So after a week or two of being paused at 0%, I finially let Steam finish downloading the demo of Tom Clancy's HAWX. It seems to only be getting moderate review scores so I was a little unsure about what I was about to fly into. Well based on the demo, I might enjoy renting this game on the consoles.

Graphics

I'll have to play around with AA and resolution, but I didn't notice ANY frame rate issues with a moderate resolution setting and 2x AA while everything else was on high (I'm using XP so I can't comment on DX10 graphics). This is with an 8800gt and lowend overclocked CPU.

Anyway, the graphics look decent, but nothing that'll really amaze you which is probably why it runs so well. The planes look great, but the environments vary from looking good at a distance to crappy up close. Stuff like buildings aren't too bad, but the ground textures becomes fairly muddy when you drop altitude which is dissapointing. 

Gameplay

I haven't played many air combat games so I can't really say how better or worse this compares to a series like Ace Combat, but I found the gameplay here fairly easy to pick up and play. You get tons of missles which you'll need because the demo level sported lots of enemeis in not only the skies, but also on the water and ground. Similar to Warhawk on the PS3, you have to close the distance between the you and the enemy until you can get a lock on and that's when you send them a greeting in the form of a guided missle. I kind of have a thing for air combat (should have saw me always playing in dogfight servers during the Warhawk beta) so I enjoyed my time with the demo.

The targeting system involves pressing a button to focus on the nearest target to your crosshairs. Enemy lock-on's will get seperate indicators so you can deal with this while you're trying to focus on destroying something else. The game's unique feature is the ability to 'turn off assist' where the camera backs out to give a loosely controlled third person perspective where you can perform stuff like tight turns to risk stalling your fighter to gain the upper hand in a fight. Trying to fly around in that mode can feel very awkward so it's best to save it for when you need it for stuff like shaking an enemy aircraft or missle. Another feature you can use will create brackets on your hud that point you on the best path to your target. I think this feature is a double edged sword. It can be frowned upon because it holds your hand and you could potentially overuse it throughout the game, but it's a great feature to help you line up shots for ground targets protected by the environment (like a tank surrounded by tall buildings in the middle of a city).

All in all, the demo was fun especially when I was in combat with numerous aircraft, watercraft, and ground forces all at the same time and I had to juggle my targets all while missles, bullets, and anti-aircraft fire lit up the sky.

Controls

Being a game about flying, it should be expected that learning the keyboard config will take a little bit of time, but that's not where my issue is with the controls. What I had an issue with is that there was a delay between when I moved the mouse and when the aircraft responded. When I switched to the arrow keys to control the aircraft control was instant. This made me a little dissapointed until I remembered that I do have a PS3 controller along with USB drivers for my PC so I quickly whipped it out, plugged it in, and activated the drivers. After remapping most of the buttons, I was easily able to set it up so that the basic controls reminded me of Warhawk. I set the left analog stick handled pitch and roll (like the arrow keys, input was instant), L3 and R3 handled yaw, R1 fired the cannon, L1 launched missles, L2 decreased throttle, and R2 increased throttle.

I still have to play around with the controls, but I don't think I'll be able to get EVERYTHING on the controller. However, as long as the most essential stuff is handled by the controller, I don't have a problem with quickly tapping a couple keys on the keyboard.

Sound

The sound effects were appropriate. Launching missles and watching it connect with an enemy aircraft is a rewarding experience.

The dialog can be a little cheesy at times, but my heart started beating faster when I'm hearing a lot of radio chatter along with the sounds of battle.

Story

It's a demo so there isn't much I can say in this regard. However, the overall story seems very predictable. From reading reviews and seeing how the story involves PMC's, games like Army of Two and it's ever obvious plot twist immediatly came to mind.

Overall

Overall I enjoyed the demo. Like I said above, I seem to have a thing for dogfighting and having enemies in air, land, or sea all over the map with missles and planes flying around everywhere and orders/chatter barking on top of the sounds of explosions on top of the roar of my engines.

I'd like to possibly give it a rent on the PS3, but I think I might download the demo for it first to see how it differs from the PC version (mainly frame rate performance). Though after seeing reviews, I'm not very fond of the PS3's manditory thirty minute install.