Hawx is a great GAME, not a great SIM.
The first thing one may notice about Hawx are the graphics. If you have one of the modern DX10 GPUs, you'll be blown away by the flawless shading, lighting effects and realistic shadows cast by planes and skyscrapers. If you have an older DX9 cards, Hawx still doesn't disappoint. It loses some of the eye candy, but it still blows away other contemporary flight sims. But the real sight to behold comes with the high end, DX10.1 GPUs. The global ilumination is quite noticeable (especially at low altitude on the external views) and the shading and shadows are noticably improved. You might think that this would kill the framerate, but it does not. I run Hawx on an ATI Radeon HD 4870 512mb card in DX10.1, with 4x anti aliasing, and my framerate never drops under 50 fps even at 1680x1050 resolution.
The jets in Hawx are great fun to fly. They don't take damage very realistically (it takes two hits with a "general purpose" missile to down a bogey, one with an air to air) and the flightmodel is pretty archade style, but Hawx gives players the option to pull maneuvers beyond top-gun. The advanced maneuvers mode can be disabled and enabled on the fly. It is best to leave it off for most of the time, and then enable it to pull a crazy stunt to evade a hostile missile or shake a bogey. The extreme maneuvers are all more or less realistic, and don't seem to be embellished. If they were any more extreme, the player might fall out of his seat.
However, the great graphics and combat maneuvers in Hawx don't account for a serious lack of the realism we expect in Tom Clancy games. Unlike, say Ghost Recon, alot of realism has been sacrificed in the name of fun - and fun it is, for a gamer. But sim seekers will be disapointed by jets carrying hundreds of missiles and unlimited canon amo. Apparently there is an armaments factory concealed behind the ejection seet. Oh, there is no ejection seet either. Planes simlply explode in mid air, once they have lost the appropriate amount of hitpoints. A planes "health" is actually displayed on it's target reticle on your hud as a percentage. Once they explode, the burning plane keeps on going for a few seconds before inexplicably vanishing. There is no take of or landing either, you simply find yourself flying over or near the combat zone before you are given orders by increadably annoying and cheesy superiors who always ask small miracles of you.
On that note, the voice acting - and the lines - are very disapointing. Some familiar Tom Clancy universe characters are hear and ready to disappoint. Mitchell's calm, cool voice is replaced by a blubbering idiot who cries like a baby about how you aren't providing enough air support, even when the enemy is being slaugtered by your bombs. On the other hand, your wingmen, who are increadably fast and infinately stupid, sound pretty convincing - even when they run dogfight dialog outside of combat.
Despite these terrible flaws and departure from realism, Hawx is still great fun to play. The storyline is typical of a Tom Clancy game, though more far-fetched than usual. The multiplayer game is not particularly interesting. It is also worth noting that the player must run through an achievment system in order to unlock more advanced aircraft and amunition, so low ranking players are instantly wiped out by more experianced, better equiped players. There is absolutley no reason to use the less advanced aircraft that are supplied at the begining of the game once you have unlocked the better aircraft, neither in single nor multiplayer.
Although it does not deserve the Tom Clancy title it bears, Hawx is more fun than many Tom Clancy games and more inovative than any flight sim. It certainly deserves the attention of gamers, and even sim enthusiasts might be taken in by what it has to offer beyond simulation. Tom Clancy games are known for prioritising realism over fun, and Hawx has broken with that tradition and turned out quite well.