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The most surprising title in the company's room at E3 is H.A.W.X., a new flight combat game from the company. I am not too much into these kinds of games, but Ubisoft has made one significant change to the formula that drew me in.
On the surface, H.A.W.X. looks and plays very similar to Ace Combat:
it's more arcade-y than realistic, very pretty and cool to look at, and very
difficult to play if you are new to it. The game's areas, including Rio de Janiero,
are built from real satellite data in high-definition, making the game
like flying over high-definition Google-Earth 3D map.
True to Ubisoft's recent iterations of its various Tom Clancy properties, H.A.W.X.
will support online multiplayer with an XP system that allows players
to unlock up to 50 different planes and a co-op
mode for the story campaign. Downloadable content with more planes and
new areas is also something the company hopes to implement later.
On both consoles, control is being kept in mind. Ubisoft has been working closely with arcade manufacturers to allow H.A.W.X. to support a huge variety of flightsticks, including the Ace Combat 6
Hori stick for the Xbox 360. And for the PlayStation 3, the requisite
SixAxis control options will be included, as flying is one of the few
things the SixAxis controller actually does just right.
The big differentiating feature, though, is that Ubisoft has gone to
great lengths to bring the action out of the cockpit. The representative on site
told me that the company wants the game to be less a perfectly accurate
simulation of reality and more an "FPS in the sky". The feature that
will accomplish this, ironically, is a third-person camera dubbed the
"Full Control Dogfighting Camera". At the cost of the majority of the
powerful UI of the main cockpit and standard tail-mounted camera, which
would net you a ton of valuable information, this new perspective lets
players execute maneuvers and tackle enemies much more easily.
It's hard to explain in words what this game really is but thankfully, a demo will be coming for
the title—possibly before release—to give you an idea of how the system
works.
H.A.W.X. will be out September 23, 2008 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii, and PC.
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