HAWX Cooperative Hands-On

HAWX is shaping up to be one of the games most worth watching in early 2009, with an intriguing plot firmly rooted in the Tom Clancy universe, overlapping with Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2 and EndWar, and featuring about 12,000 square kilometres of land to soar over. According to the game's lead designer, Simon Thomas, HAWX will take you across the Americas from Chicago, Cape Canaveral, and New England in the US, to Rio and even as far as the Magellan Strait at the bottom of Chile. In addition to all of the airspace you could want, there are more than 60 licensed fighters from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Eurofighter, and more, spanning from the first Gulf War in the early '90s to current-day prototypes. We settled into the pilot's seat and fired up the game's four-player cooperative mode at a recent event in London.

The first mission of the day, codenamed Adder, takes place after the opening mission in which you serve as air support to Captain Mitchell's Ghosts (as seen in GRAW2). Along with your three AI- or human-controlled wingmen, you'll need to protect a refinery in the Middle East from an imminent attack from ground- and air-based threats as part of your work for a private military outfit. Despite it being an early mission, the arcade style of HAWX means that you'll be dropping bombs like they're going out of fashion, and with more than 100 onboard missiles, you'll be armed to the teeth and ready for anything. Even at this stage, you'll be in the thick of a full-scale war zone, with waves of tanks, attack helicopters, and carpet bombers all vying to destroy the prized refinery. With so many targets to go after, you'll need to strike fast and in a coordinated manner if you want to stop the hostiles in time. Even with a lightning-quick plane such as the F-22 Raptor we used, it is still a challenge to cover the wide area and get in close enough to take out all of your targets. The baking-hot sand of the Middle East makes a refreshing change from the hectic urban environments that we've seen before, and despite the unforgiving nature of the desert, you'll have plenty of gorgeous eye candy to look at while flying around at the speed of sound.

Although we didn't see a lot of HAWX's story, it seems that you'll be forced to defend the USA itself against aggressors at one point in the game. The Torchlight mission takes place in the skies over New England, and with Washington under attack from hostile forces and the city evacuated, you'll be given the critical task of protecting Air Force One, including the President and senior cabinet officials, while escorting it to a secret location. Though the Presidential jet has its own escorts, it'll take the best of the best (you, of course!) to keep it in the skies despite waves of enemy forces. The Russian Sukhoi Su-37 Terminator might seem an odd choice to defend the US President, but it worked well for us, and customising its payload meant that we were well equipped for short- and long-range threats. With HAWX's arcade-style gameplay, you'll sometimes be up against literally dozens of enemies at a time, and communicating with your human wingmen, or assigning AI members to attacking or defending roles, becomes more important as the tension escalates. You'll need to keep track of and balance the overall mission objectives as well as your current target.

HAWX's controls also seem to be sharp enough for the job, with face buttons used to fire cannons and launch missiles, switch targets, and activate the ERS (Enhanced Reality System) system, which makes targeting obscured land-based target or fast-moving enemy fighters a bit easier. Shoulder buttons are used to yaw, triggers are used for accelerating and braking, and double-tapping your triggers turns assistance on or off. With assistance off, the camera will switch from a fixed angle behind the tail wing to a contextual style that shows you more of the battlefield. The trade-off of losing some onscreen information and the risk of putting your plane into a stall means that you'll also have greater precision over your aircraft, and you'll be able to pull off some advanced manoeuvres such as drifting.

Although we have yet to clock up enough flight hours to pass final judgement, Ubisoft Bucharest has put a lot of love and care into making the planes and environments look and sound as realistic as possible, and the game is looking well on its way to touching down in Q1 2009. Keep your radio frequency set to GameSpot for more on HAWX as it approaches.