Warhawk Review
September 12, 2007 11:15
Vehicular War on the PS3
Warhawk has been a long-time coming. At E3 2006 it was touted as the must-have title for the Playstation 3 launch and was the poster boy for the six axis motion controls. When I played it then it was a single-player flight game with some on-foot and vehicle missions added to the mix. The focus was on the Warhawk vehicle itself which is a VTOL jet armed with guns and missiles. The E3 playable demo had you piloting the Warhawk and jumping into a huge battle already in progress. The game was being used to show off the PS3 motion controls in response to Nintendo's earlier announcement of the Wii controller and its capabilities. Near the end of E3 word got out that Warhawk developer Incognito were tasked with developing the motion sensor controls for the game in a scant 10 days prior to the show. Considering that time-frame they worked amazingly well but after E3 things were quiet.
View the Warhawk slide show (20 images)
The news on Warhawk that started rolling in later was of in-fighting on the development team and the game was officially delayed by Sony until the summer of 2007. Sometime after the delay was announced more rumors came out that Incognito was ditching the single-player completely and that Sony was even considering making the game a download title and forgoing a retail release. This news came as a shock to fans of the original Warhawk from the PS1 who were eager to get their hands on an updated version that utilized the robust PS3 hardware. The game went from a prominent launch title to a multiplayer-only download and the rumors of development trouble would not stop. Warhawk is finally out and what it was or what it could have been is no longer important. We're here to look at it what it is.
Flying in Warhawk is simple yet effective.
To put it simply Warhawk is the afternoon summer action matinee of video games. It has lots of shooting and explosions, little to no story, and you won't remember any of the characters names. You're a soldier for one of the warring nations - the Eucadian or the Chernovan. Don't worry about which is which because they are identical aside from the aesthetics and you probably won't get to choose your side anyway. You're not supposed to be interested in the details of why you're fighting, just grab a jeep and a gunner and go! Warhawk utilizes the now familiar multiplayer-shooter-with-vehicles model giving you a main base with forward spawn points and, depending on the game type, enemies to kill, a flag to capture, or a progression of control points to hold. Each side has one kind of aircraft, one kind of jeep, and one kind of tank. It may sound like your options are limited but with the speed of the fighting you don't want to be car shopping.
The vehicles all control remarkably well. For a game that started off as an arcade-style flight game the jeep received a good deal of attention. You can slide it around corners, perform e-brake-style U-turns, and jump it off bluffs. It's no Warthog but it comes close. The tank drives like a tank so there's little to say about that, but the jewel is the aircraft. You'll find yourself in the Warhawk or Nemesis depending on your side and both can either hover like a helicopter or fly like a jet. The controls differ depending on your mode but they are easy enough to quickly jump between in the middle of a dogfight - and dogfight you will. Most of the time the sky will be full of buzzing aircraft embroiled in battle if not pieces of them raining down onto the ground. The maps have more than enough aircraft to keep the flyboys happy and they respawn almost instantly after crashing. There's no camping the spawnpoint waiting for a Warhawk.
You can fly the aircraft with the analog sticks or if you prefer you can opt for the six axis motion controls. Be warned that if you go the motion controls route for one vehicle you get them for all vehicles. Driving the tank and the jeep with the motion controls does not feel natural at all. It's a shame, too, because there is an advantage to learning the six axis for flying since it frees up the analog sticks for targeting independent of your direction. The flight model is more Afterburner than Falcon 4.0 but it gets the job done. You bank and turn using the left analog while the right one is reserved for barrel rolls, loops, and other aerobatics. If you happen to hit something like the ground or a mountain your aircraft will take some damage but you'll just be popped into hover mode rather than dying.
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