Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. Preview

After what has been a fairly significant delay, Ubisoft's Tom Clancy's HAWX will finally hit stores on March 6 (March 13 for PC). We've already seen the game numerous times over its extended development, but seeing as we received another updated build of the Xbox 360 version we thought we'd take one final look ahead of the review. As you might well already know, this is modern aerial combat with an emphasis on modern, which means you get lots of high-tech toys to play with.

Set in 2012, so the future but not one that's too far away to imagine, the world has become reliant on private military companies (PMCs), the kind we've already seen in numerous recent video games such as EA's Army of Two. One of these PMCs becomes too big for its boots and launches an attack on the United States. It just so happens that you start the game as part of this PMC, but decide to rejoin the US Air Force in order to defend the nation. It is a world at war, with the game actually taking place between Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 and Tom Clancy's EndWar - Ubisoft has tried to make HAWX familiar to fans of other Clancy titles by featuring familiar characters (Captain Scott Mitchell from GRAW is in one of the missions) and the missile defense system seen in EndWar is used here too.

One rather novel mission we attempted did away with the 'fly to location and shoot incoming targets' formula we'd seen up to that point, instead asking us to use a signal tracker to find numerous emitters hidden on a remote island. By using an on-screen light that blinks green when you're on the right track and red when you're not, you're able to find these emitters, lock on to them and take them out with missiles. Having spent a fair while trying to stop a refinery from being blown up, this came as a decent change of pace, although it wasn't nearly as adrenaline pumping.

One of the big innovations Ubisoft has included in HAWX is something it's calling ERS, or Enhanced Reality System. In layman's terms, this means you get a lot of assistance while flying high in the sky. So, you can issue commands to other planes in your squadron, view a tactical map, detect incoming missiles and more. Perhaps more interesting, and the feature of HAWX we're still undecided about, is what we like the call 'the cones'. By pressing X (in the 360 version tested), you're able to view a flight path that either takes you into a position to target an enemy or evade an incoming missile. This, more than any other feature in HAWX, separates it from the rest of the aerial combat pack, and may well determine how it ranks alongside Namco's Ace Combat.

Something that we've never had concerns about is HAWX's visual quality. While it still suffers from the age old flight sim problem that means detail on the ground is rather limited, when flying high in the sky it looks great. The ground detail isn't all bad either, with the more built-up areas looking pretty sharp. You'll be spending a large portion of your time looking at your plane, so it's a good thing that the guys at Ubisoft Bucharest have modelled them in brilliant detail, with light reflecting off them as your saw through the sky.

We're not quite so keen on the typically Clancy cutscenes and mission briefings that we've seen so far, but they do their job, and the accompanying musical score peaks and troughs when needed. This is definitely more Top Gun in tone than Combat Flight Simulator, so the music really goes for broke when the action kicks off. Ubisoft's goal has always been to make aerial combat fun and accessible to fans of other Clancy titles (Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell) and the movie-like presentation helps.

You're not going to be alone while dogfighting, either, with HAWX supporting co-op play during missions. We haven't been able to test it, but the final game will include drop in/drop out co-op throughout the campaign. This should be a big draw for dogfighting fans, especially as the entire game is spent with wingmen. Being able to tackle situations without having to manually tell AI pilots what to do should make for an even more enjoyable experience. There's also competitive multiplayer in which experience points and money are earned, allowing players to buy new weapons.

With solid production values and strong links to previous Clancy titles, Ubisoft's aerial combat game already has half the job done, but it'll need more than that to stand shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Rainbow Six, GRAW and Splinter Cell. If the entire campaign can be as diverse and action packed as the missions we've played so far, and the online multiplayer works as well as it should, HAWX may well deliver the goods in March.

HAWX will be released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 on March 6. A PC will follow a week later on March 13.