WarHawk - E3 Preview by Jason "Rodzilla" Rodzik   Posted on May 11, 2006   WarHawk for the PlayStation 3 is a re-make of the PlayStation game sharing the same name. For those unfamiliar with the original, you are in command of an advanced fighter craft and are able to fly it around the levels, destroying your enemies. The new game will allow you to exit your aircraft and perform a lot of tasks on foot, but unfortunately this feature was not demonstrated in the build shown to us, which was only 30% complete. Rodzik’s Impressions When I first picked up the controller for WarHawk, my initial thought was that it was going to be tricky to get used to. I was both right, and completely wrong, as it did take me a little bit of adjusting to get the hang of tilting the controller from side to side to steer and tilting it up and down to control altitude, but once I got that in my head, navigating was almost natural. The graphics looked good, but for a “next generation” game I was a bit disappointed by the level of detail shown in the models for the ships I was attacking. Also, as the PlayStation 3 incorporates Ageia’s PhysX SDK, it should be able to handle large amounts of debris physics, but when I would blow up parts of ships there was an unsatisfying lack of debris, with large chunks blowing up as seen in older generations of games. Hopefully this is simply a result of the project only being 30% complete, as other effects such as water and fire looked spectacular. Starting the day off by playing a game which heavily utilized the motion sensor capabilities of the PS3 controller (WarHawk didn’t use either joystick at all) may have been a bad idea, as I found it hard to go back to using joysticks, even after spending only ten minutes with WarHawk. Overall, I was extremely impressed with WarHawk and its implementation of the PS3’s controller design. Navigating an aircraft by tilting your hands in various directions works extremely well, so hopefully designers will be able to implement it just as well, if not better, for other games as well. Vince’s Impressions WarHawk for the PS3 looks to be an amazing combination of a dog fighting jet fighter game with a first person shooter. Unfortunately the game is only around 30% completed right now, so the FPS mode was available for play. The flight aspect of the game is absolutely amazing, though. War Hawk utilizes the 6-azis sensing capability of the PS3 controller, so maneuvering the jet fighter around the beautifully rendered obstacles is merely a matter of manipulating the controller appropriately, not the joysticks. While this type of control seems counter-intuitive (it’s hard to get out of the joystick mentality) at first, within minutes it is possible to get the ‘feel’ of rocking and tilting the controller to move the jet gracefully. Other cool aspects of the game include an extremely friendly targeting system, wide range of weapons, and overall stunning graphics.