War hmmm what is it good for? Absolutely tons of video games for one, because if you head down to your local video game shop you'll see more games about serving up the funky end of a shootar to your fellow man than the body count in the latest Rambo movie. Warhawk though might be just different enough from other gun toting fests to be worth a look.
The first detail that makes Warhawk stand out from the crowd is that it is entirely online allowing 32 people at the same time to snarl down a gun barrel at you, also it's a pretty descent sized game worthy of a disk release, which it has but you can get it with your arse firmly planted to the sofa through the PlayStation store, making the sofa where your arse will stay for next few hours while you get it handed to you from players across the globe. Though dieing over and over again and being laughed at through your surround system by someone who still lives with his mum might not sound like lot of fun, and initially it’s not, you’ll soon find yourself getting into swing of things. This is helped a lot by a neat ranking system that you can use to find matches fleshed out by those that suck as much as you do; allowing you at least to get a few kills in while you work out which end of the rifle is the funky end. As well as being able to access other matches by increasing your rank you’ll also be able to unlock various odd little paintjobs for vehicles and clothes for your aviator. I like to theorise that if you come across someone who has obviously been playing dress up with his character a bit too much then you should probably stay away from them, one because they will be better than you at the game from unlocking all these options and two if they like playing with virtual male dolls rather a lot they must be a bit psychotic and might come round your house and cut off your ear if you kill them. Additionally you can unlock medals for certain achievements inside the game like killing people a certain amount times or getting the flag way too often. The most obvious ones missing though are sniping cunt or twat who puts mines next to turrets; I expect to see those in the next update.
For the most part the game play is pretty intuitive, it's third person, all the right buttons do the running looking and shooting, but my personal favourite has to be the weapon selection. Here you push the d-pad down for knife left for assault rifle up left for something else and so on. I see a lot of games heading in this direction lately and good for them because in the heat of battle, especially online, you need a very quick selection system and this provides. The other more unique control system employed here is the six axis tilting which is most useful when the flying the Warhawk it's self. Many many games have ham fistedly stuffed six axis controls into their games like they’re trying to empty the fridge into a new pie maker, but with varying degrees of success and for me in Warhawk they come fairly close to Ginster levels of perfection. Although the flying took me about 30mins to really get comfortable with and then I still find it a little difficult to get my aim spot on in dog fights. Still it is very responsive and I'd always rather control the flying this way than any other, I'll just keep practising until my hand eye co-ordination does not suck so much.
The actual game play is superb, they seem to have a perfect balance between all the vehicles and weapons you can pick up, for example, you might think the massive bullet shitting plane would be everyone’s first choice leaving everything else sat around about as unpopular as Jade Goody, but this is not the case. In most matches I found myself being run over by trucks, knifed in the back, shafted with tank shells and dive bombed by Warhawks. Even though the Warhawks seem the most fun they are a bit tricky to master and easy to blow out of the sky when they’re not whizzing around at Mac 10. On foot you’re pretty hard to spot, not much armour but a fun range of weapons including a rocket launcher that can lock onto pesky Warhawks, oh and if you select the knife you become invisible on the radar. In the tank you can't lock onto anything but it’s naturally the most heavily armoured bit of kit out there, a bit slow and has heavy shells, the jeep is very fast can seat 3 guys including the machine gunner, turrets pack some serious power and are deadly against a Warhawk if you can get a lock on but you’ll want to keep a finger on the bail out button while you operate this squatting duck. Like I say perfectly balanced.
With this comes a real community feel during your play, if you have the headset attached you can team up with wingmen making you pretty unstoppable, and I have to mention a thank you to whoever at Sony had the idea of letting me use the bluetooth headset from my mobile on the PS3, owe you pint for that. One of the more touching experiences for me though is when I'm slowly plodding about the map clueless as to where all the cool vehicles are, when very often someone will drive up to me in a jeep and beep the horn signalling me to get in and join them by manning the turret, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I soon realise they are using me to cover their own rear end while they drive up to the enemy base, kill a couple of them quickly, pull a mooney then wiz off and leaving me to deal with the consequences, but still it’s the thought that counts.
Graphics are not entirely spectacular but they serve the purpose in letting you see for miles and giving you pretty fireworks when blowing stuff out of the sky. I should also mention the maps as they have done something a bit clever with them. Basically you only have around 4 or so, but they’re huge, however they become divided up in various random ways not often giving you all of what is available. Sounds like you’ve been short changed but I found the way it had been done did make them feel anew every time and mostly still very expansive.
To sum up this is a massive amount of fun, I found myself getting quite obsessed with it to the neglect of eating, sleeping and girlfriend. So if you’re single or would like to be, an insomniac, a bit of weight problem, enjoy giving and receiving humiliation and blowing shit up then this is for you.
The first detail that makes Warhawk stand out from the crowd is that it is entirely online allowing 32 people at the same time to snarl down a gun barrel at you, also it's a pretty descent sized game worthy of a disk release, which it has but you can get it with your arse firmly planted to the sofa through the PlayStation store, making the sofa where your arse will stay for next few hours while you get it handed to you from players across the globe. Though dieing over and over again and being laughed at through your surround system by someone who still lives with his mum might not sound like lot of fun, and initially it’s not, you’ll soon find yourself getting into swing of things. This is helped a lot by a neat ranking system that you can use to find matches fleshed out by those that suck as much as you do; allowing you at least to get a few kills in while you work out which end of the rifle is the funky end. As well as being able to access other matches by increasing your rank you’ll also be able to unlock various odd little paintjobs for vehicles and clothes for your aviator. I like to theorise that if you come across someone who has obviously been playing dress up with his character a bit too much then you should probably stay away from them, one because they will be better than you at the game from unlocking all these options and two if they like playing with virtual male dolls rather a lot they must be a bit psychotic and might come round your house and cut off your ear if you kill them. Additionally you can unlock medals for certain achievements inside the game like killing people a certain amount times or getting the flag way too often. The most obvious ones missing though are sniping cunt or twat who puts mines next to turrets; I expect to see those in the next update.
For the most part the game play is pretty intuitive, it's third person, all the right buttons do the running looking and shooting, but my personal favourite has to be the weapon selection. Here you push the d-pad down for knife left for assault rifle up left for something else and so on. I see a lot of games heading in this direction lately and good for them because in the heat of battle, especially online, you need a very quick selection system and this provides. The other more unique control system employed here is the six axis tilting which is most useful when the flying the Warhawk it's self. Many many games have ham fistedly stuffed six axis controls into their games like they’re trying to empty the fridge into a new pie maker, but with varying degrees of success and for me in Warhawk they come fairly close to Ginster levels of perfection. Although the flying took me about 30mins to really get comfortable with and then I still find it a little difficult to get my aim spot on in dog fights. Still it is very responsive and I'd always rather control the flying this way than any other, I'll just keep practising until my hand eye co-ordination does not suck so much.
The actual game play is superb, they seem to have a perfect balance between all the vehicles and weapons you can pick up, for example, you might think the massive bullet shitting plane would be everyone’s first choice leaving everything else sat around about as unpopular as Jade Goody, but this is not the case. In most matches I found myself being run over by trucks, knifed in the back, shafted with tank shells and dive bombed by Warhawks. Even though the Warhawks seem the most fun they are a bit tricky to master and easy to blow out of the sky when they’re not whizzing around at Mac 10. On foot you’re pretty hard to spot, not much armour but a fun range of weapons including a rocket launcher that can lock onto pesky Warhawks, oh and if you select the knife you become invisible on the radar. In the tank you can't lock onto anything but it’s naturally the most heavily armoured bit of kit out there, a bit slow and has heavy shells, the jeep is very fast can seat 3 guys including the machine gunner, turrets pack some serious power and are deadly against a Warhawk if you can get a lock on but you’ll want to keep a finger on the bail out button while you operate this squatting duck. Like I say perfectly balanced.
With this comes a real community feel during your play, if you have the headset attached you can team up with wingmen making you pretty unstoppable, and I have to mention a thank you to whoever at Sony had the idea of letting me use the bluetooth headset from my mobile on the PS3, owe you pint for that. One of the more touching experiences for me though is when I'm slowly plodding about the map clueless as to where all the cool vehicles are, when very often someone will drive up to me in a jeep and beep the horn signalling me to get in and join them by manning the turret, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I soon realise they are using me to cover their own rear end while they drive up to the enemy base, kill a couple of them quickly, pull a mooney then wiz off and leaving me to deal with the consequences, but still it’s the thought that counts.
Graphics are not entirely spectacular but they serve the purpose in letting you see for miles and giving you pretty fireworks when blowing stuff out of the sky. I should also mention the maps as they have done something a bit clever with them. Basically you only have around 4 or so, but they’re huge, however they become divided up in various random ways not often giving you all of what is available. Sounds like you’ve been short changed but I found the way it had been done did make them feel anew every time and mostly still very expansive.
To sum up this is a massive amount of fun, I found myself getting quite obsessed with it to the neglect of eating, sleeping and girlfriend. So if you’re single or would like to be, an insomniac, a bit of weight problem, enjoy giving and receiving humiliation and blowing shit up then this is for you.
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