Warhawk

By Jess Nickelsen

For those who haven’t been following the release schedule for the PS3 too closely, Warhawk is an upcoming “Flight Action” game, scheduled for release sometime during the US summer. It’s a remake of the 1995 PS1 game with the same title, and the even older version originally released on the Commodore 64.

Warhawk’s a flying shooter at heart, but the developer, Incognito, has provided way more scope for players than just downing bogeys in the sky. They’ve taken the awesome turn of developing a persistent, open-ended world, where players can fight each other in the air, from tanks or jeeps, or even on foot. What’s more, players are able to move seamlessly from each vehicle to the next, hovering their aircraft in order to drop to the ground and commandeer that tank sitting there, or perhaps to take to the jungle for some hand-to-hand action. This is a huge game, a combination of flight action, ground combat and 3rd person shooter.

The largest talking point about Warhawk so far is the fact that Sony’s recently confirmed that they will be releasing Warhawk as a multiplayer game only. While at first this seems to be a pretty radical decision, Sony revealed that this decision was made after receiving a pretty lacklustre response to the single-player version, while the multiplayer aspect of the game couldn’t be raved about more. And it looks like by focusing on just this aspect that Sony’s going to be able to provide some really awesome features for players, such as being able to set up their own dedicated game servers for clans. Anyone with a PS3 and a copy of the game can set up a server for the game, in fact. How this works out for actual players is yet to be revealed, but it sounds pretty promising so far.

A great deal of the game is customisable – vital for a multiplayer game. Players can choose different clothes and heads, as well as skin tone for their players, and also customise the paint jobs on their ‘Hawks. What’s more, as you progress through the game, you’ll acquire various medals, badges, ribbons and ranks, which you will then be able to wear with pride (and show off to your friends).

Warhawk is the perfect game to get the most out of the Sixaxis controllers, which are used for aircraft and vehicle movement. The controller acts just like your flight stick, and helps to free up your thumbs for other actions. Once you start moving around on foot, however, you’ll find yourself reverting back to the analogue controllers. (Sony said they just couldn’t get this to work to their satisfaction with Sixaxis.) That said, if you prefer not to use Sixaxis at all (apparently it can take a while to get used to), there are quite a few options for customising your controls, so ultimately you can use what works best for you.

Screenshots of the game show that the world has been beautifully rendered – say goodbye forever to flying around in a fog-of-war haze. You can now see for miles and miles. The game features a variety of environments, from peaks and valleys to islands and jungles. Great care’s been put into the whole look and feel of this game, right down to the animations of your ship when you take off and land.

All in all, Warhawk’s shaping up to be one hell of a game. Even if you’re not a huge fan of flying sims, Warhawk has a wealth of different types of gameplay on offer for everyone. You can play as the stereotypical type-a pilot, or perhaps take your position behind a machine gun on a tank. Or maybe you’d prefer just hitching a ride and watching the whole crazy show. It’s all up to you.

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