H.A.W.X. - Holy Cow, there's someone on my SIX.. - A brief review by an avid flight combat simulator fan.
I found H.A.W.X. to be intense. It's really addicting shooting down planes without pushing buttons on your screen. Just point, lock, and shoot. I miss this kind of game. It reminds me of the game Afterburner (?) when I was a kid. It gives you a break going from Falcon 4.0/Lock on where you have to manually do everything with a mouse/keyboard, or IL-2 where you need to practice calculating speed, distance and convergence.
In H.A.W.X., there's a system that helps you do that. If you want to gun down a plane, just point your nose at a small cannon reticule on your targets plane and watch your cannon bullets hit and blast your target. I found it hard sometimes to follow airplanes without my TrackIR (I keep moving my head thinking that it'll move the camera. Lol), but the game offers a system that is specifically for that purpose. It's called E.R.S., basically it gives you a path to follow to get to your targets six. You can also use this to evade missiles and to target enemies on the ground.
The story so far is great, just great. Most people will say that they've seen this kind of story and done this kind of thing. It's true. But that's how it is, ever since.
This game is not comparable to other combat flight simulator in the market. But this game gives you a new environment to explore and play from.
Overall the game is pretty good and I think that my money is well spent on this one.
Try the demo first before you buy it, and see for your self what I am talking about.