Reviews// Warhawk

The Upsides
There are many, many upsides and I include the fact that there is no single-player mode among them. Warhawk is much too much fun to keep to yourself. Also, the best AI in the world cannot conjure up the scenarios that real life, red blooded idiots and kings can produce – and that’s one of the other things that makes it great. Yes, I’ve said it, ‘great’.

Okay, the cynics among you will say that the lack of single-player is downright laziness on the part of Incognito and its project managers. The even more cynical will say that multi-player-only is a great way to ensure that PlayStation Network (PSN) gets heavily populated – and successful in appearance – rapidly.

To the first piece of cynicism I say, “Don’t be so bloody silly”.

To the second piece I say, “Well, if Warhawk was an appalling, sub-Halo game (as bad, for example, as Lair or Folklore) then no one would go online and play it, so that would be a bit of a dead-end evil strategy to get the PSN populated.

Let’s move on with an illustration of just what Warhawk has done to an office full of hardened gamers who see any new game as a challenge to our massive knowledge of gaming history and lore. Bring a new game into the under-lit corridors of SPOnG Manse and someone will undoubtedly point out similarities between it and some tape-bound creation that once played for seven minutes on a Amstrad CPC in a back-bedroom in Twyford in 1988. Yes, we do that. What we most certainly don’t do is say, “Man, he just pwned your lame-assed hide with that guided missile!”

Well, before Warhawk we didn’t say things like that – out loud, to each other – I am staggeringly sad to have to tell you that we do now. It’s the sort of lame, noob banter, that the game brings out in a person. I was reduced to the age of a young, sprightly Tim hunched over a his BBC Micro, eyes glued to Elite or a slightly older Tim, a little more hunched over his Amiga 500 eyes glued to Sensible Soccer; or even… okay, that’s enough.

The reason for this effect is not some strange, evil Sony device to randomly send you back in time while making you talk like an American college kid. No, the reason for this is the ‘one more go’ moment. For me that moment came when picking off another sniper at what seemed like eight miles away using the detail that the developers had put into the rifle.

Get this… I picked up the sniper’s rifle as a glowing orange relic hanging in the air like the Holy Grail or a big, magical, orange, glowy pint of delicious booze. Once it was part of my kit, I selected it by pressing down and right on the D-pad. Instead of being presented with an aiming reticule, however, I was given a tiny white dot. “What in the name of all that is Bristol Rovers F.C. am I supposed to do with this nonsense?” I intoned.

“Press the right-hand analogue, you blithering idiot!” cried my playing partner, fixated with his airborne antics on the split-screen. I stopped blithering and pressed it. Whamo! My virtual eye was immediately taken to a close-up through my rifle’s sight, complete with thin, black cross-hairs. Press it again and… even closer-up.

I stopped gawping and pressed twice to get back to a normal view, I moved to a better position, still trying to draw some fire so I could pinpoint my enemy’s position. I hunkered down by pressing [O].

I pressed the right-hand analog twice and located my erstwhile nemesis.

I couldn’t quite see the whites of the eyes of the Chernovan mo-flipper who had been sniping at me. But I could see enough of her to line up my cross (very bloody cross, fuming in fact) hairs and gently pull the trigger (R1, actually). Bang. Then a wait. Then another bullet and another in quick succession, hoping she’d have no time to reload. I waited, and then my kill-score incremented by one single, brilliantly taken point.

Then the bloody level we were playing timed out leaving me with one, single, brilliantly earned point. My colleague had 36. I told you I was bad.