HAWX Preview

HAWX is one of those games that will either have you hooked or see you screaming at the tv.

It’s the first flight-kinda-simulator to come from the Clancy brand, and like its predecessors, it’s a very good looking game. For those of you that know me, you’ll know that I would love to live my life in the sky, soaring among the hawks, falcons and eagles in my MiG-29. That said, I know my planes, flight models and I’ve flown before, so when the guys at Ubi told me that this was the “most realistic” flight sim on the consoles, I had my doubts. No one has been able to create a real simulator on the console. Not because it doesn’t have the computing power to do it, but more because a console is exactly that. A console. A flight sim freak, like myself, would want to have all the instrument panel interactive, the flight models real, the communications, the painstakingly tedious task of taxiing to a runway and getting clearance to take off, the climb and the descent. Generally speaking, war birds are a hell of alot easier to fly (and more fun), so it’s no surprise then that not much knowledge is needed to keep your aircraft in the air.

HAWX (which, incidently, stands of High Altitude Warfare Experimental Squadron) does feature an Enhanced Reality System (ERS) which gives real life pilots some realistic flight modes, like radar warnings and missile warning systems. It does nothing for the actual handling of the aircraft, but rather concentrates more on the realism of the flying experience. You can issue your squadron commands using the ERS too.

Ubi are saying that they’re looking to have a set of 50 modern aircraft for the release of the final game, and each aircraft will have its own unique flying experience, as you’d hope. At the event we could only chose from an F-22, an F-16 a Saab Grippen and a Su-37. All wonderful aircraft, but none the MiG-29 frankly. I have to take my hat off to the flying models though. Although I have never flown these aircraft in real life (because that would be impossible), I have spent a lot of time with them on various simulators and spoken to active pilots about the cross-over between real flight and simulated flight, and most have said that the flying models are pretty accurate. Armed with this knowledge I cast an extremely critical eye over HAWX. To my surprise the aircraft responded as it should have done, moved how it should have done and felt as I expected it to feel. Other than not being able to sit in a virtual c**pit view (just because I know whereall my instruments are at a glance) I was extremely impressed with the realism. I was also more impressed whenI saw that, from an external camera, the planes actually moved around like they would do in the real world. Their movements were accurate, the weapon payload too was specific to the faction that you were privy too and the locality in which I was flying (Rio de Janeiro) was based on a series of satellite images.