Phil Harrison made a WarHawk-related announcement at GDC which was something of a bombshell: WarHawk, one of the first games to make sensible use of the six-axis controller’s motion-sensing capabilities will be available only as a download over the PlayStation Network – it won’t appear on Blu-ray Disk – with a multiplayer-only focus.
Nevertheless, we shouldn’t have to wait too long for it after launch – Sony says it will arrive this autumn, and it could come as early as July, according to developer Incognito. Pricing hasn’t yet been set, but it’s likely that it won’t cost as much as a full-priced, boxed game.
So it should represent pretty good value, as it’s a pretty well specified effort although, as it stands, it doesn’t really have that jaw-droppingly crisp graphical quality that the PS3 can bring – although it is possible that could be applied in the polishing stage. Which, presumably, is under way, as the version of the game shown at GDC looked pretty solid and bug-free.
Up to 30 people can participate in a single game, and gameplay modes will include team Deathmatch, Territory Mode and Capture The Flag. There are two races in WarHawk, called Eucadian and Chernovan, and the battles are certainly epic, played across vast maps.
What really marks WarHawk out from its peers is the variety of ways in which you can play it. Battles take place in the air and on the ground – you can specialise in manning a flying battleship or hovership, or elect to stay on the ground, playing as if it was a third-person shoot-em-up. And you can jump into vehicles, such as tanks or jeeps (naturally, one person can be a designated driver while another mans a machine-gun in the back), and you can even jump into anti-aircraft guns.
The WarHawk itself – a flying battleship – is clearly seen by Incognito as the game’s top item of military hardware; there’s also a hover-ship that would-be pilots can take control of. Both planes make extensive use of the six-axis controller, along with several buttons. We couldn’t quite master the controls in the limited amount of time available for hands-on at GDC – clearly, they will require some sort of a learning period – but the aspects governed by the six-axis seemed responsive without being twitchy. On the ground, everything was utterly intuitive, however.
WarHawk’s ability to generate huge, epic online battles should make it a firm PlayStation Network favourite, and we’ll keep you updated with any news about when it will be released and how much it will cost, as soon as we know ourselves.
By Steve Boxer
In the meantime, here’s some footage for you to take a look at:
I think we’ve all been there/done that with Halo on the XBox and Unreal on the PC. Mixed vehicle/on-foot fighting online that doesn’t look anything like the movies Sony showed us before…
…talk about one hell of a *YAWN*.
Sony–get more stuff like LittleBigPlanet, and get it in a hurry. Your competition is already doing this…but better…last gen.
Comment by Matt — Mar 13, 2007 @ 5:17 pm
Yeah, I hate to say it but something about this game says ‘disappointment’. I think its going to be pretty mediocre, which is a shame as it was one of those titles PS3 fans have been following on and off since PS3’s announcement… =(
I fear the same for Lair too…
Comment by Obli — Mar 13, 2007 @ 5:31 pm
this looks like dam fun, i want it now.
Comment by konnichi — Mar 13, 2007 @ 5:49 pm
Matt - WTF are you talking about man? The graphics didn’t take a serious dip and we are still looking at a work in progress.
Halo and Unreal are both popular games. So why wouldn’t Sony want to capitalize on that flavor of game?
I find your comment to be a BIG YAWN. When you refer to what the competition is doing, please realize that PS2 is still the leader in the Video Game marketplace. Sony knows what they are doing.
Sony needs to do something in a hurry? Did you see GDC 07? They stole the show. Reggie was visibly pissed. All of a sudden now that PS3 steps up the Ante, Ninetndo realizes all they have is a last gen box with a gay controller.
Any more Xbox fanbois got any more comments?
Comment by D.Vader — Mar 13, 2007 @ 6:16 pm
Wow..this game just doesn’t look that good. I guess they need a whole bucket of spit and polish for this one.
Comment by Chingau Wei — Mar 13, 2007 @ 7:14 pm
“that doesn’t look anything like the movies Sony showed us before”
Uhhh… Yes it does. The only thing different is the number of planes in the air at one given time. The devs have said that they experimented (when the game was still supposed to have single player) with hundreds of planes on screen, but they thought that the skies were literally FILLED with planes then and that made the game not-so-fun to play when you basically couldn’t move anywhere without bumping into another plane.
And now that the game is multiplayer only, they basically CAN’T have hundreds of ships flying in the air because no connection could support that without lagging.
This looks like a more cartoony version of Battlefield. It doesn’t look superb (and face it, it never did, not even at E3 ‘05), but neither does it look bad. And when considering the fact that A) the island we’ve seen is pretty huge and B) the draw distance is even bigger, I wouldn’t say Warhawk is unimpressive. Of course you can’t have the detail of Heavenly Sword when you can move from ground to high into the air in mere seconds. Some people need to get realistic.
And no, Halo didn’t do anything near Warhawk’s scope The levels were small & linear and you couldn’t fly high up into the air and see the whole (BIG) level at once.
Comment by Azu — Mar 13, 2007 @ 8:02 pm
I don’t know if you guys were watching the Lo-Res versions or what but the Hi-Res versions I was watching looked pretty clean. Can’t wait to see what this looks like on a HDTV.
Comment by Nick — Mar 14, 2007 @ 1:02 am
If the price is any more than $25 (NZ) I wont be buying it. I was really looking foward to this title (hell I had a preorder for almost 6 months) but now it looks like it might be fun or it might not.
Comment by Carl — Mar 14, 2007 @ 1:06 am
Here is an excerpt from an e-mail I sent to Sony, and tried to send to Incognito:
I have a great idea for a game, specifically a Playstation 3 game. I have been spreading this idea around as best I can, by joining your forum, and e-mailing Incognito, Guerrilla, and Insomniac Studios. Finally I called SCEA and they said game ideas were to be sent to this e-mail address so here goes.
Here is my proposal:
Anti-gravity is in vogue, and becoming part of sci-fi lore. Half-life 2 has an anti gravity gun, Battlefield 2142 has drones and Titans that levitate, Halo has sentinels that have no known source of propulsion, and Gears of War has “Jack”, a cloaked robot that hovers using anti-gravity.
If anti-gravity can do all these things, why cant it levitate a character?
Look at Battlefield 2142, there are electromagnetic shields, drones that levitate, and Titan ships that hover with some kind of anti-gravity propulsion. Yet when troops have to board the Titan, they must use rocket pods or jet powered aircraft. In Gears of War the player is engaged in close quarter battle, while Jack hovers nearby unseen, even though he has a beam that can cut through steel doors.
Think of a game where a rifleman could move in three dimensions, (along six axes).
What if a character wore a jet pack or an anti-gravity suit, that allowed him to levitate, and adjust his height above ground by applying more or less power? This would be very easy to implement on the PS controller in a shooter type game. Using the controls you have pioneered for Warhawk, you could have a “Sixaxis Shooter”, get it?
Then picture a game along the lines of Starship Troopers, where a soldier maneuvers into action in three dimensions. It would change everything. I think this could be the next generation of “shooters”.
Sony already owns the rights to Starship Troopers. They have produced a cheezy movie, and a very bad four axis shooter based on the movie. But There was also an animated TV series called “Starship Troopers Roughnecks”, which was excellent in every way, and would make a great computer game.
Imagine a game where instead of flying the Warhawk, you are a flying rifleman.
And here’s another idea. I doubt that a rifleman would carry a weapon at the shoulder while flying with a spacesuit, and operating other controls. Instead let’s mount the weapons on the suit. Now you would have a “mini-mech” look to the trooper, and of course more combat options.
You could fire a beam weapon and a missile launcher just like your Warhawk does. Or better yet, you could use the ideas pioneered by the Mech games, (Armored Core, Gundam ect.), to create customized suits and weapons for each trooper. Japanese like mech games and Americans like shooters, this idea would appeal to both.
…
Comment by Scott Piraino — Mar 14, 2007 @ 1:37 am
Sorry about that post you guys, I was in the process of editing it when I accidentally posted it. Moderators please remove.
…
Comment by Scott Piraino — Mar 14, 2007 @ 1:48 am
Quicktime movies or ‘Uploaded flash movies’ like Youtube is the prefered movie format dear ThreeSpeech. Streaming WMA is the epitome of garbage.
Comment by Wollan — Mar 14, 2007 @ 5:30 am
Not to be hard on you guys, but its not gonna be a downloadable game, it will come out on a Blu-Ray disk. This has been posted about a millions times on all forums I’ve seen today.
Comment by Chad — Mar 14, 2007 @ 6:06 am
Yeah thats right Chad. Eurogamer posted an article which claimed that Sony made an announcement saying that Phil did not say it would be download only and it was coming out on blu-ray. How come threespeech who ar….sorry talk to Sony don’t know this? Whats going on?
Comment by stevieb — Mar 14, 2007 @ 1:39 pm
Download only? IGN says otherwise:
http://ps3.ign.com/articles/772/772517p1.html
“That’s a misinterpretation,” replied Sony’s spokesperson. “Phil was only addressing what the future of downloadable content meant for the industry and how important online support will be for games. He didn’t make any announcements.”
Comment by ps3fan — Mar 14, 2007 @ 2:38 pm
This game looks smokin’ awesome. I’m very excited about it (though a bit sad that they dropped the single-player mode). On-demand-split-screen is a great idea executed better than any game I’ve seen so far.
Comment by EViD — Mar 14, 2007 @ 2:59 pm
this is ridiculous how can a sony funded marketing company that maintains this site review sony games?
Comment by mike — Mar 14, 2007 @ 6:32 pm
Looks a wee bit like BF 2142, though that actually makes this sound more fun.
Comment by teamQJ — Mar 14, 2007 @ 9:34 pm
Do we know if we have the option to control the aircraft via a joystick and not use the 6-axis. Flying a plane with a joystick is actually pretty intuitive as this is how most aircraft are flown today…not by waving your hands around ???
date!
Comment by Date — Mar 15, 2007 @ 12:38 am
I think this looks pretty good - the only thing I spotted which I bet the dev teams are cringing about is that the jeep drives right through a concrete pillar in the vid as if there was no collision detection at all. To add insult the jeep reverses through it again, just in case we missed it.
Don’t get me wrong, I am practically wetting myself waiting to start home-brew coding on the PS3 and nobody can sway my opinion of it.
I just think these videos are a little bit uninspiring considering the previous videos we had seen. I actually thought this was going to be a killer game - I hope it still is - but these videos seem to reflect a much more lack-lusture reality.
Azu : I disagree, I think having > 100 ships in the air at once would be great and provide even more layers of playability. I can’t see todays connection speeds putting a constraint on this. It all depends on what you are sending and other games manage this quite happily. As an example, several years ago, PlanetSide - a Sony game - ran on my 4 year old PC with no problems - I had a pretty poor Broadband connection which I had to share with my flat mate and I was still able to play it - infact the only thing that really made a difference to the speed was the graphical options so obviously even then connection speed was not an issue.
Comment by andy — Mar 15, 2007 @ 8:36 am
Get a grip andy. The games still in development.
Comment by jasp — Mar 15, 2007 @ 4:45 pm
pretty good idea Scott, but its already been done. The game is called StarSiege Tribes. vehicles, Jet-Pacs and all.
Its the most fun 1st person shooter ever…(bold words) it has a really strong following…but the graphics were not that great, and then they screwed up the gameplay in the sequel. and that was that.
But I’d loveto se someone do this game again and do it right.
Comment by Jon — Dec 6, 2007 @ 4:55 pm
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