Ubisoft was showing off Tom Clancy’s HAWX 2 at E3 this year. I thought the arcade aerial combat game was a lot of fun back in 2008, and it was good to see a sequel coming out this year.
HAWX 2 has a new campaign mode that is split between the HAWX, Russians, and British. Players encounter each faction during the course of the campaign and do not get to choose when they play which faction, but the overall campaign is said to be much longer than the eighteen missions of HAWX.
Graphically, the main focus was on improving the appearance of the ground whenever you get closer to it, and you can definitely see a lot of improvement in this area. Buildings are three dimensional and look more substantial than they ever.
Gameplay seems largely similar, which is fine, but they did add a precision bombing mode and take off and landing sequences to an aircraft carrier. Mid-air refueling is included too, although I didn’t see that. Take off and landing is pretty cool, with landing being far more interactive than takeoff. The precision bombing sequences should be neat, the one we saw had us dropping bombs onto enemy supply ships and buildings in a town. Some crossover elements are included to other Tom Clancy fiction, including an operative from the Russian espionage sect seen in Splinter Cell: Conviction.
HAWX 2 will be out later this year and is shaping up well.
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