Didn't get your invite for the Warhawk beta? That's really too bad. The beta is, quite simply, a blast -- even riddled as it is with bugs typical of the beta experience. But never fear; you can experience it vicariously through us! That's right, we've played it for you, and we'd like to run you through a brief session indicative of the Warhawk experience. So, ready? Let's begin.
00:00 -- Staring at the menu screen, we see options for Online, Local Games, Options, and a link to the online manual. Choosing Online lets you join or create a game, of course, but also access the community area. This is where you can access your own player profile, view your buddy list (and yes, it's drawn from your main PSN buddy list), manage your clan or clan membership, and view the network leaderboards. Also on the Online menu is the option to customize your character or aircraft. While you'll eventually be able to customize the head, upper body, lower body, and insignia of your character, right now it's just picking which side you want to represent (Eucadian or Chernovan) and your skin tone. Similarly customizing your aircraft right now is simply picking a side and choosing one of two paint schemes, but eventually the game looks like it'll offer much more customization.
00:03 -- All right, then, let's jump into a game, shall we? Bringing up the server list, we see a selection of games, ranked by ping time from our machine to the host's machine. At this point the vast majority of the servers report excessive ping times, but since most of the time we're able to jump into those games just fine, it's likely just a server glitch. Now's a good time to remind you that this is an early version of the game. (The final version will undoubtedly perform better than what we're seeing here, and may very well have more weapons, vehicles, and locations.) Let's choose a capture-the-flag map.
00:04 -- The game starts, and our team of 16 (give or take a few crashers or late-joiners) spreads out like a nest of roaches when the light comes on. Obviously everyone has their favorite approach here, and there are many: Dash for an aircraft to try to catch the enemy by surprise; jump into a 4x4 or tank to bring some ground support; man a flak or missile turret to defend the flag from air attack; or just snag a sniper rifle or rocket launcher and find a nice, secluded, safe perch to wait for the inevitable enemy incursion. You've got lots of options here. But the game's called Warhawk, so let's grab one.
00:05 This is one freakin' sweet machine. You start off in a hover mode, which controls sort of like any third-person shooter, with one stick controlling your aim and the other controlling movement -- only you can also adjust height with R2 and L2. A tap of Triangle switches you to flight mode, and now it controls like a simple flying game, with you accelerating with R2 and braking with L2. One particularly sweet feature: Double-tap R2 and you've got limited turbo. The feeling of moving from a dead stop to full-on turbo is really quite exhilarating. Uh oh, there's an enemy plane incoming.
00:07 -- That ******* almost got us, but we squeaked by. We were heading toward a collision at full speed, in a game of sky-chicken. He balked first...but let loose a stream of swarm missiles as he banked up and over our plane. They connected. Yeah, it hurt. Limping along, we threw on the air brakes and slewed around in a quick 180, centering him on our sights as our homing missile slowly locked in. We let fly, but it wasn't quite enough to take him out. He came around for a second pass, and we switched over to the quicker swarm missiles. We let loose a couple and he responded with admirable quickness, dashing out a dose of chaff to shake off the missiles. But he ran out of chaff before we ran out of missiles. Us: 1, Him: 0. Now let's go find a health power-up.
00:08 -- Hmm, that flak turret right near the health appears to be moving...In our direction.
00:09 -- Our beautiful Warhawk is now just flaming shards raining down from the sky. It's OK. There's more where that one came from. One thing we can see getting adjusted as the game nears release is the respawn time of vehicles; right now it's very rare to be without easy access to your choice of vehicles. It definitely skews the whole game in a vehicular direction. It might be nice to at least be able to adjust the respawn time of vehicles when creating a game.
00:10 -- OK, let's try a different tactic. Jumping in another plane, we race off to collect a few more powerful weapons, and one very special defensive gadget: the cloaking device. We head out to the edge of the map, and race around the perimeter until we're behind the enemy base. As we get close, we engage the cloak, disappearing from the enemy's radar. Switching to hover mode, we creep along at sea level, just below the spindly platform-island that houses the enemy base. And we wait. Right now the base is swarming with recently spawned baddies; if we're lucky most of them will take off before the time on our cloak runs out.
00:11 -- Perfect timing. There's just a token resistance left. We kick on the thrusters and practically leap up above the edge of the island, slamming down right next to the flag and bailing out before the one remaining defender has time to get a fix on us with his rocket launcher. (Anyone with eyes can see the obvious shimmer of a cloaked ship; the important thing is that it doesn't show up on radar.) Lucky for us -- and unlucky for him -- we grabbed the flamethrower from our own base before heading over. He's quickly toast, and we make off with the flag.
00:14 -- We're nearly back to the base when our luck runs out. See, the game's host has to manually allow flag-carriers to be able to board Warhawks; when this option is turned on, it makes for fast, furious CTF games. But it's not on in this game, so we have to commandeer an enemy 4x4 and take the long, slow, very dangerous, overland route. The 4x4's equipped with a turret, but we're driving and the process of manually switching to the turret takes a little too much time to make it feasible to pull off quickly in the heat of battle. We're crossing one of the long, treacherous bridges that connect the islands in this Archipelago map when an enemy 4x4 comes careening around the corner. And he's got our flag. Trouble is, he also has a guy manning the turret. We bail out, but it's a futile gesture -- we're gunned down while scrambling for cover, and now they've got both the flags. We suck.
00:15 -- Luckily, our team has captured a number of the neutral bases on this map, so we get to respawn plenty close to the enemy flag...and right in the path of a tank that we could have sworn was empty. It's not. It rolls forward and we're just like so much roadkill.
00:18 -- Time for a new game, this time a round of Zones. It's a familiar capture-and-hold type of game, but the seamless transition from on-foot to ground vehicle to air war ratchet things up to a frantic pace. We capture a base (simply by hanging out near its central flag) and then drop a few land mines around to help protect it while we go in search of another capture point. Nice timing, too -- an enemy notes that the base has been captured and hustles over just in time to be standing amidst our mines as they activate. He tries to get away. He fails.
00:20 -- We've been doing our best, but our team isn't communicating nearly enough to coordinate sensible base attacks. So while the blue hue of the opposing team's bases spreads steadily -- they've been smartly surrounding their flags with multiple troops to boost the level of the base -- our team's territory is scattered dots of red. We have more bases, but their bases are more powerful...which means they're earning points at a faster rate than we are. By the end of it, it's a slaughter. While our team plays every-man-for-himself, their team tactics just run us over. We make one last stand by grabbing a Warhawk and swooping up a TOW missile. Once one of these things is launched, your viewpoint switches to a very cool black-and-white image off the nose of the missile. You can guide it within a fairly generous range, even speeding up and slowing down to chase down moving targets. We drop one right in the center of a group of three or four enemy combatants, and race to the center of the base. But it's too little, too late; they reorganize quickly and descend upon us, verily, like a plague of locusts o'er the land.
00:25 -- We've got just enough time left for a couple quick Deathmatch games. First, we join a team game set in Eucadia itself, grab a Warhawk and skim along the canals, swooping under the many bridges and picking up a full complement of weapons. We pop out right near the enemy base, and drop a load of sizzling death on their heads courtesy of a fully charged electric bolt, taking out a plane with an additional passenger, an empty jeep, and a foot soldier who was probably just minding his own business -- you know, just out for a smoke or something. Sorry dude.
00:28 -- We're not likely to top that, so we quit out and jump into an every-man-for-himself match in the Destroyed Capitol level, one of our favorites. Crumbling skyscrapers poke through dense cloud cover, offering a gorgeous vertical dimension to the level. We land a Warhawk atop the highest tower, maybe a hundred stories above ground level, just because we can. We send off a few homing rockets at passing planes, take out a guy on the ground with a lucky sniper rifle shot, and then see if we can take damage by falling. Turns out we can. Our guy sprawls limp on the ground, and we figure that's as good a scene as any to end with.
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