Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. MAGIC FUCKING GATES AND HARRIERS DOING COBRAS
 

Ubisoft have announced a new title in the Tom Clancy range, and rather than taking on the role of another foot-soldier (however advanced), wannabe Mavericks can take to the skies as a jet fighter. From the teaser trailer and initial screens that have been released the graphics look pretty damn impressive, though I imagine those are somewhat pre-rendered shots.

Ars Technica put up some information:
Other than Ace Combat there aren't really any other jet-fighter games out there so I can't help but see this as good news and hope that it turns out well. I especially like the whole "drop-in, drop-out four player co-op" idea. Co-op in Halo 3's campaign is an incredibly enjoyable experience, though being able to drop-in at any point with friends would have made it even better.

H.A.W.X will be heading to PC, 360 and PS3 later this year.

[ IGN Preview ]

Well, for 360, there is Over-G Fighters, which is basically an Energy Airforce game, only even buggier somehow! (DO NOT ASK HOW, PLANET EARTH DOES NOT KNOW.) That was far more simmish than AC, though. Also it was shit broke, so.

Despite all the "Tomclancysoft presents Tom Clancy's: How to make the army look like lulz" titles we've been getting every fourteen and a half minutes for the past thirty six years, this has a tiny bit of potential from the co-op standpoint. The last few TC games have all had decent or better co-op experiences, so perhaps this will work fine too.

A plane list would be nice, or are they gonna go with retarded shit like OH HEY GUYS THE F/A-18A AND F/A-18C ARE DIFFERENT PLANES HUR HUR. If we only get a couple of airframes, that could be AGGRIVATEDFACE. It'd be super nice if we got all sorts of stuff like MiG-21s or something, but breath ain't being held for non-American aircraft, here. Maybe we'll get lucky, who knows.

Here's what I'm NOT looking forward to though:

How does one balance weapon unlocks in an aircraft game? I can see it in something like Call of Duty, where realism takes a back seat to lulz, but even in Rainbow, where some of the variety of weapons makes some of the upgrades of the higher ranks less pronounced, but in an aircraft game...you've got what? Everyone starting with AIM-4s and upgrading to AIM-120s? That's not gonna work.

Maybe it'll be better, like Vegas 2. We can only hope. But it'll have some ridiculous amount of XP needed to hit the highest rank again. PLAY 30000 MATCHES TO GET TO THE HALF MILLION XP YOU NEED. YOU GET 150 POINTS PER MATCH. ACHIEVEMENT WORTH 20 POINTS.

If this is a fairly sim-ish effort I might be interested. I really enjoyed Blazing Angels but the dogfighting in that, arcadey as it is is all about getting behind the other guy and using your cannons. I've never got into the whole AC thing of having 50 odd missiles. The best flight sim of all time remains in my eyes, Strike Commander and if this is half as good as that I'll buy it. Essentially, if they make pitch/roll control the default it'll be good, if it's pitch/yaw I won't bother.

Eurogamer have a new hands-on preview of this up, and it's sounding like it could be somewhat promising. Some highlights:

[ source ]

I'm really, really hoping you can force off some of the assists in the options when creating a multiplayer room. Tomclancysoft games like Vegas have let you put limits on what wepaons people can use, so I hope that level of choice carries through to this.

Massive bump for demo. Which is out. On Live.

I need someone who's not a genre fan to comment on the damn thing. Because despite the fucking ridiculous magic gates and god forsaken HARDCORE LIMITER REMOVAL LOOK AT HOW AWESOME THIS LOOKS camera that basically just wants you to do Cobras all day, I'm not entirely turned off by the experience. Because fuck me if it isn't really damn pretty, and the co-op campaign could be cool.

In the end I'm completely neutral towards it. It really depends on how much fun the co-op boils down to, really. Need to try 4P demo stage.

Someone else play it and give impressions please. And enjoy the wonderful voice work, lmao.

Is there co-op in the demo? Either way, I'll probably grab this after work tonight, give it a go.

4 players, yeah. Two missions included, one the hilarious tutorial with the unfortunate cloud cover that makes it harder than it needs to be to learn the limiter cam.

Yeah it's a 4 player co-op demo. Live capability and all.

Also fuck that camera. It would be nice if it followed your target instead of giving you a side scrolling perspective half the time.

Game looks GORGEOUS THOUGH. Skills and I played it for about 20 minutes. Lulz were had.

Also either the F-16 is really shitty (likely) or the planes fly like bricks in assistance mode.

We'll have to get some 3/4-player action going later then.

Is this demo on the PSN store as well? Ive been wanting to try this game out, me being an Ace Combat fan and all, and not having a 360. Id wanna try out the mode where you have a chase view, rather than that other mode where it shows a larger scale of you and another plane. That mode that im talking about, is the stupid "this lane will appear to help you fly" thing removable? Because I dont need help flying lol.

EDIT: Nvm, I checked wikipedia for demo date. Fucking 360 getting all the shit first... -___-;

Having played through the demo I can reassure you that yes, use of ERS is entirely optional... you'll probably bother with it only for the sake of filling out certain challenges, especially if you've cut your teeth on Ace Combat, AFDS, et cetera. As for assistance-off mode, I found myself using that mostly for evasive purposes.
With that out of the way, it appears we have a contender here, especially with co-operative play being part of the total package from the word 'go' (a nice touch about this is that you can see who else might be engaging a particular target).
Oh, and two amusing things about the Su-35's beam-riding missiles:

1. they can acquire surface targets; and
2. you've gotta wonder about the 'boss' flight when all four of them went down as a result of taking one to the face

It's ridiculous though that they force that camera view upon you in assistance off mode. If all you're doing is removing the G Limiter why the fuck can't I keep a decent viewpoint? It's a shame that in order to do anything worthwhile, you HAVE to enter that mode. In something like versus multi you're going to be in it the entire time or your performance will suffer, and that'll be about as fun as taking your dick off with pliers.

yea, the ers thing and forced camera is pretty retarded. I'm not even the greatest Ace Combat player even I lol'd when it told me to do that shit to hit tanks hiding behind buildings. Like really? Nice presentation though.

Given you have to actively press the button to engage the ERS stuff, I thought it was a really neat addition for people who might not know or have figured out the best way of manoeuvring. The ERS gives them a chance to learn by example, rather than die flying into a building or failing to avoid a missile when they just fly directly at things.

I agree there should be a way to pull of the high-G moves without the weird camera, but I don't think it's all that bad either. I don't know, I liked this, though perhaps not enough to think about getting it right off the bat. Definitely want to see what it's like in co-op.

I'm not a plane game person by any stretch, and I found that the camera for the assistance off mode was ludicrous. Side-scrolling plane game? No fucking thanks. I only got a few seconds with the other mode before my 360 pooped itself, but that felt better.

Game looks FANTASTIC, though. Holy shit. Say what you will about Ubisoft's game design but their engines kick ass.

XP in a plane game strikes me as an even worse fit than XP in Rainbow Six.

XP fit perfectly in Rainbow. All the best weapons are immediately available and the ones you unlock are simply for a bit of variation. Nobody who knows what they're doing ever wears armour in vs mode anyway so it's all just cosmetic stuff. About the only thing you might need to unlock is the shield and I've never seen someone using one in a vs match.

Well, the performance of the three aircraft in the demo all indicate the differences are pretty much just cosmetic too, if that means anything. Hopefully the unlockables is more than just these predefined weapon packs for aircraft.

And I found ERS gives you a far, FAR more deliberate and sweeping trajectory to follow than you need. I laughed at the dive bombing bit.

ASSISTANCE MODE OFF or whatever laughable bullshit they call it would have been better serviced by a decent lock on cam. There's a ton of these as examples which are less hectic. I understand both targets and yourself are faster and more maneuverable than in most others to feature a camera like this, but it's entirely possible to accommodate that and not be entirely too spastic.

For those interested: Tom Salta has been gracious enough to make available for download from his official site a trio of this game's music tracks. While the actual page can be found here, I've provided the MP3s' actual URLs for convenience (right-click, save as)...

• 'Artemis Ascendant';
• 'Ready Aurora'; and
• 'The Unthinkable'

After giving the demo a try yesterday, the whole thing felt like an extremely poor man's Ace Combat 6. The first bit of the mission taking down landing crafts and bombers was fun, but the Assistance Mode Off thing feels gimmicky and clunky in general. Limiting high-G turns to only that mode was frustrating and made the second part of the mission against "aces" unnecessarily difficult. I suppose the whole point is to marvel at the planes' movements with the pulled back camera, but it just irritated me and made it hard to keep an actual missile lock.

The ERS gates were okay, but pretty pointless. The red gates for dodging missiles are just silly since a few quick turns accomplish the same thing, and it isn't hard to get behind targets without the blue gates. Dive-bombing tanks to get around buildings is neat, but it got old pretty fast. Hopefully that isn't standard through the rest of the game.

It wasn't bad, but I'll wait for this to hit the discount bins.

I've still not played the demo for this (Last Remnant install is using basically my whole hard drive) but I'm still quite tempted to get it anyway. Is it possible to play it just from the in-cockpit view and with all the flying aids just turned off?

It might be possible, but I don't think so. The four aces at the end of the demo mission are way too fast to keep a lock on without being able to perform quick turns, and you have to go into the wonky Assistance Mode Off for that. Still, despite all my complaining the demo wasn't bad.

Well, yeah, I was hoping to have the assistance thing turned off all the time. I'm sure I read an interview with one of the developers saying that was an option, the idea being that the plane's handling was nerfed with it turned on to even out fights between casual (Read shit) players and hardcore ones. I guess the equivalent is how auto-aim doesn't give you headshots in FPS games.

In that case, your answer is no. You're stuck in that terrible side viewpoint with Assistance Mode Off, which is its whole problem. The developers made it really clear that they want you to use that as much as possible since the tutorial mission only teaches flight with it off, so it's strange that they didn't put more effort into making it less awkward.

That's a shame. I guess I'll have to download the demo and give it a go then.

The ERS aid is always optional, and the G limiter is the only thing really removed when you go "ASSISTANCE OFF". There is, however, no way to keep the limiter off and maintain an in-cockpit view.

Could have fooled me. It was most certainly not difficult to do. I did it to see if it could be done one of the times I played through it and it was fine. Maybe on the harder difficulties, but the easy peasy shit of normal mode that the demo offers made this not a difficult task.

After playing the demo seven or so times, I can confirm that while it's complete shit, you eventually figure it out. It's still the absolute worst exterior lock on cam I've ever seen, but at least it's eventually usable.

The assistance off mode definitely pissed me off the first time I tried it out. I really wish that the camera view was positioned behind the plane or retained whatever perspective you were in. Other than that I did have a blast playing it and plan on picking it up.

If anyone wants to do a co-op on the demo, shoot me a message.

Team Deathmatch trailer (GameTrailers.com)

Aside from showing off the MiG-29 and YF-23, this does give us a couple of important pointers:

• the EMP strike is similar to its EndWar counterpart in that it crashes its targets' systems temporarily. As far as I can tell from this video, that means instant-stall, and probably disables targeting and missiles; and
• the missile tracking system does, in fact, let you know just what kind of unpleasantness is trying to introduce itself to you

Another thing I'm curious about: whether the host of a competitive match can configure it in such a way that, for instance, no special weapons are available (or, indeed, no missiles of any sort for a 'Winchester match'). Or determine which support powers, if any, are available.

A gun match would be pointless in this game. Between the assistance off mode where manually aiming is exceptionally difficult from a required precision standpoint, but entering it would make it hard for those trying to aim to keep up in performance. It would 10 minutes of no one getting shot since no one on the offensive could get a kill and no one on the defensive would be able to counter before the other player went into bullshit mode to evade. Yeah, no. Fuck that.

Gun matches work better when you're not intentionally gimped.

You want gun matches? Wait until Sturmovik comes out in summer.

I downloaded the demo for the psn version, and I must say it's not too bad. The lvling is cool, got myself the Su-35 ;D. Id love to play this game with someone if they got it on PSN. Its definitely a game id like to play for real thats for sure. But the whole 'advanced' thing is a little weird...I guess it would be good for real ace matches...but I dont think id ever use that mode otherwise. Ace Combat style FTW, sorry.

Or play Blazing Angels with the rockets turned off.

Finally got around to trying the demo for this. Like everyone else I find the "off mode" to be pretty hilarious, but I also find it fun. Since it's not much like flying a plane I'm probably a lot better at it than I'd be at the game if I only had conventional controls.

It really feels more like powersliding a missile firing car more than anything else. Powersliding in three dimensions.

It depresses me greatly that anyone might actually look back at that experience fondly.

Behave, the online dogfights were awesome fun, although that had a lot to do with the fact that most of the kids playing it had no fucking clue about basic aerial combat tactics and just tried to loop round you at minimum speed all the time, meaning you could merrily slaughter them for hours. An online game I'm actually very good at is a rare thing you know.

Zaku over at Ace Combat Skies was kind enough to share his attempt at identifying all the plane silhouettes show in this image:


The provenance of this image is currently unclear; it is believed to be a collection of the silhouettes associated with that portion of the HUD dsplaying your craft's health and weapons status. If this is indeed so, the list of playable craft is considerably larger than claimed in this official blog entry.
On another note, I thought the opinion shared in this thread on the official forum might be of interest.

Seems like most of the extra ones are just airframe variants though. The only two new ones I spotted were the X-29 and the Tornadoes.

Also of interest: I don't see it on the trophy lists anymore, but there was an award called "defying gravity." It was awarded for being in "off mode" in a fighter with the unstable perk for 10 minutes in a multiplayer match. Sounds like there are planes that behave better in "on mode". Good news for the people that hate what off mode plays like.

"Unstable" is probably analogous to "stall happy". Probably has less to do with increased performance in "on mode" and more to do with watching the fuck out with what you're doing instead of being all willynillyfaggot. The CFA-44 in AC6 is a similar concept.

The three "preorder exclusive" planes are luckily similar to Burnout Paradise's store themed cars in that they can be unlocked with an in-game code instead of some shitty DLC unlock key, fucking over the rest of us.

For those interested:

* FB-22 Strike Raptor - Hold Left Trigger and press Right Bumper, X, Right Bumper, X, Right Bumper, Y
* A-12 Avenger II - Hold Left Trigger and press X, Left Bumper, X, Right Bumper, Y, X
* F-18 HARV - Hold Left Trigger and press Left Bumper, Y, Left Bumper, Y, Left Bumper X

I think I'm forgetting one but I couldn't find the code for it.

I would assume the codes are the same for the triple version, just replace with respective triggers/shoulder buttons/face buttons, but don't quote me on that.

Nope; that's all three 'preorder exclusives'; the others - the J35 and XA-20 - merely require a valid Ubisoft forum account. Note that all but the J35 have level requisites for use in campaign missions.

Having played through the entire campaign, I will have to modify this statement. There are two missions portions of which require ERS... all I will say here is that one has been likened to 'worms eating through an apple', and the other has you chasing something... unpleasant... through a major city.

Yeah, I adapted them to the PS3 pad and they worked just fine. You forgot to mention they'll only work while you're on the hangar screen though.

For those two lazy to work it out:

• FB-22 Strike Raptor - Hold L2 and press R1, square, R1, square, R1, triangle
  
• A-12 Avenger II - Hold L2 and press square, L1, square, R1, triangle, square
  
• F-18 HARV - Hold L2 and press L1, triangle, L1, triangle, L1, square

Been playing HAWX since I got it, and Im sorry...but I fucking love it. The experience bar really adds an addicting flavor to it, and trying out a Co-Op game was absolutely awesome. Id love to play with anyone here on ps3. :)

Alredy beaten it.
the final mission was a bit of dissapointment .

the variety of planes are awesome and I had a blast with this game.