Warhawk – Hands On Impressions

Ok, so not long after my hands on time with Heavenly Sword I was pretty pumped to get my mitts on more PS3 goodness. My next stop was the booth next door where the kind folks from Incog. Inc were giving us mere mortals our first ever experience with the PS3’s tilt control technology via Warhawk.

Read the rest of my hands on preview of Warhawk after the jump!

Ok, so not long after my hands on time with Heavenly Sword I was pretty pumped to get my mitts on more PS3 goodness. My next stop was the booth next door where the kind folks from Incog. Inc were giving us mere mortals our first ever experience with the PS3’s tilt control technology via Warhawk.

       

First, I should note that Incog was apparently the only developer to be informed of the tilt technology, giving them time to implement the unique gameplay mechanics present in Warhawk. Alright all well and good, but how does it play? Umm…. I think it’ll probably take some getting used to, but that seems to be the consensus with these new input device thing-a-majigs (I heard similar things from Chris G concerning the Wiimote.) However, it might also just depend on how hardcore you are, the guy ahead of me was definitely hardcore, he was able to control the aircraft with amazing grace, twisting and dipping the pad just so the on screen craft would flip between buildings, swoop under bridges and perform impressive looking barrel rolls, he made it look sooooo easy. Finally I got my hands on the controller, now I pride myself on being a really good gamer but this was a rude awakening. It looked like the aircraft was being piloted by blind drunk! I was slamming into buildings, crashing into enemy planes and spraying my allies with friendly fire with reckless abandon. Blame it on complex flight controls, blame it on oversensitive calibration of the tilt sensor, or heck blame it on my own lack of skill, I just couldn’t get the hang of it.

       

That said the game definitely has promise and it looked like tons of fun watching people who could actually control the aircraft well enough (of which there were few) clear the skies of enemy fighters and take down massive floating capital ships. I’m sure with a little time at the controls it’ll quickly become second nature, but no matter how hard I tried it was just so difficult to tilt the pad instead of swerving the analog stick to bank, talk about trying to teach an old dog new tricks!

So how does it look? Gorgeous. The volumetric clouds and water really have to be seen to be believed, everything’s clean and crisp, explosions are meaty and have weight and squadrons of aircraft fill the skies with lethal weapons fire… it’s all quite pretty.

       

What excited me the most about Warhawk? It was seeing that the on foot section of the game hinted at in the first trailer shown at E3 last year is still very much a part of gameplay. As a matter of fact not only did a new trailer shown at this E3 state that this transition would be seamless, there was footage shown of segments where the main character took control of a tank as a tank commander (runamok!)

So what do I really feel about Warhawk? Well, despite my inability to grasp the controls in the limited time I had with the title I’m still very much looking forward to it because it looks like so much darn fun!