DigitalBattle.com

So the other day, I managed to get a hold of the latest Tom Clancy licensed property, HAWX.  And frankly, I’ve become convinced that they would slap this guy’s name on any thing if they thought it would turn a buck.

Because you see, HAWX is not the standard sort of Tom Clancy game, in that you don’t wander around and shoot things.  No, nothing so pedestrian for HAWX– this time around you get to take control of heavily armed aircraft against ridiculously overmatching forces.

The plot is fairly standard for anything with the Tom Clancy name on it in that it has to do with armies.  Specifically in this case armies of mercenaries which are now referred to as PMCs, or private military companies.  PMCs seemed to be above the law, operating on what amounts to be a supranational level and accountable to no one save the country that’s signing their checks this week.  In something of a rare departure for the Tom Clancy line of products, at one point the company you work for will actually be sent to attack targets in the continental United States.  It’s interesting to consider the kind of geopolitical dynamics that would make private military corporations a more viable alternative than state-sponsored military organizations, but all we’ll get to do is fly a plane real fast and make things go boom.

And of course it’s not a Tom Clancy game unless somebody makes a rough friends to Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, so Ghost leader Scott Mitchell will make an appearance in a couple missions.

It’s the somewhat limited nature of HAWX that at once works for and against it.  Your role is largely limited to flying a plane, and that’s the kind of thing we were doing back in the 80s with significantly less powered systems.  Aside from vast improvements in graphics there is not a whole a lot of functional difference between HAWX and, say, After Burner.  In fact even the engines look similar with your camera located behind the plane as you fly into danger to attack the legions of enemies that will be thrown at you.  And when I say legions, I mean legions–I personally took out something like twenty targets in the first stage alone and still had to repeat it a couple times because I hadn’t taken out quite enough.  They’re really stacking the deck against you on this one; seriously, you’re going to be busier than a one armed paperhanger, trying to keep up with the sheer number of targets that are all firing at your objective all at once.

It’s not that the experience isn’t fun– indeed they’ve done an excellent job of capturing the feeling of rocketing over a field at extreme rates of speed loaded with large quantities of explosives, but my primary problem is that this is most of what you do.  Yes, you get different planes, and you get different weapons, and you get different missions…but it all boils down to is that you are flying a plane and making stuff go boom.

Over and over and over again.

If you’re looking for a good beer-and-pretzels flight sim, then you could do vastly worse than HAWX.  Otherwise, leave this one in the hangar and save yourself a lot of hassle.