By Quintin Smith on November 24th, 2010 at 5:54 pm.
Ubisoft’s just released a $9.99 portion of DLC for H.A.W.X. 2 PC entitled Open Skies. A pretty hasty move, considering it’s been less than two weeks since the PC release of H.A.W.X. 2 and about two days since the Steam release, but nevermind THAT because the pack gets you three new team missions, five new planes and two new skins. Is that what you wanted, HAWX 2 fans? Or did the release of HAWX 2 pass you by, like a jetfighter in the night? If so, the latest testostetacular trailer can be viewed below.
The full extent of my relationship with HAWX 2 is that I played HAWX 1 and thought it was about as much fun as staring at a lightbulb, but with flight sims becoming a bit of an endangered species these days we should probably take care to nurture any that appear.
What would you breed HAWX 2 with, readers? And why?
24/11/2010 at 18:10 Delusibeta says:
Quick question: is UbiDRM present on this game?
24/11/2010 at 18:15 Quintin Smith says:
I believe it is, yes.
24/11/2010 at 19:14 Ubiquitous says:
I thought that they dropped that always online business a little while? Mistaken perhaps?
24/11/2010 at 19:37 subedii says:
They dropped it for RUSE, but that was an exception that they made.
Possibly because they were actually expecting that game to sell in decent numbers and were worried about the negative hype building around it at the time because of the DRM. RUSE was facing enough problems from the competition without being saddled with additional bad word of mouth.
24/11/2010 at 20:40 DJ Phantoon says:
Still boycotting it.
24/11/2010 at 18:13 Bungle says:
They should just start charging $90 for their games and be done with it. I’m not paying for this crap. All they do now is remove a few levels from the game, slap a price tag on it, and call it DLC. And the kids love them for it.
24/11/2010 at 19:10 BAReFOOt says:
You mean like Jamster (or Jamba as we call it here)?
4.99€ for a 30 sec sample of a retarded hippo dancing to a idiotic tune. Sounds like it…
24/11/2010 at 20:36 Peter Radiator Full Pig says:
Or, in the month between finishing a game up, and it being complied and made and then shipped to retailers, they work on extra content that cant ship with the boxed game.
They cant then give this to download onlys as the stores wouldnt then stock their games in protest, i would bet.
So yeah, work for that month, give the players some DLC.
It is a problem in other ways though.
25/11/2010 at 09:31 opel says:
Because they can’t provide a free download.
I’m sure they developed this somewhere in the period between the console and PC release of Hawx 2, and then thought, “Well, if we delay the release of this DLC just past the PC release then we can sell it to both parties.”
24/11/2010 at 18:18 DrugCrazed says:
I thought we got it at the same time as consoles, or am I crazy?
24/11/2010 at 18:22 Shakermaker says:
Hawx isn’t really a sim. I’d call it a 3d shmup.
24/11/2010 at 18:23 Navagon says:
I stopped paying much attention to Ubisoft games about a year or so ago. Judging by the way Ubisoft’s PC sales have collapsed over the same period, I’m not alone in that .
24/11/2010 at 18:55 Inglourious Badger says:
Ditto.
Nearly got excited about Assasin’s Creed: Brotherhood after Eurogamer’s glowing review, only to find out it’s not out on PC until March/April next year. Seems in keeping with their PC policy of late.
Sigh
24/11/2010 at 18:25 Sam C. says:
I would have at least pretended to add some simulation elements in. I haven’t played HAWX 2, but in the first one, every plane flew exactly like the other. I use the term flying very loosely – HAWX represents flying about as well as MarioKart represents driving a real car – but somehow they removed the fun as well as any hit of realism. I really wanted to like it, and it was very pretty. So many models of planes represented – and they were just skins, with no actual difference between them. And I’m not asking for something like Falcon 4.0, with spending a real hour flying to the target and then getting shot down by an SA-2 that you never saw until it detonated ten feet below you. There has to be a happy medium of simulation and arcade for modern jet combat. With some elements of actually managing a team of flying mercenaries, buying and equipping planes and co-pilots, visiting black markets and getting to paint your MiG-21 in custom colors and picking and choosing from aftermarket weapon systems and upgrades – God I want to play that non-existent game.
24/11/2010 at 18:54 Colej_uk says:
Couldn’t agree more. Codemasters managed to find the balance in racing games with Grid and Dirt, there should be a flight sim equivalent.
24/11/2010 at 18:56 Hydrogene says:
A game like Strike Commander then ? I would love that !
24/11/2010 at 19:43 subedii says:
Yeah the closest we ever got to that was Strike Commander.
In general though, the Space Combat genre used to be the place to go for that “mix” between simulation and action, maybe minus the management aspects.
It’s a shame the genre’s pretty much died off, Freespace 2 is still awesome to play even now (a lot of credit to the mod community there as well).
25/11/2010 at 06:47 Blackberries says:
I yearn for some decent flight combat games, either air or space. FreeSpace 2 remains my favouritest game of all time.
24/11/2010 at 18:26 dash says:
I actually didn’t know this was out already. I’d see about getting it if not for the DRM.
24/11/2010 at 18:26 Brumisator says:
Nah, dying genre or not, a bad game is a bad game, I’m not going to make excuses for this piece of filth.
25/11/2010 at 06:49 Radiant says:
Harsh man is harsh.
24/11/2010 at 18:27 Hellfire257 says:
Please don’t tag this as a Flight Sim! It gives the genre an even worse name!
HAWX1 was okay, for a while, but it became old very quickly. There are only so many ways you can play a game like HAWXs.
24/11/2010 at 18:32 KillahMate says:
I’ll give them this: it’s a lot easier to boycott Ubisoft when the games they release are so shit.
24/11/2010 at 19:18 Ted says:
amen to that.
also, on subject of breeding this game, I’m pretty sure this game has at least surprise-fucked Ace Combat, looking at that lock onto tail +3rd person ‘cinematic’ shakycam for the press x to do stunts.
back to IL-2.
:sigh:
24/11/2010 at 19:31 Matzerath says:
This DLC business is getting hilarious. Front Mission Evolved has new pricey DLC coming out every week … does this make sense for a game that I assume very few people purchased in the first place?
24/11/2010 at 19:53 Optimaximal says:
They have to make the money back somehow!
24/11/2010 at 20:42 DJ Phantoon says:
Maybe they could try having their games not being garbage, and not have the DRM. Then more people would buy the original product, and they wouldn’t need a torrenting blast of DLC-vomit.
24/11/2010 at 21:58 Matzerath says:
The DLC in this case seems like the metaphorical nails in the coffin. If you haven’t bought it, each additional 5.00 bit of add-on is gonna further reassure you that you made the right decision.
25/11/2010 at 09:37 opel says:
Maybe they could have released the PC version with the console version so that it could benefit from their marketing campaign OH WAIT, NO! PIRACY WILL REDUCE SALES!
24/11/2010 at 20:09 Rii says:
>> Header image
Looks like a Su-30MKI and Mirage 2000 respectively.
Oh yeah. /shades
24/11/2010 at 20:18 Hensler says:
Well, since Endwar 2 has been canceled and the Red Storm Rising MMO seems to have gone MIA, I’ll play HAWX to get my Tom Clancy fix till Future Soldier comes out.
The first HAWX wasn’t that bad – provided you turned the difficulty to max and only played co-op. Playing it by oneself was pretty horrendous, but the multiplayer modes were pretty fun with a decent group on my console toy.
24/11/2010 at 20:36 Rii says:
You can have a Tom Clancy addiction? I didn’t realise the games under the label had enough of a creative or mechanical ‘voice’ to make that possible. Huh.
25/11/2010 at 03:00 Springy says:
Every Tom Clancy franchise Ubisoft’s running has gone to hell; the ones I really respected six or seven years ago (Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon, Splinter Cell) have dyed their hair blonde and had a brainectomy and the new ones, like Hawx and Endwar, are utter cack.
I’m not holding out much hope for Future Soldier.
24/11/2010 at 21:30 P3RF3CT D3ATH says:
H.A.W.X.? More like S.U.X.
24/11/2010 at 21:33 Rii says:
Oh, snap.
24/11/2010 at 21:57 herpa says:
I like H.A.W.X, it’s fun.
Mind you, I did pick it up on budget.
25/11/2010 at 08:06 drillerman says:
JET THUNDER by AEROSOFT is meant to be coming out before Xmas. Looks very nice and it a sim about the Falklands war with a dynamic campaign/war going on around you. It looks quite good!!
25/11/2010 at 09:03 taikonaut says:
– Bingo fuel, we´re heading for the barn.
– Hawks, we´re going in…
Damn this is stupido…