HAWX, the Arcade Sim that Appeals to No One

I played through the entire campaign on PC with a Logitech 3D Pro in under 3-4 hours. I was beyond disappointed. I'm going to mostly compare it to the Ace Combat series, as it was intended as its primary competition in development, but really, you should keep in mind that whether or not you liked Ace Combat, it won't matter: this game appeals to nobody. You won't find much to like in this game whether you're a fan of arcades, simulators, or bullet-hell coin eaters.

After accepting the game for its surreal tone, and the ridiculous maneuvers and poor assist-off camera, all things that are recognizable from the in-game-footage trailers, I was hoping it'd at least match up to being somewhat entertaining as the Ace Combat series for me. That is, I wanted the game to have interesting mechanics, challenging missions, larger-than-life boss fights, and some wild environmentals like in Ace Combat. I got none of that.

HAWX is has 19 missions, all of which are either defend a specific airspace, escort a platoon or another aircraft, bomb a set of ground targets, slip through radar, or shoot up all your objective targets as they close in on your position. Or a combination of any of those. It gets pretty tiring after a while, since there really isn't much more to it than that, and you wouldn't be able to tell some of these missions apart. Their biggest and best gimmick was when your plane's electronic systems go haywire and you were unable fire any missiles. That's kinda funny, since I thought assist-off turned off all your computers anyway? Regardless, I like gimmicks, but if that's the best they can do, that's pretty lame. You have to really dig to find creativity or inspiration that went into the mission or map designs. (Oh wait, I forgot. They didn't design the maps, since they just took satellite images and converted them to landscapes. Fantastic.)

What did Ace Combat offer? You got to fight spaceships armed with laser batteries. Gigantic bomber fortresses with a cloaking field. Fly through caverns in training jets with no armaments dodging the detection of enemy ace fighter pilots. Sinking submarines with splintering ICBMs raining metal shrapnel from the sky. Flying through narrow vent openings in nuclear compounds to blast missiles within the silos ala. Death Star. Or dodging giant pillars of lasers fired from space. It was ridiculous but once you got past that, the game was actually enjoyable... It's an alternate universe. Think of the game more like a bullet-hell game where you slaughter hundreds of enemies until you get to the end where you fight a massive firepower-excessive boss. Those were always fun. The problem is that HAWX went halfway and fell short at pleasing anyone. You get past the insane flight mechanics (or lack thereof) but there really is nothing left for you to enjoy. HAWX's big problem is that past its thin unpleasant exterior shell, there is only a hollow, lifeless, generic game underneath, with an unfulfilling story, forgetable characters and monotonous gameplay.

Speaking of the plot, for a Tom Clancy storyline, wow... Was it ever predictable and just mundane. I won't spoil it for anyone here, but the story was something you could see coming a mile away, and wasn't particularly noteworthy anyway. Maybe they wanted to really keep it down to earth (relative to Ace Combat) and possibly even within the framework of the Tom Clancy novels, despite a few of the aspects about Artemis being outlandish, but what really bothered me, was the lack of personality in both of your wingmen. They both like money, whores and money. Did I say money? They can't get enough of that. At least, until they need to be patriotic all of a sudden. Then it's all honor and glory. But now they want medals. And women. And medals. Did I say medals? So first they fall in love with their new job in exchange for a vast sum of material payment, then they turn on a dime and decide they don't care about the pay at all and are willing to work for free? Inconsistent and contradictory doesn't even begin to describe it.

Furthermore, did they just cookie cutter these guys out of Army of Two or something? They're shooting down hundreds of pilots, tanks, bombers and reducing bases to rubble... Yet they mind as well be fist-pounding. Even when your own cities (read: civilians) are being burned to ash, its just an "Aw, shucks" here and there. There is not the slightest air of seriousness in any of the pilots you encounter, which really ruins immersiveness as to them, it really is just a video game. Coming from the pilot instructors who describe your movements as 'drifts' and 'power slides', I guess I shouldn't be surprised. At least in Ace Combat, when your cities are being destroyed, your wingmen are either too shocked or enraged to say much of anything like this.

Its even worse that at the end of every mission, you get the most juvenile dialogue out of these two, and its even REPEATED. As in, Ubisoft was too lazy to give them new lines for scripted triggers. And these are scripted dialogue lines, so obviously someone at Ubisoft didn't give a shit that you had to listen to the same ignorant crap that they already made you hear 3 missions ago. Beer, bling, tits and ass after every successful mission.

Thankfully, a few of the missions you fly will have your wingmen mysteriously not be by your side. I'm guessing that it's because of an infiltration directive or possibly they're off fulfilling their own missions at the time. What a relief right? Nope! They still come over your radio just as often (and their portraits show them flying in their planes??) to pester you with their frat-boy depiction of warfare. "Alright, score one for the good guys, we just sprinkled radioactive debris all over our cities. Let's go back for some booze! Oh, and some medals."

Ace Combat, which has little story-writing base, at least does fairly well throwing in lively characters with differing (usually foil) personalities. In some games, where your wingmen actually die, you do miss them somewhat, which is already leagues more than what I can say for my wingmen in HAWX (I've tried killing my wingmen, trust me, they can't die). I won't say the Ace Combat characters are deep, but compared to HAWX, they're the Mariana Trench. Your wingmen in AC will actually play a role in establishing relationships and connections with other NPC characters... Especially those you save in several missions. Even better is that those you SAVE and assist actually often come back to help you out in your final missions. Cue the cutscenes of a fleet of jet fighters, bombers and AWACS and heavily-accented Russians singing along with your wingmen (who could do without that?). Damn that is awesome, to for once, have the numbers on your side, a good payoff feeling for having saved so many people and struggled against impossible odds all the way up until the end. Characters actually mean something in AC, especially since the cutscenes show them having some persona outside of their cockpits. If anything, at least they have a face. In HAWX, you'll never see your wingmen's faces. Talon and Casper (your wingmen) are as generic as can be.

Worse, I would have thought that the Ghost Team you save in the very first mission, who tells you they 'owe you one' and they 'won't forget'... never actually come back to repay their due. What a letdown. Everything is very impersonal in HAWX, you don't really feel anything from any of the characters, save whoever is debriefing you... Since he's probably barking his head off at you (if anyone has played GRAW2, it's the same sort of 'way too loud and obnoxious authority'). I figured hey, maybe since its a video game, and they've established that they're not aiming for realism... They'd actually try be entertaining instead.... Nope.

Characters aside, the storyline in AC's 3,4,5 and Zero still trumps that of HAWX. Sad to know huh? Fun events happen in AC, and you can have multiple mission choices. Depending on how well or what you do on your previous mission, your next mission may be something different. You may also unlock special planes by doing things differently. Your carrier gets sunk while you are being debriefed on it, so you get to emergency takeoff with whatever plane you want (a relief after being stuck with carrier-based planes for a good 3-4 missions). You deal with several layers of conspiracy and internal sabotage. You're led into traps. You have to fight people who were your allies in the past. You find unexpected help from people you thought were your enemies or who you thought were dead. You get framed for war-crimes that you didn't commit. They're not great plot twists, and some are more predictable than others, but at least they are there. For HAWX, they guide the player on a monorail of boredom: there are no alternative missions; you unlock planes purely by your grinded experience level; replayability is hugely lacking. Grinding experience and achievements to unlock new planes and their weapon packs (which you need to do if you want to use the other planes in Multiplayer) is not my idea of fun. There aren't any surprises either. People who start evil end evil... Those who start good end good. Not like it even matters, since everyone is so single-layered and predictable. The story basically follows the same stereotypical, overdone route. Its a war, and you're winning it step by tiny step. You don't ever feel like you're being pushed back, or have the carpet pulled out from under your feet... It's pretty linear, drawn-out progression.

HAWX singleplayer was a huge letdown. There's not much to do after you complete the campaign, other than doing it again on harder difficulties (or for achievements)... or free flight (fly around the map with no enemies). I don't remember for sure, but I don't think there were multiplayer modes outside of team deathmatch and coop either... So that will definitely get stale as well. Apparently most reviews have labeled the multiplayer as being the weakest aspect of HAWX, so I wouldn't expect any sort of recompensation by graduating from singleplayer to multiplayer - it only gets worse.

I'm fine with the fact that game developers can take liberty in modifying the genre or doing something new and unexpected with their game. It may not always work out, but it's innovative and progressive, and the only way for developers to foray into new territory, that may yet pioneer an unexplored direction of gaming. However, the main aspect, no matter what you're trying to do with the game, is to make it fun and entertaining. If this is sacrificed or lost in the concept, then the game just won't fly. HAWX is exactly like that, burdened with uninspired missions, maps, characters and gameplay, there really is no motivation to taxi to the runway, much less take off, regardless of whatever field of gaming you come from, sim-buff or arcader. Peel away all the fancies and shinies, if the game isn't fun to play, it appeals to no one.

One of the greatest, lingering facepalming moments in HAWX surely would have been the moment you hear from your wingman, "I haven't been in a battle like this since the Gulf War!"... Only for him to say again 3 missions later "I haven't been in a battle like this since the Gulf War!" .......... >_>