Review: Warhawk
Warhawk for the PS3 is not what I would call a direct sequel of the PS1 launch title of the same name by Incognito, but an online multiplayer experience in the skin of the original game. The title has gone through a peppered development cycle with single player and multiplayer development coexisting for some time until the single player campaign was scrapped to focus on the multiplayer only. In Warhawk, you get all of the joy of flight from the first game with tight, intuitive controls that are completely customizable to your taste. New to the series is ground combat, where you start on foot and locate a vehicle of your choice to wage your battle.
Jumping into the action is quite easy. Just customize your character and your aircraft, and jump into the Join Game menu. Once in the Join Game menu, all of the servers pop up and you can have your pick. Since I was new to the experience, I began on some the smaller, less populated servers to get my footing. The server list displays the name of the game, the max amount of people allowed in the game, the amount of people who have already joined, the mode of gameplay, and the map. The various modes are Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Team Deathmatch, and Zones. All are pretty self explanatory except for Zones where you capture and maintain zones, pretty simple stuff.
The action is pretty hectic and getting a feel for the game may take a while. I recommend running around, gathering a few weapons, then take to the skies. That’s where the game really shines. The perspective shift from ground to air is really exhilarating. When you jump into your warhawk, it’s in hover mode which mimics ground movement with dual analog stick support, but in the air. You change your altitude with the R2 button and press triangle to switch to flight mode.
With SIXAXIS control on, you tilt the controller to fly. With dual analog support on, you use the left stick to steer and the right one for evasive maneuvers. Pressing forward on the right stick sends you into a diving loop, while pressing back tilts the nose up for an upwards loop. Halfway through your loop, you can release the right stick to level yourself and perform a 180 degree turn. Holding left and right on the right stick allows your craft to roll left and right. Combining all of the evasive maneuvers can be key to your survival in the air.
The flight controls are solid and responsive, but I wish I could say the same thing about ground movement. When you character is on foot, the controls are downright sloppy. Character animation is pretty stiff, and the controls could have been tightened considerably. Adjusting the look sensitivity helped, but overall, the ground combat doesn’t even compare with the slickness of flight.
While the graphics are not the best seen on the system, they are impressive and do their job really well. The warhawks all look gorgeous, and are nicely detailed with all kinds of movable parts and jet engine effects streaming out of the back of your vehicle. The draw distance is very effective, allowing you to see clean across a level to spot your adversaries from miles away. I would have liked more variety in the character creation ability, by changing your height and build, but it gives the game a uniform look that is consistent.
Warhawk has a beefy options menu where you can adjust nearly every aspect of control from on-foot combat to vehicle combat and of course flight combat. The flight combat is even split into aircraft flight and aircraft hover controls. All of the aiming speeds can be tweaked by sensitivity to give you the ultimate control of handling. Every axis can be inverted, so if you like your ground combat to be normal, but your flight combat to be inverted, you can adjust each aspect. The game supports SIXAXIS control through the Motion Sensor Settings option, where you can adjust the sensitivity also. So you can play the game with SIXAXIS or without, the choice is up to you. The control setup was very impressive from the wealth of options at your disposal, to satisfy the needs of any player.
The Bonus Movies on the Blu-ray disk were a tad disappointing, I was expecting an in depth look into the development of the title. What I got was a bunch of advertisements for other games from Lair and Eye of Judgement to Ratchet and Clank and Folklore. There is a singular Warkhawk behind the scenes movie, but that’s it for bonus Warhawk content.
I have really enjoyed my time with Warhawk and feel that Incognito and Sony have built an engaging online experience for a reasonable download price of $40. The packaged version of the game comes with a Bluetooth headset for $60., but I would only recommend that for people who absolutely need a headset. Otherwise, Warhawk is a great deal off of the PlayStation Store. Even with the uneven control from ground to flight, I think it’s a great game that deserves a turn from anyone interested in online combat.
For more info, check out the official site for Warhawk.
Toots
Posted to Hot Stuff, Video Games on 28 September 2007
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: incognito, online, ps3, warhawk
I recently borrowed the disc version from a friend from work. I feel that the team was able to create the right mix of weapons, terrain types and controls for something fun and (for the ps3) pretty unique. Even with all of this, I felt that the *extremely* limited number of maps/areas (more on this below) and complete lack of a single player tutorial hurts the overall experience. Granted I'm not the biggest online player around, but the entire time while I played this game I wished that there was a single player mode. Playing Warhawk is like looking at a painting that's only half finished; you can see the underpainting of something beautiful, but is glaringly not finished. It's just like Shadowrun 360.
The current selection of maps in this game is shameful! Nearly all of them look the very similar (visually) and none are particularly memorable or feature outstanding design. Much of the maps are made up of recycled bits and pieces, everything from the small details to large scale structures. I'm sorry Incognito, you can't have it both ways: either provide a small number of remarkable maps, or a ton of varied "meh"-level maps and customization features.
Those without a 360 will eat this game up until a "real" multiplayer shooter ships, like UT or Orange Box, and I'm sure that we'll see new maps (for sale) via PSN shortly, but this game is either too expensive or sorely lacking in features at either of it's current prices.
One of the nicest things I can say about this experience though is that the complete strangers PSN gamers I played with were EONS more polite, understanding and genuinely helpful to noobs than the majority of Live users I've run across.. No racist comments, no homophobia, no 13 years yelling for chocolate milk.
Maybe because I'm new the genre but I think Warhawk is a great game. I find the controls are very smooth and easy to use. I agree with your assessment of the ground combat controls being a bit clumsy. Also, if you're on a laggy server everything just goes to shit. Minor issues really and that aside I find that Warhawk has a very pleasurable learning curve for someone like myself who is, like I said earlier, new to the genre. I don't find the maps to be all that boring because it's multiplayer and therefore each game will always be different. My only want is that they come out with an add on for naval battles, commanding sea vessels sounds fun to me but I don't know if would translate well into the game.