Does HAWX RAWX?  Click here to find out!

You are all familiar with the Tom Clancy Series of games, especially this one.  But before you can play your copy Tom Clancy's: Tom Clancy.  You might want to look at the current title, HAWX.

High Air War Extremes! Or what ever HAWX stands for is an air combat game with a high focus on extreme flight maneuvers. 

Notice I did not say, Flight Sim, HAWX gives you all the thrills and chills of a high end flight simulator, but is designed in a way that most novice of players and can feel like an Ace.  But takes just about all the realism and buries it under the carpet, in a safe, located in a warehouse, that was filled with cement and dropped in a lake.

To make flying a breeze, it uses the 'ERS system', at certain points to press the X button and a series of triangle shaped rings guide you to where you need to be. The ERS system is more of gimmick then a mechanic, but its quite fun and thrilling to use. 

Also included is the third person 'Assistance off' mode that allows you pull off air stunts that would liquefy even the most battle hardened pilot.  When you score your first kill by using a Cobra Maneuver, you will feel like a god. For this, the game gets a bonus fist.

With that said, the simple controls make the game very easy to play and will let you into the game with a very small learning curve.  This means more time having fun, and less times looking for what button is what. As an added bonus, Ubi added Endwar style voice commands, so when you are in a heated dog-fight, you can cry for help from your wingmen, or even  fire your selected weapon.  This simple feature adds tremendous depth to the lighting fast battles.  You can select targets and have your wingmen attack them, all with out pushing a single button.  On missions with multiple waves of things to shoot, this gives you a large advantage.

All though the voice commands are limited to about 8 actions, they work very well,  all though, when swearing at your wingman,  its very easy to change to ASSistance mode. 

The game is very comparable to Ace Combat, but with-out the teriyaki sweet  flavor of Japan on it.  You fight in real world locations, captured in amazing detail with the mysterious -Geo-Eye technology.  (also used in Ace Combat).  But Ace Combat chose to have you fly in on the ubiquitous land of 'Estovakia'.  Speaking of Ace Combat, if you were lucky enough to get the fancy flight stick when Ace Combat was released, lucky you, its works with this game.  ( least that is what the box says)

There are no magic super planes as found in Ace Combat. (just check out the Demo of Ace Combat to see that I mean), but 50ish real world planes, with a few concept planes.  Keep in mind, 50 planes, means you will get 8 versions of the Mirage, and 5 F-14's.

The graphics are quiet tasty, a feast for the eyes if you will,  The locations are real world, and look like the real work.  When you fly over a city, it’s a city packed with streets and buildings. 

The planes look fantastic, and are very highly detailed.  The catch its, you hardly get to see them,  as the game rushes you through missions faster then a  yuppie coffee addict, blasting down the highway in his BMW to a poetry reading at Barnes and Nobel. 

The single player campaign is painfully short and the difficulty is very unbalanced.  The average player could scream through the campaign on the hardest difficulty with only a couple snags.

One mission that hung me out to dry was an Escort mission where I had to repel wave after wave of fighter jet .  Once I got past this mission,  thought, I completed the next four missions without dying at all. 

The game tosses you around the globe so you can experience a few genres of air combat, such as Vietnam style air strikes, Gulf war ground attacks and even blasting bases out off the mountains in Afghanistan.  You get to fight in a few cities and this is were the ERS gimmick really gives the game some great moments of roaring down a city street plugging tanks full of rockets.  All though, the real world tactic of a high altitude dive bombing works just as well.

The biggest low of the single player campaign is that, regardless of the difficulty you select, the mission feels the same.  Harder difficulty's only seem to effect your payload and the damage you can withstand before your multi-million dollar plane becomes  a lawn dart.  Further more,  each missions feels like a tutorial mission, with someone holding your hand through the most rudimentary tasks.  "You have missile lock! Shoot!" 

Really game? Should I really shoot?

When the game lets go of your hand and gives you a large scale battle, that’s when HAWXS really shines and lets you fully utilize all the toys it gives you.

To further pacify the missions, if you ever get stuck on a mission, you play the mission in co-op mode with the help of 3 additional pilots, with unlimited re-spawns making  the game even easier.

Because of the single player limits, the game loses one fist.

To keep you playing the missions, the game uses an experience based system that , with the more kills you rack up, the more stuff you un-lock.  You will unlock maps, planes, and weapon kits for the planes you already have.

 Don't let some of planes fools, sure the Mirage 2000 looks kinda dinky, but when the trash talking 'M45t3rCh1ef' take's the over used f-22 into a guns only dog fight with you, you can show him that  a small plane is harder to hit and with the two cannons the mirage has, can turn his precious plane into rubble before he can ask his mom for a sandwich. 

To gain extra XP, HAWX gives you a set of 120 or challenges to earn bonus XP.  They range from simple, 'Kill 50 targets with x weapon' to challenges, ' Fly upside down for two minutes lower and keep your altitude less than 40 meters with both eyes closed'

Versus mode is extremely fun,  and chaotic,  The matches are fast and you will rarely see a player stay a live longer then 6 minutes at a time.  But the large variety of planes and tactics you can deploy help hide the fact that, its pretty basic in nature.

It would be nice to see modes such as protect a convoy of tanks from the other team, buts its strictly shoot, dodge shoot dodge die, re-spawn repeat.

It also would be like to see a way to limit the planes to a specific era of flight, I would love to take down Mig's with a wing of F-4's while protecting the dreadful Corsairs.  For this the games loses another fist.

All in all, HAWXs crazy story, the simple mission design, and basic multiplayer still add up to a addicting game experience.  I love flight sims and played just about the entire line of Jane's air combat Sims.  I played the hell out of Flacon 4.0 and own the limited edition that came with the 500 page binder of how to play the game.  One might say that I am an 'enthusiast'.  If you expect a realistic and deep experience with HAWX you will be disappointed.  If you are expecting a more polished version of Ace Combat,  then HAWX is for you.

I have spent about 12 hours in the single player campaign mode, Unlocking planes, trying different planes and have enjoyed it all.

I have spent around 9 hours online, and have only clashed with two players that I would classify as the 'Typical Halo player' trash talk and all. 

In closing, HAWX is a blast to play, fast paced, action packed and very very pretty.  Its is not perfect, but when it shines, its so freaking bright it melts your eyes.

HAWX gets 4/5 fists.