The Demo

[DJ-Daz]

Infinite where's you review, cant find the bloody thing.

Anyways, not my kind of game, but I liked it, good arcade/top gun type action. I found the end of level aces to be a bit good, or maybe it's me being a bit naff. I got them, but you just end up flying in circles until you blow them out of the sky.

[InfiniteStates]

In the "HAWX read on..." thread :grin

OK, so I played the demo last night. It's basically Ace Combat, but there's some annoying things about it. Before I list my complaints, I should point out I liked it enough to play through a few times (with KZ2 in the drive). Enough to get to level 3 and unlock the SU-27 any way. Then I played a couple of co-op games with YorkshirePud.

Ok, so what's wrong with it IMO? First and most importantly the targetting selection sucks nuts when you are trying to choose targets via triangle. The game is reluctant to choose the target you are pointing at, and it down right refuses to choose a local target you're not pointing at over something miles away that it deems an important mission objective. For example, in the only mission worth playing you'll be fighting some planes. All is well, until some boats spawn in. Then the game refuses to let you target a plane and only offers boats which are miles away. So then you have to fly miles with enemy planes pecking at you because you can't clean them up before moving on.

Secondly, I HATE the external camera thingy. If the game allows me to do that cool hand brake turn thing while still in cockpit view, all well and good, but I couldn't see how. And if the only way I can do that move (which will be crucial in dogfights) is to use the external camera, that's a potential deal breaker for me.

Thirdly, the only view with those horizontal lines on the HUD that show roll and pitch is the nose camera. Those HUD lines are essential to me, otherwise, unless you can see the ground, the game is totally disorientating. Now I can cope with playing in that view, apart from one thing... Holding triangle to view your current target doesn't work as well in that view as it does others. It only has about a 30 degree elevation window, which is fuck all use when you're using it to gauge when to dive on tanks hiding in building clusters.

And lastly, the co-op lacks polish on either end. Pre-game the host just starts the mission and you load in when you're ready, rather than the game waiting for all players to be ready then starting you all off at the beginning. Post-game there are no stats or comparison between players. No showing who got the most XP or kills, or best accuracy or anything. Just dumps you back to the front end (although you are both still in the same room).

So all in all, it's a proficient flight game, with a few annoying gripes that may or may not cause me to consider a purchase carefully.

[InfiniteStates]

...but you just end up flying in circles until you blow them out of the sky.

LOL that's any flying game ever written isn't it?

HAWX at least tries to break that mould with that assist off/hand brake turn thing.

HAWX would go up massively in my estimation if they let me do that turn without using the external camera, but as is I find just going external to literally do the move sometimes works. And sometimes is just disorienting to fuck.

And if tapping triangle prioritised the fucking planes firing missiles right next to me over some irrelevant boat 4 miles away.