select with the direction-pad.

The graphics are exceptional from range, up close you can see the developers (particularly the artists) got lazy with the texture mapping for buildings, but from a range the landscapes and scenery are breathtaking.

The bombing system is AWESOME!! Freefall bombs are pretty freaking fun and the multi-target bombs are impressive to watch. There is a lot of realism to this game. My roommate is a huge flight-sim advocate and he comments on his approval. The unrealistic parts of the game are the munitions capacities, i.e. carrying over a 100+ missiles, et al. To me this is negligible because taking on an entire floatilla and several squadrons is fun. It's challenging and launches the fun factor into the extreme end of the fun spectrum.

The flight dynamics are very unreal in the -OFF mode but again, this makes the game more fun, the maneuvers you can pull off, especially with vector-thrust propulsion planes is AMAZING!! Very impressive and you'll feel pretty damn good about yourself if you pull 'em off to avoid a missile locked onto you.

The air-air combat system is kind of neat. You can just manually dog fight, i.e. just fly and engage targets as you see them come on screen or have them automatically selected for you by the radar but you have the ability to manually select your target and when you are trailing a bogey, there's a system of rings on your HUD that if you follow will place you right on your target's 6 o'clock. It's cool!

They use the same fly-through ring system for targeting ground units surrounded by buildings. Think the movie Stealth when the guy flies into sub-orbit and then plunges downward towards the skyscraper to give more velocity to his missile. This is kind of cool too.

*** FYI -you also can unlock the plane from Stealth which the human pilots fly. ***

I give this game an A+, it would get another + but the feel of the combat system is lacking something. It's not as intuitive as the combat system of Crimson Skies.

I highly recommend this game, but please purchase knowing that there is a high learning curve to become effective in the elite-level of difficulty for this game or for multiplayer.