Warhawk

September 7,2007 - It’s always tough to see games with potential run into trouble during development. Warhawk could’ve been a mediocre game with a full multiplayer and single-player experience, but developer Incognito decided to cut off the fat and focus instead on the heart of the game--online multiplayer. What has resulted is a game that takes a lot of its influence from the Battlefield series, but does so in a way that sets its own mark on the genre and pushes the boundaries of this generation’s downloadable games.

Warhawk was to be the re-imagining of the well-remembered flight game early in the PlayStation’s life, but things went awry and it’s now a multiplayer-only game. It offers both online and offline multiplayer with a lot of variety mixed in so you can have the experience that you want to have. Want a great game for LANs? You’ve got it. Want a game that lets you and a group of friends play online from the same PS3? You’ve got it. Want to be able to use your PS3 as its own server for clan matches? You’ve got it. The versatility shows how much focusing on just multiplayer has helped Incognito make the multiplayer as deep as possible.

Warhawk may not be much of a flight game anymore, as it’s now a Battlefield-style game, but more arcade-like in its gameplay and overall tone. That’s not a bad series to model your multiplayer experience after, but it’s nice to see that Warhawk is more than just a clone. You primarily take control of a soldier on either the Eucadian (blue team) or Chernovan (red team) side of the battle that can also hop into the tanks, 4x4s, turrets, or Warhawks that litter each map. Along the way, you can pick up weapon power-ups to collect weapons for your inventory—controlled by the d-pad—which can be used to kill your enemies towards the goal of whatever game mode you’re in. Warhawk offers team deathmatch, deathmatch, capture the flag, and zones. The first three are fairly easy to guess what they are while zones may be a slightly new mode, but it’s basically like team deathmatch on steroids. Team deathmatch lets you capture bases for new spawn points for your teammates. Zones lets you power those points up as you stay near the base, so that bases will merge and provide more spawn points once they grow large enough. Along with the ability for the five maps to scale up or down depending on whether you’ve got as low as eight players or as high as 32 players on the server, maps also offer the ability to limit the server to Warhawks only. So it’s basically a giant dogfight, which has its own brand of mayhem that also offers a lot of fun that the general modes don’t offer.

Control is a big factor to the enjoyment of Warhawk since it offers motion controls alongside the more traditional controls. It’s definitely a rewarding venture to learn to control Warhawks with the Sixaxis control, as it frees up the targeting reticule to move independently of the ship’s movements. Unfortunately, if you turn on motion controls for the Warhawks, you’re also forced to control the tanks and 4x4s with the Sixaxis, too, which is highly unpleasant when analog stick control is the much better option for those two vehicles. It’s likely that that will be fixed in a future patch, but for the meantime, it’s a small price to pay for the rewarding Warhawk motion controls the game offers. Soldiers control as you’d expect, with a loose lock-on system for rifles and pistols while missile launchers can lock-on to vehicles and Warhawks for the chance to cause a big-time explosion. In fact, there are going to be explosions everywhere, as you’ll find gas tanks, barrels, and seemingly ordinary boxes lying around the bases that’ll explode with a few good shots from your pistol. Weapons litter the map, not so much that it’s ridiculous, but that you should never be to far from an additional weapon to expand upon the standard pistol and knife that every soldier carries. There are eight ground weapons and eight Warhawk weapons to find around each map that offer a really good balance, so that no weapon feels too powerful with some negative that’ll keep it from being abused. Don’t worry about tanks or Warhawks being overly powerful against soldiers either, as a well-used missile launcher or turret can take down those behemoths with ease. So with no weapon or vehicle being too powerful, it leaves the player’s preferences and skills as the deciding factor in who wins each battle. Even skill is not a great deciding factor, as new players can jump right in and get a few good kills in as they learn the game’s nuances, while having some fun without too much pressure from the vets.

As for the rest of the package, the game can be played without an internet connection, either on the same console and TV or with LAN play across multiple PS3 and displays. It’ll play the same as it does online, just most likely with less players, as bots are not apart of the offline experience. If your friends want to take your splitscreen adventures online, it’s easy to do, though it’s unfortunate that you can’t use separate PSN accounts and actually play in the ranked games to have the stats recorded to your profile. Still, the fun heavily outweighs the need to record stats and there are tons of splitscreen-compatible servers available. Other notable things include the ability to use your PS3 as a makeshift server, for hosting matches for friends to play on while you’re away or for your own game-hosting needs. The game offers a ton of stuff to unlock, with ribbons, medals, and ranks that you can earn as you play more of the game, along with clans, customizable soldiers and Warhawks, and more stats than you can shake a stick at. Also, since the players can host there own servers, the game has the chance to outlive even Sony’s support of the game, which is rare to see in the console realm.

Visually, Warhawk looks like a fantastic game. It’s not mind-blowing, but it looks great all-around. The game does offer the ability to scale up to 1080i for the gamers with older TVs that can’t handle 720p games. As for lag, Warhawk is practically lag-free, so except for maybe the rare occurrence, you won’t experience lag unless you pick a game that’s not hosted near where you live. Audio-wise, Warhawk does the deed of what you’d expect from this kind of game. The included headset for the retail version works well and makes the retail version worth getting if you’re in need of a headset for your online PS3 gaming.

Overall, Warhawk’s a solid game that breaks the boundaries of what a downloadable game can do while also being offered in retail outlets for the gamers who aren’t fans of digital downloads as well. The game looks great, can be really addictive, and offers a variety of ways to enjoy the experience that Warhawk offers. The only thing that may stop you is the price, as the $40 price for the PSN version is a little steep while the $60 retail version with a headset included is certainly the more enticing way to get it. $30 would've been easily recommendable as $40 makes it tougher to recommend without a test drive. Warhawk’s a definite buy for gamers who know what they’re getting from Warhawk, while those on the fence may need to either rent the game or find a friend with the game to try it out. Regardless, the choice of scrapping the single-player in favor of making the multiplayer as good as it can was definitely the right choice in the end.

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