On the Subject of HAWX

Holly Madison

How the fuck could anyone mistake Tom Clancy's HAWX for a proper, realistic flight sim? The fact that it's a multi-format release should be enough to tell you it's an arcade game, and if there's any doubt beyond that then a quick look at any of the teasers and trailers should firmly put the matter to rest.

And yet since the release of the PC demo, I'm seeing endless forum posts from people whining that the flight model is unrealistic, or the unlimited ammo and fuel is unrealistic, or it's not as realistic as Falcon 4 or Lock-On - Modern Air Combat or whatever other chin-stroking flight sim they can think of.

It's like complaining that Mario Kart isn't realistic. It's an arcade game. It's about action, pretty pictures and blowing stuff up. It's like some people saw a picture of an aeroplane and immediately started dusting off their joystick/thrust/pedal combos.

Anyway, some people's idiotic presumptions aside, I was quite enjoying the PC demo. For a while. But like virtually everyone else who's tried it, the out-of-cockpit "assistance off" mode started to wear thin quite quickly. I was saddened to see a developer response to the issue,

Our "Assistance OFF" mode comes with a completely different gameplay style than the one we have been used to until now in other flight combat games. The dogfight camera is the only camera that can support that type of gameplay. Here are just a few of the features we wanted to implement in the "Assistance OFF" mode, which could only be obtained through the "Dogfight camera":

• See both your target and your own aircraft at the same time, to anticipate and quickly react to your opponent's moves.
• See incoming missiles as they approach your aircraft, so you can assess impact time and calculate exactly when you need to react.
• See every move that your plane makes, this being the only way to execute extreme maneuvers, never seen before in other flight combat games.

This is why the dogfight camera is and will remain the only camera available when playing in "Assistance OFF" mode. This camera is at the core of the game design, and an essential part to create the game experience.

What a load of absolute wank. What they actually mean is the game would be too easy if you had a proper cockpit (or even chase) view in assistance off mode, so they've added artificial difficulty by forcing you to use a needlessly disorientating camera. The first two "reasons" they give are essentially the same, but the third doesn't even make sense. The 3rd-person view is "the only way to execute extreme maneuvers"? Hitting brake+up elevators at the same time, which seems to be the full extent of the game's "extreme maneuvers", has nothing to do with the camera. The fact is that if you were in a first-person view, you'd be able to judge when to complete the move much more easily than you can with the current camera.

Of course a first-person view wouldn't show off their fancy graphics as well.

And the game seems to be quite pretty, at least from high-altitude. At ground level the simple box buildings look a bit... boxy. The clouds are sweet, though. Another side effect of the "not a proper sim"-ness is that there are limits to the active flight zone. Admittedly it takes a little while to reach them, but when you do you'll find a very sci-fi force field blocking any further exploration.

I thought it felt a bit like Strike Commander, a classic action-oriented, non-sim flight sim. It was probably that nostalgia that led me to preorder on Steam. However, having spent a little more time with the demo, and after discovering that the assistance off camera is apparently here to stay, I'm wondering if I should have bothered.