Things I hate this week: Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.

Or Tom Clancy’s B.U.L.L.O.X.
Or Tom Clancy’s C.A.W.X.
Or Tom Clancy’s C.R.O.X……of shit.

Yeah. Yeah.

New AEROPLANAN’ GAEM right. Can’t be that bad. Or something. Right…right?

I wouldn’t be writing this if it wasn’t.

Well, FUCK.As the resident faggot who likes ZOOM ZOOM JETS I considered it my civic duty to purchase this thing. Even after I played the abysmal demo and learned that, damn, that camera is the worst thing this side of getting raped in the mouth by a group of AIDS ridden male hookers.

The weird thing, though? That camera is the least of this game’s problems. If only for the reason that, despite being overly jittery, hard to use, and hard to choose targets with, you get used to it relatively quickly. And once you do, despite probably not enjoying the experience of using it, you’re at least somewhat proficient in doing so. Even though it takes away all of the important HUD elements like pitch, roll, altitude, heading and velocity, you can work with it.

So no, this rant doesn’t have a lot to do with that thing. It has to do with a multitude of other problems.

First and foremost, the SP campaign. Let’s ignore the typical TOM CLANCY PRESENTS THE MILITARY IS AWESOME problems of silly story involving terrorists on US soil, the most EXCELLENT of voice actors (watch for DRAGON TWO SIX and his FULL SCALE INVASION lines, hot diggety),  and generally lameo presentation that has DESIGNED BY A FRAT BOY spray painted all over it. Because that shit’s to be expected. No, let’s talk MISSION DESIGN.

Admittedly, what can you do with ZOOM ZOOM FOX 2 games? Well, there’s your defendin’, your attackin’, and your stealth infiltratin’. Ok, yeah. So let’s have a shit TONNE of the first one. Like half the missions. Defendin’. It’s such a odd choice of task in some situations though. DEFEND THIS TANK BATTALION FROM….ONE ENEMY TANK.  Ok then, this group of 8 or 10 friendlies comes to a DEAD STOP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HIGHWAY and all scream and shit themselves that oh god this one enemy tank in the middle of the road is giving them so much trouble.  A lot of the defend tasks in the missions are seemingly strangely placed. This giant fleet is incapable of fighting off four attack helicopters. Normally “yeah yeah it’s a flight vidya they need to give you something to do”, but they could have come up with some better situations at least.

The last option there though, the stealthan, leads to some of the worst gimmicky shit I’ve seen in a game of this nature. One mission has you fliying under a flight ceiling in a certain part of the map only, marked, of course, on your HUD by a giant wireframe roof saying “DON’T FUCKING GO THIS HIGH”. You’re supposed to be sneaking under their radar net and popping some generators. Only it adds this restriction for no real reason. You can fly above it, it won’t fail the mission immediately or anything, it gives you some really long timer to get back under it or YOU’LL BE DETECTED. What’s the point of the restriction if it isn’t going to add a challenge element to it? Doesn’t make sense.

There’s another mission involving you flying through an ERS (that’s the game’s idiot mode helper, gives you escape and attack trajectories, that sort of thing. ) pathway that’s all over the fucking place, including one random  loop, in an attempt to create a challenging path to fly through so you can hit a target and bomb it. That’s the mission. Fly through a predefined path and you won’t get hit by seemingly huge amounts of flak or sam sites. Doesn’t make sense logically, but again, I can forgive that. It’s just not fun. At all. Why would I want to do this?

There’s similarly boring, gimmicky, or just plain bleh mission design throughout the 19 stages.

Coupled with the low replayability of the missions thanks to a complete lack of interesting design or setpieces, you’ve got…what. The planes?

There’s a lot here. And admittedly they look gorgeous. A lot of similar planes (several variants on certain chassis, for example), but generally I appreciate the selection.

It’s a shame then that, from a practicality standpoint, they all perform the same. There’s a few that stall easier, go faster, have the occasional perk or weapon loadout that’s somewhat unique, but for a most part most of the choices don’t really matter. You can do fancy stall turns and cobras with everything, including weird shit like the Blackbird, and it’s a shame that it really doesn’t matter. Because there could have been a dynamic there. But…nope. :(

In fact, that dynamic , or lack there of, is a major problem in multiplayer as well. There’s no bonus, for example, for picking a plane that has a lower weapon loadout, or has the unstable perk (enters stall faster), or whatever, when compared to something like the F-22, where there’s a built in perk for locking on to others faster, getting locked onto slower, etc. Why would anyone choose anything different? You don’t get more points for shooting down a plane in a higher tier than you (like in Ace Combat 6, which was a fantastic idea), you just end up crippling your team. Maybe you’d get access to the rocket pod, or some other unique weapon loadout, provided you weren’t high enough level to unlock all the ones the F-22 possesses.

Which leads to another problem. If you’re a high enough level, you DO get these insane weapon packages with what’s basically the planes with the best perks. Which gives lower ranked players a kick in the teeth. They’re stuck with…what. 30 year old MiGs  with a lower weapon count? That’s…not really all that fair.  At least in other games with unlockables the weapon balance seemed somewhat fair. The best stuff is either the initial stuff or the early unlocks.

But Multi’s biggest problem? The inherant imbalance of the weapon types and the offense/defense dynamic. By adding the mode that increases player performance on the defense, but makes it harder to be offensive and line up shots properly, you end up with a whole bunch of switching back and forth between the modes to try to attack and subsequently defend. But because these modes can be switched to on the fly, it’s very hard to get a situation where the offensive player has the advantage. Got the drop on someone? Nope. Advantageous AoA? Fuck that. At least in terms of regular missiles/guns.

However, the extra weapons. These…these seem so poorly thought through that it’s a wonder that anyone uses anything else. There’s really two viable additional weapons. The Radar Guided ones (keep the target in the circle and the missile is a guaranteed hit, can’t dodge unless using flares) which aren’t so bad because of the inherant difficulty of doing this at short range, and…something that just doesn’t make sense, called the ALL ASPECT MISSILE. Similar in concept to AC’s QAAMs, only far more ridiculous, these things are literally unstoppable. You can NOT dodge them unless you use flares. They will always hit. Doesn’t matter how much dodging you do.  Doesn’t matter what pimp maneuvers you pull off. You will be hit. They do less damage than regular missile types, but all you have to be in is the general vicinity of someone and let ‘em loose, no lining up of any shot necessary. They’re completely broken from a gameplay standpoint. That’s all anyone spams. The fuckers firing them can stay in assistance off, focusing on defense, and just fire whenever they have tone (from any angle with these things, provided short range), and bam, you’re hit.

It turns any sort of fun variety or skillful avoidance into…nothing. Nothing at all. What’s even the point. Do you get less points for using these? No. There’s no sense of balance WHATSOEVER. It’s ridiculous. Multi is deathly boring. And that’s the worst crime. Even if you have shitty camera that lets you dodge practically anything with a stall turn, you could make that exciting by giving players a reason to choose something other than a plane with some inherant stealth ability or something with as many of these retarded missiles as possible.

But nah, between the SAME FUCKING THING EVERY GAME multiplayer and the HORRIBLE DESIGN of the single player, I can’t really advocate this at all. Go play something else.