review
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POSTED 9/10/10


TOM CLANCY'S HAWX 2

Ubisoft
PS3 (also on Xbox 360, PC, Wii)

We feel the need… the need for speed! OK, the most clichéd cliché of flying clichés is out of the way, so it’s time to go up, up and away! Oh, drat…

But seriously folks, HAWX 2 is the latest in a long line of, erm, one Tom Clancy-branded aerial combat games that pitch (and perhaps even yaw – we’re on a roll…) somewhere between the arcadey likes of After Burner and the simulation likes of, well, MS Flight Simulator. It’s not all “do this, do that, stick your thumb up your bum whilst reciting the alphabet backwards underwater as you use your toes to prevent a small Irkutskian kibbutz from imploding” difficult, but it’s not “go that way really fast, if something gets in your way turn (whilst spamming the fire button)” easy, either.

With Clancy’s name sticky-taped to the title, you expect story – and it’s OK, if sometimes clunky. Really, all most will care about is how this puppy handles. The flying bits are quite satisfying as you’re gradually inured in the art of controlling several outlandishly exxy, state-of-the-art flying thingummywhatsits. Missions are as expected – find this, destroy that, return to base… it can grate.

There’s ancillary stuff we reckon is superfluous, too. Like flying for ages after a mission to find our base, or taxiing along a runway before take off. Most annoying is trying to land (we’ve landed a real plane in real life and it wasn’t this hard - real-ly!) and stacking, only to return to the last save point to be told “good job”. Oops!

Ultimately, plane gunzels will love this, others not so much. We must also note ace composer Tom Salta’s digging up of that old Top Gun staple, the DX7 tubular bell patch. Bastard!

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ALL WRITTEN CONTENT COPYRIGHT © AMY FLOWER 2008-2018. GAME IMAGES COURTESY OF RESPECTIVE GAMES COMPANIES.