Anyone who has followed Tom Clancy branded games can immediately identify that when his name is attached to a title, there are bound to be massive plot twists, nuclear threats, and all out government debauchery at hand. While those elements do exist in Ubisoft’s latest offering to the H.A.W.X. franchise, H.A.W.X. 2, they seem to fall a little short on the riveting plotline that usually accompany titles associated with the famed author.
Game: H.A.W.X. 2
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Bucharest
Genre: Combat Flight Sim
Price: $59.99
Verdict: A good continuation of the series that does exactly what you’d expect it to.
Pros: Tight controls, excellent terrain and plane graphics
Cons: Story becomes lost in itself. Cutscenes look sub-par. A bit repetitive.
Acquired via Publisher
H.A.W.X. 2 comes to gamers late in the summer season of games and offers a competent and somewhat refreshing re-entry into the combat-flight genre of video games. While other titles and the first H.A.W.X. game before it share the same basic concept, this second offering intersperses unique missions and perspectives to the often mundane gameplay that can come from this genre.
Being a flight game, the meat of your progress is going to be spent behind the sticks of various jets in the US, British, and Russian fleets. Thankfully the formula that worked so well with the first game hasn’t been changed too much and still delivers that feeling of flight and impending peril. Ubisoft has also taken into account that staging multiple dogfighting levels one after another can often become remedial and boring, so they’ve laced the story with several other aerial mission types that are pleasing to play and offer a nice break from the tension of combat. Grown weary of your FA-22 fighter jet? H.A.W.X. 2 throws you in control of a UAV and you’ll have to assist ground forces in infiltrating buildings that are holding tortured prisoners. Other missions pit you in the powerful AC-130 where you set obnoxiously powerful weapons loose on ground based insurgents to help clear mission goals for your allies. These missions are a nice change of pace and I found them to be genuinely fun to play.
As H.A.W.X. 2 is a Tom Clancy inspired game, I shockingly expected the story to hold my attention a lot more than it did. The game focuses on three perspectives of one conflict from the eyes of the United States, United Kingdom, and the Russian Federation. The unfortunate part is that the delivery of the story is lackluster at best, causing you to either not pay attention to what the characters are doing in the story or skip the cutscenes all together just to carry on with more missions. I do commend Ubisoft for including a seemingly rich story into this game, but the presentation of it could have used a bit more polish to hold personal interest.
What doesn’t help this fact is that the graphics in the cutscenes are fairly lacking when compared to other high profile games of this caliber. The in-game graphics of the planes and environments look sharp, detailed and almost perfect in execution. It’s a shame to see that no real attention was paid to the models and environments in the story that is being pushed so hard from beginning to end. Luckily the majority of your time in the game will be spent either gazing at the gorgeous backdrops provided by the GeoEye satellite imaging included in the game’s environments or admiring the detail put into your plane and the planes of your enemies as you blow them out of the sky.
The controls are familiar and nothing has really changed from either this title’s predecessor or even its competition. In fact it seems that even some of the targeting reticules are almost identical to every other flight combat game available. This is what is possibly the most disconcerting about the game. If you’re looking for the newest flight game that doesn’t deviate from the previous flight games you’re used to, that’s pretty close to what you’ll find in H.A.W.X. 2.
From controls to story to gameplay, everything is the same as it ever was. Aside from the compulsory side missions, there’s really nothing that breaks new ground here. While fans of the series may not be looking for a complete reinvention of the game, it does leave so much to be desired that the game ends up feeling like more of the same. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it makes you feel as if there might have been a little bit more that could have been thrown in to make the genre and series feel fresh again. Fans of the series, as I am, will be proud to have this in their lineup, but may be a little dissuaded by the monotony. However, that shouldn’t deter them from picking up the title. It may be the same, but it’s still the same fun flight combat action that fans have come to expect.
GrE Grade: B
Popularity: unranked [?]
