Preparing for Warhawk
So I'm off to Salt Lake City for a brand new look at a major PS3 game -- eh, forget it, those of you familiar with where Incognito is based will know it's Warhawk anyway. So yeah, I'm going to be checking out Warhawk in advance of what will be shown at GDC in under two weeks. I've been pretty chained to my desk these past few months (we have a ton of good stuff in the works for the 1UP Network right now, so it's been the good kind of busy), but I did want to make the trip for Warhawk. It's a game that I'm particularly interested in -- mostly because of the nostalgia factor (the original was fantastic at the time), but also because I'm curious how the new game is taking shape, given some of the choices that have been made. I've been following Warhawk since its original announcement two E3s ago, getting new hands-on time with it when I could (such as when I got to try to tilt function for the first time at E3 last year). I most recently got to play it at the Tokyo Game Show, where we were given a taste for how the ground combat would work. The good news at the time was that both the ground combat and the flight combat worked great -- but not as a cohesive whole. As I mentioned then, Sony demonstrated that both gameplay styles were good, but didn't show why we needed them both.
More recently, though, have been the worrisome reports of the project running into serious direction problems and team members leaving (with David Jaffe stepping in to say that, well, this sort of shit happens with a lot of games before they ultimately come together). What I do know is that some interesting cuts choices have indeed been made in terms of its scope, and I'm curious to see how they'll go over with people (myself included). What Warhawk has apparently evolved into is a multiplayer-only title featuring ground and air combat that'll be downloadable from PSN. That's definitely not the Warhawk experience I'd imagined when I first saw the trailer two years ago. But that's not to say I've lost excitement over it, either -- for all I know, it could still be pretty freaking cool -- it's just not what I expected.
It's interesting, because I know a lot of people's perception of the game will change once they hear it's downloadable over PSN as opposed to being a full retail game. It shouldn't. I believe this could actually become a great demonstration of what Sony has in store for us with downloadable games. Mark my words: While Sony definitely needs to catch up with Microsoft in a lot of respects when it comes to online, they are going to lead the way when it comes to downloadable games this year. Nintendo seems pretty content with the retro stuff for the time being, and Microsoft, despite initially wowing us with cool stuff like Geometry Wars, has pretty much kept everything relegated to this "Arcade" philosophy (as in minigames/simple experiences -- only recently did it scrap its file size limit to accommodate bigger games like Castlevania SOTN), but Sony is approaching these PSN titles as "real" games that you can buy online. Yes, they're going to have the "arcadey" stuff, too, like what Jaffe is working on or Super Rub a Dub, and so far the PSN offering has been pretty tame, but there's so much that Sony hasn't shown or talked about yet -- stuff that will really surprise people. Just about every major Sony developer has a PSN game in development right now (in fact, Warhawk isn't the only "major" Sony franchise that'll have a new title on PSN this year -- you'll find out more on that one soon). Factor 5, for instance, have two of 'em (one of which is a new Turrican style game). A bunch of third parties also have some "substantial" (as in, not ports of older games) PSN stuff in the works that will really surprise people once they hear about them.
Don't get me wrong, once Nintendo start doing their own original stuff for download we'll probably see some insanely cool concepts there, and for all I know, Microsoft's XNA initiative and a lot of its own internal studios' projects (such as those from Rare and Bungie) could very well push Arcade forward quite a bit (not to mention that cool stuff like Ikaruga is apparently on the way). But from my vantage point, having spoken to lots of folks in the development community working on this stuff, there's a lot of reason to get really excited about downloadable content on PSN this year -- we're at the point where the downloadable games are finally being taken just as seriously as the packaged ones. I'd imagine this is part of what Phil Harrison will be covering in his GDC keynote.
Speaking of which, while I believe I have a good sense of a lot of what he'll be talking about, there's something apparently pretty substantial that I don't know of yet. Something different and/or unexpected...but something that will give you a better picture into the future of PS3. Reactions from those in the know range from "it's major" to "it's...interesting" -- so I'm not sure what to think just yet. But I'll say this, I'm intrigued.
As for the "new" Warhawk, although I'll be seeing it tomorrow, I'm unfortunately going to be sworn to secrecy on it until GDC. Will it live up to expectations as a downloadable title? Come back in two weeks and I'll let you know.
