Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. (Xbox 360)

[  1 | 2 | Next Page »  ]

We travel to Paris to get our first taste of Ubisoft's Ace Combat killer

Tom Clancy's HAWX, or, as we've seen some gamers quip online, Tony Hawk's HAWX, has had a mixed reception since its recent announcement. Some have praised the incredibly detailed screen shots that have been released to media. Some have claimed them too good to be true. Others have expressed interest in the promise of four player cooperative play. And a cynical few have already delivered judgement, labelling it nothing more than Blazing Angels, also made by Ubisoft Romania, or Ace Combat 6, with Tom Clancy pasted over it. At Ubidays last week we went in search of some clarity and found a cockpit with a HD TV and a 360 squeezed inside.

Manning the cockpits at the Ubidays HAWX (High Altitude Warfare eXperimental Squadron) booth is Andrei Costin, international product manager at Ubisoft's studio in Bucharest, who was happy to answer our questions about the game. Was the team even aware of the online reaction to its announcement? "Well yes," he says in a thick Eastern-European drawl. "But let's say it's too soon to fully appreciate. Until you have a hands on you see screen shots, movies, renders. The hands on gives you a better perspective, and we're just starting to receive those kind of reactions. People are saying are these images real? Is the environment looking as good as they are showing in screen shots? Yes."

 Advertisement

So the screen shots are in game? "Yes." I glance at the screen in the cockpit. What I find most impressive is how detailed the backgrounds appear, so much so that I spend more time eyeing up my surroundings than concentrating on rival fighters. Speeding thousands of miles above Rio de Janeiro, the hands-on demo displays a representation of the South American city so wondrously realistic it almost looks, well... real. Get in closer and you do notice an understandable degradation in quality, but perhaps those screens aren't as unbelievable as first thought.

Andrei is certainly confident in the game's graphical prowess. So much so that he reckons HAWX's virtual cities outdo Google Earth. "We get the best commercially available satellite imagery from GeoEye and we work with this amazing satellite image which has a higher resolution, much better than Google Earth, and we build the environment which is supposed to reflect the war atmosphere," he explains. "We don't want to make an environment which is static or not very interesting. Realism doesn't necessarily mean copying reality. Realism is a feeling, believable, credible. For example we reproduce Rio. We combine 3D buildings with 2D texture, we put shadows with all that we need, we put volumetric clouds to give a sense of altitude. The maps are huge, like 100km by 100km, because we want to give a sensation of infinite space, of freedom to go. This is an option for the player. All this creates immersion, creates the sensation that you play on something that definitely is natural, logical, believable, real. It's not made up for you. It's not a play box. It's the real world."

Some doubted the game's graphics, but they are impressive indeed.

So let's put this to bed right now - HAWX's graphics are very good indeed. The backgrounds steal the show from the planes, which look similar to what we've seen in recent air combat games (more on that later). But what of that claim that the game is merely Blazing Angels with Tom Clancy pasted over it? Certainly this is a first for a Clancy game. Fans are more used to fragging with two feet set firmly on the ground in Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell and Rainbow Six.

What do you say to the Clancy fans who say HAWX isn't a real Tom Clancy game? "I would say it's the first air combat Clancy game so really there is no point of comparison," Andrei insists. "What do they define by real in this case? Of course it's not a shooter. It's an air combat game. But then it's different from Ace Combat too. So it's like saying this game is not like anything else. We are proud of that. That means we innovate. But we keep the Clancy values. We have elite military, realism, locations, multiple scenarios, these are the Clancy values. It's just a new perspective and it takes time to get used to seeing the fight from the air. In 3D space you don't navigate between buildings to get to a certain point. You navigate in three dimensions."

So, in time, you're all going to come to realise that Clancy and dogfights at 50,000 feet are as right for each other as Ross and Rachel were in Friends. Central to this, according to Andrei, is the tactical gameplay afforded by HAWX's assistance on assistance off system. With computer assistance on you'll pilot your fighter from just behind its tail pipe with limited controls. ERS (Enhanced Reality System) takes over, restricting fancy flying and guiding your plane with virtual tunnels. These pop up when you need to evade enemy missiles, intercept planes, engage ground targets and pretty much do anything else that requires serious thought and skill. It feels very auto-pilot.

Turn this off though (with a double tap of the left shoulder button) and the jet's all yours. The perspective shifts to a more cinematic angle that's much further away. The safeties are off and the firing window is on speed enabling you to let rip Top Gun style with extreme manoeuvres and dastardly dogfighting skills. But there's a risk. Without the help from the computer there's a much greater chance of losing control, stalling and crashing. You might be able to show off in front of your wingmen with sharper turns, spectacular loop-the-loops and death-defying weaving in and out of buildings, but you run the risk of embarrassingly biting the dust.

"We don't force the player to take one course of action," says Andrei. "We don't force you to use ERS, but it is convenient. These options provide the tactical gameplay and this is the match with Clancy. Clancy has the same values at the core."

[  1 | 2 | Next Page »  ]