Warhawk is a 3rd person sci-fi shooter created by SCEA Incognito. It's a
multiplayer only war game and the first on the Playstation 3. It places you on
either the red (Chernovian) or blue (Eucadian) team in an all out war that takes
place in the sky and/or on land. Due to the lack of a single player campaign
mode, one would think that this game could not be good, but one play through of
the online experience will help to convince you otherwise. You engage in the
typical multiplayer modes (i.e. Capture the Flag, Death Match, Team Death Match
and Zones) on five maps that vary in size depending on the amount of players in
the game and the mode. You can join a server and play against one person or you
can play in a 32 player mode which provide for countless hours of
entertainment.
The game currently is available for either a $39.99
download from the PSN store or a $59.99 retail version that comes with an
instruction manual and Jabra blu tooth headset. The game looks great as it can
be displayed a maximum resolution of 720p and 1080i. The game's sound effects
sound great as well, however, at points during combat the soundtrack can become
repetitive. The game plays very smooth as 32 players can conduct battle in a
heavy war zone with little to no drop in frame rate.
Like with most titles
that are the first in their respective franchises, there are glitches present.
These glitches are however, very difficult to find unless your sole purpose is
to discover these glitches, abuse them and ruin the online experience for
everybody else (which happens). The lack of variety during customization is a
down point as well, but does not hinder the overall great experience. Currently,
Incognito is making improvements to their servers to enhance ranking issues that
some users are having. At the moment players are ranking up without fulfilling
all the rank requirements. Although this does not seem like a huge issue, it can
be when you're playing with somebody on your team who is supposed to be a few
ranks above you and in actuality is a few notches below you. Critical battles
can be lost in this manner and ultimately ruin your overall record in the game.
Sometimes network traffic in the game can be tough to deal with as most games do
not display the correct amount of people in a game. For example a Team Death
Match game may say it has 18 of 24 people playing but will be full and will not
allow you to enter the game.
Other than those few issues, the game makes
for a very solid experience. As stated previously, there are only five maps that
are currently available for the game, but something tells me (hoping) that the
future will yield a handful of additional maps as well as some sort of campaign
mode. There is tons of replay value with Warhawk due to the amount of variety
that online multiplayer games provide in conjunction with the need to constantly
rank up and receive achievements (if you're into those things). If you own a
Playstaion 3, I definitely recommend this game as you will have one of the
better online experiences (if not the best) provided by the PS3 with this one.
