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Monterey Jack's WarHawk Review
WarHawk
It's a war hawk! Man your battle stations!
Warhawk is a war-themed online-only game where you and many other people are put onto environments to kill each other, while sometimes seizing some places and even work together with other players to accomplish your mission. But in the end, it usually turns into a race for the nearest jet and killing everybody in sight. Available via PSN or on a blu-ray disc, Warhawk will give new meaning to absolutely thrilling multiplayer action while tossing you into a warzone with explosions coming in the thousands every minute. Besides, this is the sort of game that many first person shooters turn out to be anyway, but this one doesn't buggerise around with a bloody half-assed campaign mode! Let's hop to it right now before I rant on and on about Halo.
Now where have I heard this title before...
For PS1 players, Warhawk should sound very familiar... Hmm.. Launch title? You bet it was! This version of Warhawk is supposedly a remake of the original PS1 title. Unfortunately, it only shared flight physics and the name; the rest of Warhawk 07 is vastly different from Warhawk 95. Warhawk 95 was strictly a flight simulator with a six level campaign, whereas Warhawk 07 incorporates that style of gameplay with a third person shooter sort of style, while blowing stuff up. Now, I kind of liked Warhawk 95, I thought it was a neat flight simulator, but I was more into Star Wars: Rogue Squadron for the N64 because that had more interesting gameplay, plus... it was *bleep*ing Star Wars, man! You can't screw with them! Fortunately, I find Warhawk 07 to be a fantastic remake of the original overall. For the rest of this review, Warhawk 07 will be referred to as Warhawk.
Wait, WHAT?! ONLINE ONLY!? HOWS THAT SUPPOSED TO WORK!?
Warhawk possesses no single player campaign, which people may be against, but hey, I thought that was a good idea. Let's face it; a decent amount of single player campaigns are about as interesting as watching grass grow, so for a game to cut the bullshit and get straight to the nitty gritty is an achievement in itself. This also prevents a half-baked story from being told, because... it's a shooter for crying out loud! They are the sort of games that you play to cause carnage and wreak havoc in the game, not sit on your couch and being interrupted by a cutscene you could care less for or some crap. Nobody actually gets suckered into a story of a shooter, they just play to shoot! If you want a story, go play an RPG! It's like watching a porno; who care for the dialogue, just get to the hot girl-on-girl action!
Much like with any shooter possessing multiplayer features, there are servers you can log into, there are friend lists, leaderboards, rankings and other things you'd expect in this kind of game. Uh, maximum amount of players, what style of game you want to play, you name it. In other words, rudimentary crap.
What's better than a flight simulator? Dogfight and gunfight simulator at once!
After actually getting into a game, you'll see yourself with a pistol and a knife on the ground, surrounded by some really awesome looking environments. But no time to get immersed into the scenery, you have some weaponry to find! Ranging from flamethrowers, to assault rifles, to rocket launchers among grenades and mines, yeah, it sounds generic and just like many other shooters, but at least they're a whole lot of fun to use. If somebody is destroying everyone in a jet or a tank, just shoot them with a rocket launcher and BOOM! They're dead!
Amongst the weapon selection, you can also ride in vehicles. There are only three varieties; jeeps, tanks and jets. Jeeps and tanks are ground based, whereas with jets, you take it to the skies in typical dogfight fashion. The vehicles are a better alternative to just running around, as the weapons on them are mostly stronger and have better resistance to bullets. I really thought the vehicles were stereotypical too, but hey, they were cool to use, and you could really cause some chaos with the tank, provided somebody doesn't blow it up with their own tank bullets or rocket launchers.
As fun as tanks and jeeps are, the jets just reek of awesome. You can fly around the battlefield, shooting missiles at other aircraft or at grounded troops. You use either the analog sticks or SIXAXIS controls to move the jet and the R1 and L1 buttons to shoot, although the SIXAXIS controls leave a lot to be desired. The rest of the controls are very well done and the only reasons for death is either due to you sucking at the game or because of cheating, but the SIXAXIS controls just aren't... Sometimes, they just fail to respond, causing you to either crash or blow up. Stick to the analog sticks for aerial combat, even if you're really good.
It just keeps you coming back!
The fact that it's a multiplayer game should keep you coming back for more, whether it's punishment or whatever. Maybe it's because the game is very fun to play against human players or because it's just a kickass game altogether and you can't help but to kill people in the game; whatever the case, this game will find a way to keep you coming back, even when you're playing other games. Maybe there's a sort of chemical it puts into your brain when you lay eyes on the menu screen... Just a thought.
Damn this looks awesome!
Albeit briefly, I pointed out that the battlefields looked pretty good. Well, let me go into immense detail about that. It runs in 720p, 1080i and looks great throughout. All of the battlefields are quite lush and colorful. Whether it's a desert or a floating city about to be destroyed by war, they all look so goddamn awesome. The one thing that makes them look better is the amazing draw distance. You can walk to the edge of a map and see like half of the battlefield with buildings and such intact with most of their textures, which are damn plentiful.
A neat collection of explosions!
As far as the audio goes, it's mostly good. The sound effects sound really authentic, as if there are actual gunshots being fired in real life while the explosions sound like an atom bomb just went off next door. It's just that awesome. If you have a really good sound system, the sound effects sound much better, with loads of clarity and... Just freaking awesome. I bet they recorded a war, dissected the individual sound effects and put them in the game. The soundtrack, or what there was of it, was okay. The song that played through the menu screen was quite arousing, but the silence that played through the actual game...well, we have the sound effects, that's a nice thing at least.
Back to the menu screen.
Warhawk was a pretty good game to play through. It's addictive, it's well executed and it's just a bare boned multiplayer-based game. There are enough maps (default and downloadable content) to keep you playing through without getting too bored, and they all look so awesome. I would recommend you download this on PSN or buy the blu-ray disc if you can find it, but only if you like online multiplayer.
Summary Server
Gameplay: 8/10
A whole lot of "if you don't like what you're seeing you ain't gunna like the rest of the game", although the execution of it all was just excellent.. except for some balance issues with the jets. If you're good with jet control, you win the game man, YOU WON THE FREAKING GAME, unless some lucky bastard blows you up, which should be rare if you're a good in-game pilot.
Multiplayer: 10/10
Hosts a range of filters to accommodate to everybody's tastes, like the amount of players and such. But at the end of the day, we just want to kill up to 31 other people a million times. As it's a multiplayer only game, you'd have high hopes for it, and it really comes onto you strongly...
Controls: 9/10
Learning the controls should be easy enough, and they work pretty well for the most part. Each button press does what its designated to do straight away... Yeah, up until you decide to use SIXAXIS controls for dogfights, which sometimes just LOVE to not respond at times, causing death for you. What lovely motion controls, what a grand way to rival the Wii's Wiimote...
Graphics: 10/10
There's a lot of detail in the character models, vehicles and everything else. Draw distance is also good so you can see an enemy soldier from miles away. Damn awesome graphics.
Sound: 8/10
Sound effects are authentic; almost too authentic, but it sounds awesome, especially out of a sweet sound system. The lack of in-game music kind of feels...eh, don't like that. There is some, but not much.
Overall: 8.5/10
It's a war hawk! Man your battle stations!
Warhawk is a war-themed online-only game where you and many other people are put onto environments to kill each other, while sometimes seizing some places and even work together with other players to accomplish your mission. But in the end, it usually turns into a race for the nearest jet and killing everybody in sight. Available via PSN or on a blu-ray disc, Warhawk will give new meaning to absolutely thrilling multiplayer action while tossing you into a warzone with explosions coming in the thousands every minute. Besides, this is the sort of game that many first person shooters turn out to be anyway, but this one doesn't buggerise around with a bloody half-assed campaign mode! Let's hop to it right now before I rant on and on about Halo.
Now where have I heard this title before...
For PS1 players, Warhawk should sound very familiar... Hmm.. Launch title? You bet it was! This version of Warhawk is supposedly a remake of the original PS1 title. Unfortunately, it only shared flight physics and the name; the rest of Warhawk 07 is vastly different from Warhawk 95. Warhawk 95 was strictly a flight simulator with a six level campaign, whereas Warhawk 07 incorporates that style of gameplay with a third person shooter sort of style, while blowing stuff up. Now, I kind of liked Warhawk 95, I thought it was a neat flight simulator, but I was more into Star Wars: Rogue Squadron for the N64 because that had more interesting gameplay, plus... it was *bleep*ing Star Wars, man! You can't screw with them! Fortunately, I find Warhawk 07 to be a fantastic remake of the original overall. For the rest of this review, Warhawk 07 will be referred to as Warhawk.
Wait, WHAT?! ONLINE ONLY!? HOWS THAT SUPPOSED TO WORK!?
Warhawk possesses no single player campaign, which people may be against, but hey, I thought that was a good idea. Let's face it; a decent amount of single player campaigns are about as interesting as watching grass grow, so for a game to cut the bullshit and get straight to the nitty gritty is an achievement in itself. This also prevents a half-baked story from being told, because... it's a shooter for crying out loud! They are the sort of games that you play to cause carnage and wreak havoc in the game, not sit on your couch and being interrupted by a cutscene you could care less for or some crap. Nobody actually gets suckered into a story of a shooter, they just play to shoot! If you want a story, go play an RPG! It's like watching a porno; who care for the dialogue, just get to the hot girl-on-girl action!
Much like with any shooter possessing multiplayer features, there are servers you can log into, there are friend lists, leaderboards, rankings and other things you'd expect in this kind of game. Uh, maximum amount of players, what style of game you want to play, you name it. In other words, rudimentary crap.
What's better than a flight simulator? Dogfight and gunfight simulator at once!
After actually getting into a game, you'll see yourself with a pistol and a knife on the ground, surrounded by some really awesome looking environments. But no time to get immersed into the scenery, you have some weaponry to find! Ranging from flamethrowers, to assault rifles, to rocket launchers among grenades and mines, yeah, it sounds generic and just like many other shooters, but at least they're a whole lot of fun to use. If somebody is destroying everyone in a jet or a tank, just shoot them with a rocket launcher and BOOM! They're dead!
Amongst the weapon selection, you can also ride in vehicles. There are only three varieties; jeeps, tanks and jets. Jeeps and tanks are ground based, whereas with jets, you take it to the skies in typical dogfight fashion. The vehicles are a better alternative to just running around, as the weapons on them are mostly stronger and have better resistance to bullets. I really thought the vehicles were stereotypical too, but hey, they were cool to use, and you could really cause some chaos with the tank, provided somebody doesn't blow it up with their own tank bullets or rocket launchers.
As fun as tanks and jeeps are, the jets just reek of awesome. You can fly around the battlefield, shooting missiles at other aircraft or at grounded troops. You use either the analog sticks or SIXAXIS controls to move the jet and the R1 and L1 buttons to shoot, although the SIXAXIS controls leave a lot to be desired. The rest of the controls are very well done and the only reasons for death is either due to you sucking at the game or because of cheating, but the SIXAXIS controls just aren't... Sometimes, they just fail to respond, causing you to either crash or blow up. Stick to the analog sticks for aerial combat, even if you're really good.
It just keeps you coming back!
The fact that it's a multiplayer game should keep you coming back for more, whether it's punishment or whatever. Maybe it's because the game is very fun to play against human players or because it's just a kickass game altogether and you can't help but to kill people in the game; whatever the case, this game will find a way to keep you coming back, even when you're playing other games. Maybe there's a sort of chemical it puts into your brain when you lay eyes on the menu screen... Just a thought.
Damn this looks awesome!
Albeit briefly, I pointed out that the battlefields looked pretty good. Well, let me go into immense detail about that. It runs in 720p, 1080i and looks great throughout. All of the battlefields are quite lush and colorful. Whether it's a desert or a floating city about to be destroyed by war, they all look so goddamn awesome. The one thing that makes them look better is the amazing draw distance. You can walk to the edge of a map and see like half of the battlefield with buildings and such intact with most of their textures, which are damn plentiful.
A neat collection of explosions!
As far as the audio goes, it's mostly good. The sound effects sound really authentic, as if there are actual gunshots being fired in real life while the explosions sound like an atom bomb just went off next door. It's just that awesome. If you have a really good sound system, the sound effects sound much better, with loads of clarity and... Just freaking awesome. I bet they recorded a war, dissected the individual sound effects and put them in the game. The soundtrack, or what there was of it, was okay. The song that played through the menu screen was quite arousing, but the silence that played through the actual game...well, we have the sound effects, that's a nice thing at least.
Back to the menu screen.
Warhawk was a pretty good game to play through. It's addictive, it's well executed and it's just a bare boned multiplayer-based game. There are enough maps (default and downloadable content) to keep you playing through without getting too bored, and they all look so awesome. I would recommend you download this on PSN or buy the blu-ray disc if you can find it, but only if you like online multiplayer.
Summary Server
Gameplay: 8/10
A whole lot of "if you don't like what you're seeing you ain't gunna like the rest of the game", although the execution of it all was just excellent.. except for some balance issues with the jets. If you're good with jet control, you win the game man, YOU WON THE FREAKING GAME, unless some lucky bastard blows you up, which should be rare if you're a good in-game pilot.
Multiplayer: 10/10
Hosts a range of filters to accommodate to everybody's tastes, like the amount of players and such. But at the end of the day, we just want to kill up to 31 other people a million times. As it's a multiplayer only game, you'd have high hopes for it, and it really comes onto you strongly...
Controls: 9/10
Learning the controls should be easy enough, and they work pretty well for the most part. Each button press does what its designated to do straight away... Yeah, up until you decide to use SIXAXIS controls for dogfights, which sometimes just LOVE to not respond at times, causing death for you. What lovely motion controls, what a grand way to rival the Wii's Wiimote...
Graphics: 10/10
There's a lot of detail in the character models, vehicles and everything else. Draw distance is also good so you can see an enemy soldier from miles away. Damn awesome graphics.
Sound: 8/10
Sound effects are authentic; almost too authentic, but it sounds awesome, especially out of a sweet sound system. The lack of in-game music kind of feels...eh, don't like that. There is some, but not much.
Overall: 8.5/10
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