Tom Clancy’s branding has brought us many different flavours of terrorist killing fun in the past decade, from the sneaky antics of Sam Fischer in the Splinter Cell series to the squad based combat of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. With a history stretching back to the original Rainbow Six games (which some would claim are much more tactically minded than recent affairs) it’s fair to say that the Clancy brand has the tactical squad gaming market wrapped up in a neat little bow. Last year, the brand took a new direction with the release of HAWX on consoles and PC, bringing the same anal attention to detail over technical specs to the world of air combat.
Anyone who has played the first instalment of HAWX will already be familiar with the way in which the game handles and HAWX 2 is a return to the same form. The main features of the original return; the ability to fly with assistance off enables a more free form style of flying and targeting computers hold the players hand by calculating intercept trajectories and showing them exactly how to evade missiles. This is all well and good, but it always seemed a little more like a gimmick than a true evolution of the genre and it feels like an AI babysitter is always there in the background.
Ubisoft have decided to throw a few extra surprises at the gamer this time round and have upped the ante in terms of realism. The player will now have to refuel their plane mid-air, and is very reminiscent of the classic arcade title, Afterburner. However, any level of difficulty is removed from the equation the moment the targeting computer is turned on. In saying that, it’s not very difficult to catch up to said plane without it, but it’s up to the gamer to decide whether or not they want to follow the “vector” looking lines or try it on their own.
While Ubisoft were introducing new aspects to the franchise, they decided to throw in some take-off and landing sections, coupled with night-vision to make those midnight bombing runs a little easier. This encapsulates the entire second section of the demo, playing as a member of the HAWX team, with the first section revolving around a Russian fighter squadron in the Caucasus mountain region. Again the difficulty level of piloting manoeuvres, such as the aforementioned landing procedure, is given a swift beating by the targeting computer.
Aside from the obvious attempts to make HAWX 2 feel more like a flight/combat simulation, rather than the arcade dog-fighter its predecessor was, there are no drastic changes that can be remarked upon. The scenery looks a little prettier, the setting has changed and there will be a few new planes to toy with, but that doesn’t cut the mustard by today’s standards. Everything handles and looks very much the same as it did before, despite some minor graphical tweaks, and if that’s your bag…you’ll feel right at home.
