Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X.

Overheal

Anyone hear much about this? As far as I can gather from its steam page its meant to be a Tom Clancy's Ace Combat for PC. which is always good because i love ace yet have no consoles...(can i get ps2 games to run on my laptop?)

Cy_Revenant

It looks to me to be exactly what you described. An arcadey Combat Flight Sim for the PC. Looks quite awesome to me.

I only wish I could afford a HOTAS for it.

PogMoThoin

Wow, it does look amazing, first I heard bout it actually
http://hawxgame.uk.ubi.com/

Overheal

Already have a HOTAS too bad the laptop wont be able to handle it.

I just rented Ace Combat Zero only to find the game is scratched and it crashes after mission 10 I was having fun.

the_syco

Looks like a laugh. Have an X52, so hopefully this will replace "Comanche 4" as my flight sim of choice. Is it in the shops now?

Overheal

Not till 3/3/9

x52 is a great controller but the profile software was a bit glitchy under vista. I simply dont bother.

Blazer

Brother got the X52..I've smaller hands and got it bit too big and light.
Used to the weight of my MS Sidewinder force feedback..

the_syco

Getting to fly the list of planes in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Clancy%27s_Air_Combat would be pretty darn sweet!

Overheal

Kinda wish you could fly a longbow or a harrier as well though.

the_syco

Overheal wrote: »

Kinda wish you could fly a longbow or a harrier as well though.

The list is 29 planes of 50. Who knows?

Cy_Revenant

It's got the A-10, Eurofighter Typhoon, F-22 and F-35.

Thats me sorted, I'll be getting this.

Overheal

Cy_Revenant wrote: »

It's got the A-10, Eurofighter Typhoon, F-22 and F-35.

Thats me sorted, I'll be getting this.

All I need is my Sukhoi. I'll dog-fight you when it comes out.

Overheal

I got my hands on it...

I have to say I'm not terribly impressed. The controls just dont feel right at all. Of course im already so accustom to Ace Combat control settings and a Playstation controller, but this mouse and keyboard just doesnt do it for me. I'll see what I think when I try the joystick setup downstairs.

Graphics wise, not as taxing as Crysis, so it runs great on my laptop and doesnt look terrible. Havent tried dx10 yet. Again though, not as pretty as an Ace Combat game. The terrain looks alright, but the planes only look and feel up to par. Missiles leave a lot to be desired, they dont look or feel right. But maybe thats more realistic, I dunno. Nothing groundbreaking here. Runs smoothly on my laptop on full specs, which is worrying enough coming from a brand new release. Maybe thats just optimization - Splinter Cell 2 skips around a lot and thats a much older game

One cool feature is Intercept Mode. When you get into dogfighting range you can press ALT and it will plot a 3d flight path to follow to get behind your target. Kinda like a noob crutch really but its a nice feature and shows some ambition in terms of coding - that can't have been easy. Theres also a missile evade path generated anytime you get fired on.

Unlocks are done by experience for kills and objectives, not money, which is fine I guess. Theres no messing around in the shop so to speak its just You Will Unlock this plane at: Level 12. Whether or not you like that or not is a personal preference. Some people just want to get in the air.

Doesn't really accomplish what it sets out to do I think, which was make a fighter game that revolves around close air support. Really its still just a bunch of oh look, that green blip is your friend, protect it from the yellow blips. Your first mission is to provide CAS to a Ghost Recon team in a city, you fly, you destroy yellow blips. No accounting for all of the buildings in the way of your target, which to me is very disappointing. And of course everything around you is 1/10 scale or so, which seems very stupid if half the point of this game is to be hugging the ground providing air support to ground forces and everything looks out of place.

Overall, I wouldn't pay more than $30 for this kind of action.

Sephiroth_dude

Is it worth forking out on flight sim controller for it?

cherryghost

i quite like the game as a whole, controls are nice, graphics are decent, gameplay is enjoyable.

PogMoThoin

I'm having a stupid issue on Vista64 where the game randomly alt+tab's itself for no reason. Wrecking it for me cos I was enjoying it, it usually happens when something good is happening and I'm lost in the sky or in the ground by the time I get back into the game.

Game looks great, my young fella's well into it now. Wait till ye see the battle in the skies over Rio De Janero further into the game, graphically its a masterpiece Not sure bout the controls, tried kb & mouse, then xbox controller, then joystick, but went back to kb & mouse when joystick I have didn't work for yaw (even tho same controller does yaw in flight sim X) and I couldn't assign it and had to use keys with it. I'm kinda gettin used to kb & mouse now but still haven't cleared the first mission myself to unlock free flight. Young fella's great on it with kb & mouse after a bit of practice, He reckons its the only way to go. Voice control is cool, but a little slower to respond, I find its easier to just use the keys.

Overheal

Have now got it working on the desktop with the x52 HOTAS and an ATI HD4850 on all maxed settings running like butter. Which is probably more important than mind-melting revolutionary crisis-graphics The good news is you can run the game smoothly on most setups. But with all the dx10.1 settings on it looks alrighty.

Slight issue with joysticks though that upon googling seems ingrained in the game sadly, and thats sensiticy and deadzone issues. With the mouse, you cant adjust sensitivity, which is why i immediately thought to try the joystick - which is a lot more fun I suppose, and makes things easier for me. But like you cant adjust mouse options you cant adjust joystick options either, and the game is programmed with an obnoxiously large default deadzone, meaning youve got to jerk the controls around every which way before you get any response. It seems like a very big issue for them to have overlooked tbh, and seems to override my own driver-settings. Hopefully they will patch this. Probably not. You can just imagine whatever idiot they hired to do it hard-coded his own deadzone preference in because he uses some usb-rigged atari joypad from 1987. grrr.

So no I still can't vouch for this games controls. Theyre fine, theyre passable, but I've played much smoother, bettererer controls in my time. I must say though, this game makes freefall bombs fun again.

edit: hang on, how come nobody mentioned this before? Surely an awesome feature of this game - theyve added a very cool feature where you can disable your plane's flight computer to pull off some of the most insane flying I have ever had the joy of. That in itself is a major selling point. Between that and the ERS I am begining to see where this game justifies its price point.

Overheal

k, my eyes are bleeding. This game is good bang for buck tbh.

The first few missions though are nothing to brag about, just awkward, boring shoot this kill that stuff. By your 5th mission or so they introduce Unassisted Mode which lets you pull off some batsh!t crazy maneuvers like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ssCA0iAn0U

Around the same time the missions start getting more interesting. they start putting much more effort into the terrain unlike in their bland-looking demo missions, and then they finally introduce of course build-occlusion (ie. Having to line up right to fire at ground targets). Theres a few others suprises in their too, and some well thought out missions and combat elements to keep you alert. During a Fleet Escort Mission you can see the huge torpedo trails in the water - looks awesome.

Joystick is still a pain, that huge deadzone makes it almost impossible to use guns, and multiplayer has connectivity issues. But its worth spending money on, if only to get them to begin devoping sequels. Its got a lot more under its sleeve than it looks like at first glance and theres plenty of potential here.

This pretty much sums it up. Watch in HD

Mossy Monk

Played a demo of this today and tremendous fun. Will definately buy

ArphaRima

I thought it was an awful game. If they let me fly it from inside the cockpit then I'd be happy, but it forces you to fly from an external camera miles out, and too many prompts help you out. No skill involved.
Yeah its an arcade game rather than simulator, and looks pretty. I just long for a new super-accurate, nerdily meticulous JSF/Gripen/F-22/Typhoon simulator...

PogMoThoin

fluffer wrote: »

I thought it was an awful game. If they let me fly it from inside the cockpit then I'd be happy, but it forces you to fly from an external camera miles out, and too many prompts help you out. No skill involved.
Yeah its an arcade game rather than simulator, and looks pretty. I just long for a new super-accurate, nerdily meticulous JSF/Gripen/F-22/Typhoon simulator...

Change the view, there are 3 views, first person, third person and cockpit

Overheal

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Change the view, there are 3 views, first person, third person and cockpit

Or do you mean in unassisted mode? Because yeah, that is kinda annoying if not very cool looking. Beside that Pog is right and you can fly your missions in first person, aside from when you turn off your limiter.

As for the prompts and skills argument, nobody is forcing you to turn on ERS. I almost always find a faster attack angle to kill someone. The only time I really use it is for missile evasion. As for the limiter I find myself leaving it on most of the time unless to perform a 180 about-face. Usually if I dogfight with the limiter off I end up in the ground ass-first.