Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X 2

The arcade-style flight action game H.A.W.X takes off into the bullet-riddled skies for another outing in, Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X 2.

I really enjoyed playing Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X when it came out in 2009. It ditched the super realism gameplay I’d been accustomed to in other Tom Clancy games, in order to focus more on the action and dogfighting. Not to mention the whole political thriller/military storyline about a private military corporation staging a coup d'état against the United States made for a highly entertaining yet ridiculous narrative that kept me playing to the very end. Now, a year later Ubisoft announces H.A.W.X 2 and alarm bells start ringing in my head, is this just going to be another rushed out game to capitalise on the sales of the first?

Right off the bat the game throws you into a situation in the Middle East with no back story about what happened after the events of the first game, and it certainly takes a while for the story to get mildly interesting. Throughout the course of the game you’ll jump from being a pilot of the British Royal Navy, Russian military and the American H.A.W.X. squadron, but this time around you won’t just be flying real world licensed planes, you’ll also get to control unmanned aerial drones and at one point get a little AC-130 action, blowing up targets on the ground in cool looking night vision.

While blowing up stuff is great, the majority of H.A.W.X 2’s 8+ hour campaign is more about being on the defensive and babysitting other computer controlled allies which gets majorly frustrating and repetitive, and because of it, H.A.W.X 2 definitely has a large amount of trial and error involved. You’ll be restarting checkpoints when your allies take too much damage or just restarting so you can hunt for those pesky enemy units that are actually mission critical as opposed to the ones who just aimlessly fly around being nothing more than a nuisance. What really infuriated me many times during the campaign were the enemy planes that would get so insanely close to you that targeting them was an absolute nightmare; flying around in circles, endlessly, is not fun, especially when there’s a timer ticking down half the time. Oh, and don’t count on your AI partners, they won’t help you nearly as much this time around, say for a few scripted events later in the campaign.

Multiplayer wise, H.A.W.X 2 has the same 4v4 battle & team battle modes from the first game with a new bunch of maps to fly around in. Persistent experience or as the game calls it P.E.C. (Persistent Elite Creation) remains and will reward players with new planes, skins, and even custom weapons loadouts just by playing any mode in the game. Single-player, competitive and even the new co-op wave-based survival mode are all covered by the P.E.C. system, so you're constantly unlocking stuff as you play.

Overall however, H.A.W.X 2 feels rushed and the new gameplay mechanics such as taking off, landing and refuelling in mid air feel tacked on and unneeded, ultimately ruining the great pacing the previous game had. The controls feel loose and very sensitive making the planes feel weightless, and the graphics seem on par with the first game but the in-game cutscenes look very poor when ground level. The only thing that truly impressed me was the games soundtrack but that’s not enough to recommend this game, but if you must get your fix or you just want to see how this games story ties in with Ghost Recon: Future Soldier, then share the frustration online with three other players and play the co-op story instead, it certainly makes the campaign a tiny bit more enjoyable.

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