Talk Playstation 3 News

The Official Playstation Magazine featured a Tom Clancy’s Hawx preview, Ubisoft’s attempt at creating an Ace Combat competitor.

There is some sort of drifting involved in Hawx, and drifting is the jet term for handbrake turns. So what does this mean? It means that you can skid the plane through the air, point it in the direction you want and then whack the afterburner on to send you plane in that direction. So imagine this, an enemy is chasing you and you want to do something about it, do a drift, point your plane towards the enemy and simply turn the afterburners on and send a rocket his way. Or even better go nose down towards the ground, drift and put the plane upright, and after burn away inches from touching the ground. The possibilities are endless.

You can only do this when you have turned electronic flying aids off and it puts you into an external cinematic view mode. It sounds very tricky but after pulling off a few stunts it starts to make sense and you will get used to it.

While turning off the assistance looks fantastic, it does limit your use of features you would find playing with flying aids switched on. The Official Playstation magazine says hitting things is one.

Cockpit view limits you from pulling off such stunts but will warn you when you’re about to hit something or stall.

Now onto the HUD. The HUD is very much like that found in Ghost Recon 2 (GRAW2) that displays plenty of information such as the enemies’ location and targets.

You have team mates that help you, in the sky and on the ground. Just like in GRAW2, you can select units using the left and right on the D-PAD and to give orders to the selected units you use up and down.

You can order bombers to take out a ground target, a fighter to dogfight and radar planes to utilise some sort of UAV similar to GRAW2’s UAV’s. Talk into the headset to issue commands, select units and switch weapons as seen in Endwar.

On completion of each mission you are awarded with XP and depending on how well you did on the mission determines how much XP you get. XP is used to enhance skills and unlock new abilities. You can also earn money in the game through the PMC and you can spend the money on new planes and weapons.

So there you have it, the Hawx preview. Purchase the Official Playstation Magazine – UK May edition to find out more information as they have a Q&A with the lead designer and also 5 big questions regarding the game.

Are you going to buy Hawx when it’s released?

Ubisoft are famous for their massive Tom Clancy series. They have secured the rights to all of the Tom Clancy properties and they are already showing us what they have in the pipe line for aerial combat lovers.

If your a PS3 owner and want to play some Ace Combat (which will probably come out for the PS3 eventually) look no further than Ubisoft’s new jet sim, Tom Clancy’s HAWX. In HAWX you get to pilot a lot of planes, 50 in fact, and that’s a lot of planes for a pilot game. HAWK will be set in the future, in 2012 to be exact, in a world dependant on private military companies (PMCs).

Planes in HAWX will come equipped with ERS (Enhanced Reality System), which is basically auto pilot. What ERS does is detects incoming missiles, prevents you from crashing with an anti-crash system, controls your damage, includes radar and tactical maps, and gives you commands to send to your AI squadron. You don’t have to play with ERS turned on, you can turn it off. This way you will have greater control over your plane and more freedom.

Ubisoft have always been great in terms of enabling co-op features in their games. HAWX offers four player jump in co-op through the story mode (as seen in Vegas 2). 16 players can battle it out online for EXP points and in-game cash which are used to unlock new things such as weapons.

Here are some in-game screenshots of HAWX:

And here’s a trailer: