H.A.W.X, which stands for High Altitude Warfare Experimental [squad], is another one of those Tom Clancy titles with an acronym so complicated it’s kinda funny (GRAW being the other one). You play as the silent protagonist, David Crenshaw, leader of a high-tech and high-altitude trio of Air Force badasses. I won’t mention more of the plot (although I wouldn’t be spoiling much), but I will say that HAWX puts a surprising amount of effort into the storytelling process, which is surprising for such an arcade aerial shooter.
Like Ace Combat, HAWX is all about waiting for lock-ons, using flares, and firing missiles. However, unlike Ace, HAWX nails the touchscreen/accelerometer-based flying system, and adds a lot more variety and depth per dollar. Don’t worry about the convoluted name, HAWX is an enjoyable, fast-paced shooter that makes these multi-million dollar jets handle as beautifully and simply as Go Karts – and I like Go Karts.
HAWX
One of the coolest parts of the game is picking your plane and weapons loadout before heading off on a mission – and the selection in HAWX definitely doesn’t disappoint. I’m no big airplane geek, but it was great fun to see all of the different models I’ve flown in other games, including the F-18 and the F-117 Nighthawk. The planes all have differing ammo, armour, speed, and handling statistics and – just like in Ace Combat – every plane features all-purpose missiles for anti-ground and anti-air, as well as a very, very mean machine gun. Multi-lock anti-ground missiles, huge bombs, and omni-lock missiles (they can even fire backwards!) will also be unlocked as you progress through the campaign. HAWX is a lot of fun to start off with, but it’s a rewarding game to play through as well.
Missions
As is usually the case in Tom Clancy titles, your character gets mixed up in some kind of macro-political affair that sticks you in a lot of situations (13, in this case) where you need to blow stuff up. While a couple of the missions can feel a little tedious or drawn out, I was actually really surprised by the variety of the encounters throughout the 2-hour single player campaign. I also really appreciated the checkpoint system that saved me from replaying several missions.
The various scenarios have you providing close air support, defend space shuttle launches, fly missions with altitude limits, and much more. Granted, a lot of these end up in the same old dogfights that you’ve seen in every other aerial shooting game, but at least the stage is set differently every time.
A big part of that is the GeoEye imagery that HAWX uses for the landscape. It uses real-world images of the locales you’re fighting above – and they look incredible from 10,000 feet up in the air. Get any closer, however, and the ground and the structures that litter it start to look awfully pixelated. The landscape is actually the only portion of HAWX to disappoint in the graphical section — everything else, from airplanes to ground vehicles, is surprisingly detailed.
You’ll also hear a fair amount of voice chatter throughout the game. You won’t hear your enemies, like in Ace Combat, but your wingmen (who are never actually shown in-game…) and commanders always have plenty to say. Your wingmen sound a little too wimpy to be ace pilots, but I’m just glad that they included the chatter at all. If you want everybody to shutup, though, you’re free to play music from your iPod via a sweet in-game interface.
Woof!
You probably didn’t buy this game to fly past the incredibly pixelated flowers. The heavily-armed planes that you fly are designed for stealth missions, aerial supremacy, and accurate bombing runs – and you’ll be doing a lot of dogfighting throughout HAWX. You can steer your plane by tilting the iPhone up and down or turn it left and right like a steering wheel — this controls the pitch and roll maneuvers, respectively. There are also arrows along the bottom of the screen that control the yaw of the plane, which is the aerial equivalent of tilting the rudder on a boat to steer. You can also choose a set of touchscreen-only controls if you’d like, but I played the game through with the default accelerometer-based setup.
As with most other modern aerial shooters: heat seeking missiles are king. You can use the aforementioned machine guns to turn your enemies into metal jigsaw puzzles (the kind you can’t put back together), but it’s much easier to just point your plane in the right direction, move into lock-on range, and let a missile or two do the rest. Explosions and missiles trails are beautiful things to watch in HAWX, and you’ll always see a confirmed kill rewarded with xp (level-ups unlock more weapons and planes).
Most of the enemies you’ll meet do a decent job of fighting back, but it’s often their sheer numbers that present the main challenge – and if it’s not the enemies, it’s the placement of the weapon switch and target lock buttons that will get in your way. Switching or firing a weapon requires a quick tap or swipe along the bottom-right of the screen, and it’s far too easy to switch weapons by accident when you’re flying so that you end up trying to drop a bomb on a plane instead of firing a missile. This clearly isn’t ideal.
The other ridiculous button is the all-important target lock , which cycles through the possible targets on-screen. This button is on the upper-left side of the screen, just below the camera toggle. I can’t even begin to describe how disorienting it is to suddenly see a gorgeous 3rd person view of your aircraft when all you meant to do was switch targets. Wait — did I say disorienting? I meant frustrating. 🙂
Conclusion
There are a couple of aspects of HAWX that I wasn’t able to try out — the local multiplayer dogfighting chief among them. However, as far as the single player campaign and general experience go, I think HAWX is off to a great start on the iPhone. I find it easy to forgive the pixely landscape, lackluster voice-acting, and silly button placement because I was just so busy being impressed with how much fun I was having on my phone.
So if you’re looking to spend a couple of bucks on an aerial shooter, I’d suggest you take HAWX over Ace Combat for now (then pick up Skies of Glory for FREE). The game ran at a good clip on my iPhone 3GS, featured a varied enough campaign that I never felt bored, and it did an admirable job of making my 3.5″ touchscreen feel like a real cockpit.
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Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X is available on the App Store for $6.99.
H.A.W.X was bought by JAiB for review on the site. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
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TAGS: aerial shooter, dogfighting
