HAWX 2
Posted: 2010-09-11 07:26pm
Didn't see a review thread for this, so let me just say that it's crap. I suspected it would be, but I am psychologically compelled to buy any arcade flight sim, so...
The game is packed with gimmicks, but most of them boil down to 'shoot the glowing dots on the 2D IR scope'. They're ok I guess, as a diversion. However the actual flight sim part is completely shit, much worse than the original HAWX. The missiles are the most useless I've seen in a modern flight sim game, due to a combination of ridiculously short range window (minimum vs maximum) and flare spam. Nearly all the enemies like to play 'mob you and get as close as possible, then float around at stall speed too close for your missiles to lock'. Early on you can do high speed wide circles to avoid this, but later on most enemies get near-infinite quantities of 98% effective flares. On the few occasions the missiles do lock, they have ridiculously good tracking so it isn't like there's much skill involved lining up shots. It's far more sensible to rely on your gun, which has infinite ammo, high damage and very favorable collision detection. So effectively it's a crap version of Blazing Angels. The aircraft handling is fairly bad as well; the turn rate is high but the angular inertia seems excessive, such that it's harder to aim than it should be. Although the 'off mode' gimmick from the first game is still available, it is now virtually useless (because you're relying on gun kills all the time, and don't really need the extra maneuverability) - I played through the whole game without finding a use for it.
The second major problem, after screwing up the first game's reasonably competent air-to-air combat, is the mission design. There are lots of them and they're each pretty long, but almost without exception you concentrate on a tiny area of the map at once. There are no expansive battles and for the most part pretty few targets on the map at once. In campaign mode the game dictates which plane and special weapon you use for each mission, so no variety there (although you can select in free flight mode). Personally I found the missions both boring and frustrating; there are several places in the game where you can easily be killed by things you couldn't realistically anticipate. Your standard missiles don't work on ground targets, and strafing is a PITA due to the wonky handling. Oh and finally there's no feedback to indicate you've been hit (no screen shaking etc), so if you don't notice your health going down dying from one hit comes as an unexpected shock. I found the game quite hard, but almost all of that difficulty came from the escort missions, where you frequently have a ludicrously short time to kill all the enemies before the troops you're protecting die. Your wingmen are even more useless than usual for these games; there is a token 'allied support' gimmick in a couple of missions but it isn't really relevant. Generally the designers make a desperate effort to keep the excitement level up, which fails miserably.
The final problem is the graphics, which are mostly crap. Apparently the designers put so much effort into the flashy tacticool stuff in the interfaces and the IR vision that they couldn't be bothered to make a decent 3D engine. The landscape shows a lot of triangulation and popping, nearly PS2 level. The water is awful; ships have reflections but mountains don't, which looks really stupid. There are a few passable bits of music, I liked the Terminator-style early stuff, but the later levels have really boring music (and a laughable attempt to do an Ace Combat style dramatic finale). Even the planes somehow look worse than the first game, and there are significantly fewer of them (e.g. the YF-12 has been removed). The story is the usual brand of Tom Clancy insurgent/Russian nationalist stupidity, which is delivered with gusto and too many characters for you to really get attached to any of them.
Thus I would say that unless you also suffer from a tragic compulsion to buy console flight sims, avoid this. It's considerably less fun than Top Gun : Combat Zones (on the GameCube), my former 2nd worst console flight sim, although it can't compare to the absolute worst of the genre, Heatseeker on the Wii.
P.S. Also completed Battlefield : Bad Company 2 this weekend and that was a sequel I actually liked. I missed the helicopter section and it's a shame there was only one free-roaming level (a pretty small one at that), but it was a pretty polished and entertaining bit of FPS silliness. Better than Wolfenstein, although as expected the single player was fairly short. I didn't mind the ludicrous amounts of fog/smoke too much as a gimmick for one game, although it would be really annoying if it caught on and all FPSes adopted the 'cannot see anything but muzzle flashes' look.
The game is packed with gimmicks, but most of them boil down to 'shoot the glowing dots on the 2D IR scope'. They're ok I guess, as a diversion. However the actual flight sim part is completely shit, much worse than the original HAWX. The missiles are the most useless I've seen in a modern flight sim game, due to a combination of ridiculously short range window (minimum vs maximum) and flare spam. Nearly all the enemies like to play 'mob you and get as close as possible, then float around at stall speed too close for your missiles to lock'. Early on you can do high speed wide circles to avoid this, but later on most enemies get near-infinite quantities of 98% effective flares. On the few occasions the missiles do lock, they have ridiculously good tracking so it isn't like there's much skill involved lining up shots. It's far more sensible to rely on your gun, which has infinite ammo, high damage and very favorable collision detection. So effectively it's a crap version of Blazing Angels. The aircraft handling is fairly bad as well; the turn rate is high but the angular inertia seems excessive, such that it's harder to aim than it should be. Although the 'off mode' gimmick from the first game is still available, it is now virtually useless (because you're relying on gun kills all the time, and don't really need the extra maneuverability) - I played through the whole game without finding a use for it.
The second major problem, after screwing up the first game's reasonably competent air-to-air combat, is the mission design. There are lots of them and they're each pretty long, but almost without exception you concentrate on a tiny area of the map at once. There are no expansive battles and for the most part pretty few targets on the map at once. In campaign mode the game dictates which plane and special weapon you use for each mission, so no variety there (although you can select in free flight mode). Personally I found the missions both boring and frustrating; there are several places in the game where you can easily be killed by things you couldn't realistically anticipate. Your standard missiles don't work on ground targets, and strafing is a PITA due to the wonky handling. Oh and finally there's no feedback to indicate you've been hit (no screen shaking etc), so if you don't notice your health going down dying from one hit comes as an unexpected shock. I found the game quite hard, but almost all of that difficulty came from the escort missions, where you frequently have a ludicrously short time to kill all the enemies before the troops you're protecting die. Your wingmen are even more useless than usual for these games; there is a token 'allied support' gimmick in a couple of missions but it isn't really relevant. Generally the designers make a desperate effort to keep the excitement level up, which fails miserably.
The final problem is the graphics, which are mostly crap. Apparently the designers put so much effort into the flashy tacticool stuff in the interfaces and the IR vision that they couldn't be bothered to make a decent 3D engine. The landscape shows a lot of triangulation and popping, nearly PS2 level. The water is awful; ships have reflections but mountains don't, which looks really stupid. There are a few passable bits of music, I liked the Terminator-style early stuff, but the later levels have really boring music (and a laughable attempt to do an Ace Combat style dramatic finale). Even the planes somehow look worse than the first game, and there are significantly fewer of them (e.g. the YF-12 has been removed). The story is the usual brand of Tom Clancy insurgent/Russian nationalist stupidity, which is delivered with gusto and too many characters for you to really get attached to any of them.
Thus I would say that unless you also suffer from a tragic compulsion to buy console flight sims, avoid this. It's considerably less fun than Top Gun : Combat Zones (on the GameCube), my former 2nd worst console flight sim, although it can't compare to the absolute worst of the genre, Heatseeker on the Wii.
P.S. Also completed Battlefield : Bad Company 2 this weekend and that was a sequel I actually liked. I missed the helicopter section and it's a shame there was only one free-roaming level (a pretty small one at that), but it was a pretty polished and entertaining bit of FPS silliness. Better than Wolfenstein, although as expected the single player was fairly short. I didn't mind the ludicrous amounts of fog/smoke too much as a gimmick for one game, although it would be really annoying if it caught on and all FPSes adopted the 'cannot see anything but muzzle flashes' look.
