H.A.W.X. Brings New Perspective To Tom Clancy Series

This week saw the addition of aerial combat game H.A.W.X. to the Tom Clancy franchise by Ubisoft. Shane Bierwith, brand manager of the project, sat down with Student Life to discuss the game and some of their developmental decisions. "... we have four-person jump-in/jump-out co-op, which is a first for the air combat category. As far as competitive multiplayer is concerned, we have eight-person Team Deathmatch. It's a really fresh take on multiplayer in-air combat. As you level up and get kills in succession, you'll have access to support units, which range from electromagnetic pulses (EMPs) — you'll shock the other planes out of the sky — to altitude limits." Eurogamer's evaluation of the game calls it fun, but also "a victim of the high standards set by the other titles in the Clancy franchise." IGN says it's "very close to being a great game," but criticizes the combat and the mission design.

Comments

The big issue

[Anonymous Coward]

The game only allows you to fly properly (that is, without the assist cutting in and screwing things up, and with full maneuverability) in a horrible third-person view that can not move, does not sit behind your aircraft, and never seems to be aimed to show the enemy you're interested in. If they just fixed this, it would be a perfectly acceptable arcade flight game, even with the ridiculous air drifting and stuff.

Re:The big issue

[!coward]

Mod parent up!

You've hit the nail in the head, as far as I'm concerned.. The "Assistance OFF" mode (that's what they call it) was a seriously bone-headed move on their part. The only thing you could say for it is that it can sometimes give you nice visuals of your acrobatic moves, but it doesn't even begin to mitigate the crap it is to actually fly that way.

It's a stupid gimmick (done mostly for the visuals) and a really moronic way to implement an Expert mode, akin to just making your bullets do less damage and the enemies' more when you raise the difficulty level on a FPS.

It makes even simple manouvering exceedingly difficult because half the time you're trying to determine what exactly is the plane's heading, its roll, pitch (and forget about height -- damn near impossible to determine that) so that you can then translate your stick moves to the action you want to perform. The whole thing feels so detached that it defeats the purpose of a mode where you're supposed to have full control of the aircraft.

Granted, this game was never supposed to be a real simulator.. The market is just not there (Flight Sim is really good, but how many people do you know have it?), so this game was always going to be more arcade than anything else. And let's face it, the same reviewers who ranted about the lack of "realism" (or the fact that it's not a real sim), would bitch if the game forced you to take off from some airstrip, spend most of the mission either heading for your targets or patrolling the empty skies, then take a long, lonely flight path back to land on some other airstrip -- all the while worrying about the likes of fuel and realistic ammo reserves (which reminds me of a really old video game -- Strike Eagle? -- that was exactly like that and yet really kicked ass).

There was always going to be some dumbing down to make the game more "fun", more action-packed and therefore more appealing to the masses, but they could have pulled it off without sacrificing the game mechanics is such a terribly broken way.

Re:Name Rec.

[rsmith-mac]

Step 1: Sign celebrity endorsement (Clancy)

It's not even an endorsement any more. Ubisoft bought his name for $30 million USD. They now own the name "Tom Clancy" and can slap it on anything and everything they want to, including things that aren't video games. There's no longer even a token endorsement going on, it's just a brand name now.

Presumably he gets to keep his name for use in any future books, but anyone else wanting to make something "Tom Clancy" has to license it from Ubisoft.