After the surprisingly fantastic experience I had with Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon on the Nintendo Wii, I became curious about one of the other two Wii games with Clancy's moniker, H.A.W.X. 2. I have been aware of this series for quite a while but had never played one of the games. Much like Ghost Recon on the Wii, H.A.W.X. 2 is a game completely independent of games with the same title on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. With H.A.W.X. 2 I kept my expectations low and went in hoping for a low-rent Ace Combat rip-off. To a certain extent, that's what H.A.W.X. 2 is. So, is it worth checking out? Let's take a closer look.




H.A.W.X. 2 is an arcade style flight game you mostly control your aircraft with the thumbstick on the nunchuck and shoot machine guns, rockets, and lock-on missiles by aiming a reticle on the screen with the Wiimote. The gameplay is very basic as there are some key features missing from the action, namely any kind of radar screen. Enemies are found only with on-screen markers, and for someone who has played many Ace Combat games very recently, this seems like an egregious omission. Once I got past this, I started to enjoy the game for what it is, which is a decent arcadey flight game for the Wii.

The main campaign of the game plays out in a series of well-checkpointed missions that last from five to fifteen minutes each, making for a great pick up and play flow. Throughout the game, there are not only traditional flight style missions a la Ace Combat, but on rails sequences and pseudo top-down shooter segments. There are a good variety of planes and helicopters to choose from, and you will even play as an actual hawk from time to time. 


The overall presentation of the game has a cheap quality to it, but that doesn't mean it is necessarily bad. While the voice acting is actually quite good (from high profile actors such as Ron Perlman and David Zayas), the character portraits look like cheap Saturday morning cartoons. I actually loved the way they looked, but this seems to be an unpopular design choice.

Between the gameplay and the presentation, the game does have a little bit of a "slapped together" feeling, so it's one of those game where I can sympathize with those who were disappointed with this product at its initial retail. However in the end I can recommend this game now for its variety, fun factor, and the little bit of heart it has. We've got one more Tom Clancy game left on the Wii so tune in next month as I take a look at Splinter Cell: Double Agent

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