Comments on: Brazilian Dogfight: HAWX Demo

By: Soundy

Soundy — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:47:30 +0000

So they didnt bother to do a combo between keyboard and joystick…. kinda stupid if you ask me. So now i have to have 11tybillion buttons all prgrammed into my joystick, well thats just awesome.

By: Scandalon

Scandalon — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:18:05 +0000

So…just played the demo. All the whining is funny, if nothing else because you’ve got it backwards – the “Assist” actually refers to the computer limiting maneuvers, with the standard behind-the-plane/in-the-cockpit views the default for that, whilst the weird outside from the side, but maybe from the front, view is with assist OFF! Weird, a bit disorienting, but actually cool in that it makes it easier to/forces you to visualize where everything is in relation to your craft. (When it isn’t confusing you, that is.)

It was pretty, and fun. (Long term? Worth $50? Probably not for me.) While I agree that a re-done Strike Commander with new tech would be welcome, and Falcon 4 was the bees knees for sims, complaining this isn’t those is like complaining that Sins of a Solar Empire isn’t Star Control 3…

Playing with a keyboard sure hurt my wrists though.

By: blind_stone

blind_stone — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:57:27 +0000

I can’t believe no one has mentioned Falcon 4.0, best combat flight sim ever.

By: Nando

Nando — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:34:03 +0000

Definitely nothing like old Strike Commander. Such disappointment.

Moving your view after flashing yellow squares and then pressing space bar to shoot unlimited homing missiles at them gets boring really really fast.

First they dumb down RTSs with End War, and now Combat Flight Sims. They could change the name Tom Clancy for something like Simple Game for Kids.

And worst of all, when the guy says in the radio “Mission accomplished, return to base!”, I actually thought to myself “Oh good. Now I can actually try to land the plane on that nice looking airport runway”, but Nooo, there comes the End of Mission window with the Ok button to take me back to the main screen.

The only good thing about this game was the out of ordinary brazilian scenario. Too bad we can’t even interact with it.

I just remembered now my good times playing games like Strike Commander where I could only finish the mission after succesfully landing the plane back on my base. Sometimes I would even press the eject button to get back safely and easier with the penalty of having to pay some million dollars for the lost plane. That was cool.

By: Fire_Storm

Fire_Storm — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:04:16 +0000

Anyone else getting a bug where you just fire missiles at random? Most annoying…

By: Sunjammer

Sunjammer — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 11:49:31 +0000

Ace Combat, Westerner edition. Now with bullshit camera arcade minigame mode you don’t need.

By: bansama

bansama — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 01:18:35 +0000

Still, a breath of fresh air. Now I have to figure out if I’m willing to overcome my “boycott Ubisoft” stance that I took after they chose to release the Prince of Persia downloadable content for consoles only (has RPS blogged about that yet?).

That’s pretty much why I won’t be buying it. I don’t think RPS did cover the POP thing, but I’ve made my thoughts on the business reasons scandal known.

By: Mohamed

Mohamed — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:39:40 +0000

i have played the PC demo, and i don’t like what I have seen,the consoles gaming is downgrading the complexity of the games and deliver more shallow playing games, same thing TC End WAR, these games are for children. the both was not entertaining and very easy

By: Nando

Nando — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 22:00:17 +0000

Demo is finally out on Steam. Should make it easier to download. Just started the processs.
How does this game compare to Strike Commander? Used to love that one.
Anyway, it should be good to finally play some aerial combat over my home city. I’ll probably try to throw some missiles on that long bridge I used to cross every day on my way to the university. :)

By: Blather Blob

Blather Blob — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:28:15 +0000

I wish Gamer’s Hell didn’t wrap single-file installers up in zip files. It gets more and more annoying as the demos get more and more huge.

By: Mad Doc MacRae

Mad Doc MacRae — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:14:51 +0000

I actually really liked the tutorial from the weird assist camera. Not much was happening, and braking and turning on a dime to ambush drones was ridiculously fun, combined with the beautiful graphics. However, when I actually needed to be making good moves in the real mission, the assist camera didn’t help at all.

I was using mouse and keyboard and didn’t reconfigure the controls, so that didn’t help. If they had gone full out and used WASD for accelerate/yaw left/brake/yaw right I think I could’ve done better.

Uninstalled it after one playthrough. Not my cup of tea.

By: Corbeaubm

Corbeaubm — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:08:40 +0000

I’m in love with HAWX after playing the demo. Ubisoft finally figured out that the single most important factor in a dogfight isn’t your location on some data grid, it’s your relation to the enemy. This game requires very different thinking from the typical flight sim model, but is like a breath of fresh air once you grasp it. After playing around a bit with assist-off, I felt pained going back to assist-on again.

Not that love is without its frustrations. There is a learning curve, particularly for using the “expert” control mode that gives you standard stick control while in assist-off rather than the move-in-the-direction-that-I-press mode that it normally shifts to. The game itself doesn’t seem particularly deep once you’ve mastered assist-off either. Plus I’m not a fan of the theme – glorification of modern-day violence just doesn’t appeal to me.