Preview: Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X

A month after Ubisoft announced it had acquired the rights to the entire Tom Clancy universe, Ubisoft announced a new independent Clancy game. Surprisingly, it isn’t a tactical shooter. It’s a flight simulator.

Titled Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X, (apparently thinking it is still cool to misspell words with an “X”) Ubisoft is hoping to take a chunk out of Namco’s popular flight simulation game, the Ace Combat Series. H.A.W.X will still be set in the Tom Clancy universe and will feature a number of notable characters from previous Clancy games including the Captain Mitchell and his Ghost squad from the Ghost Recon: Advance Warfighter series.

Ubisoft is marketing H.A.W.X as a new type of flight simulator, combining deep plots and tactical shooter features indicative of previous Clancy games. The integration between your wingmen, ground forces and even enemy NPC forces is meant to go further than any previous flight sim in history. The player will do more than just fly around attacking ground and air targets until all the little red dots are gone but will be part of the greater picture and have the chance to really decide the outcome of any particular operation.

According to the May 2008 issue of Game Infomer Magazine (page 58), players will step into the cockpit as an American pilot who has joined the newly formed Private Military Contractors (PMC) whose job is to stabilize war-torn countries around the world. H.A.W.X is promised as the first game in an ongoing series. In this first title, players will see the rise of the PMC and its growing importance in global conflicts.

Set in 2012, between Ghost Recon: Advance Warfighter 2 and the upcoming EndWar, gamers will fly the unfriendly skies across the globe in more than 50 different real world aircraft. H.A.W.X will also support a four-player co-op mode for the single player game, and up to 16 players can battle for dominance online.

Graphically, H.A.W.X is looking as if it might surpass Namco’s Ace Combat series, which has sold over 10 million units worldwide. It is nice to see a flight simulator that is actually set in the real world, with real countries and plausible conflicts (unlike Ace Combat).

H.A.W.X is due for a Fall 2008 release for the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and PC.

Site [H.A.W.X] Site [Ubisoft]