H.A.W.X.: Difference between revisions

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The protagonist is a Captain in the U.S. Air Force named David Crenshaw, who is part of the titular High Altitude Warfare Xperimental Squadron. He begins the game on his last day on the job, supporting covert operations being conducted south of America's border (''[[Ghost Recon]]'' fans should recognize the mission as [[Continuity Nod|being a part of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2's storyline]]). Afterwards, the H.A.W.X. squadron is deactivated and subsequently headhunted, along with Crenshaw, by Artemis Global Security. The team quickly proves themselves to be one of Artemis' most valuable assets and helps secure them a place as one of the richest and most powerful PMCs in the world. Life has never been so good. Right?

Well, who are we kidding? Life in fiction never stays good.

 

 

The game has the player flying various real-world aircraft on their missions and employs a semi-realistic simulation of aerial combat. Under normal conditions, the game prevents the plane from stalling and limits its maneuverability but this limiter can be disengaged to allow the player to perform all sorts of funky post-stall maneuvers. The other aspects of the game are more arcade-like; planes carry mountains upon mountains of missiles, even on the highest difficulty levels, and there is no need to keep track of fuel or the effects of physics on the human body. If this is all starting to sound familiar to you, chances are you have played ''[[Ace Combat]]'' before, and you would be right. The gameplay is almost identical to that of the ''Ace Combat'' games and there is a degree of overlap between the fanbases of the two. On the other hand, ''H.A.W.X.'' has been ported to the PC whereas ''Ace Combat'' remains a console-exclusive.

To date, there is only one other installment in the series, ''H.A.W.X. 2''.

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* [[Ace Pilot]]: The titular squadron is made up of these, but they're not the only ones. The US Navy and Japanese pilots are also pretty damn good in Operation Typhoon. [[Ace Pilot|Ace pilots]] are also frequent enemies, being more agile than normal [[Mooks]] (Though they still die from the same amount of damage).

* [[Air Force One]]: There's an [[Escort Mission]] involving it after {{spoiler|Artemis betrays the U.S. and launches a full-scale invasion}}, where Crenshaw must escort the President to a secure location, fighting off enemy fighters that try to shoot it down. The mission gets harder toward the end when {{spoiler|Artemis}} brings in radar jammers that make it harder for your aircraft to lock-on and stay locked-on.

* [[Camera Screw]]: All damage on your vehicle causes a fuzz on your screen, even the weak anti-aircraft guns (it's pretty much the only thing keeping them from being simple annoyances). This fuzzing could cause you do crash or get hit again if you're in the middle of a heated battle.

** The OFF mode transition can also be jarring at times, due to the game wanting to be "dynamic" and thus causing your camera to focus on your plane first before panning over to your targeted enemy. This causes a delay between when you switch and when you can actually fire, which can be pretty jarring when you're trying to attack something. This also makes switching targets a bit harder. However, the game is smart enough to realize that if you switch in the middle of a heated battle, the view will just immediately change.

** The second installment even has this on its box: Fight in the same conflict depicted in Tom Clancy's [[Ghost Recon]] Future Soldier

* [[Cavalry Betrayal]]: The Artemis Battle Group that was supposed to help the U.S. defeat the remaining remnants of Las Trinidad's Navy arrives and promptly betrays the U.S., attacking the James Lawrence Battle Group and causing the HAWX squadron to defect back to the U.S.

* [[Chasing Your Tail]]: The ERS actively moves you in this sort of maneuver to attack your enemy. Of course, if an enemy tries to do this to you, you can easily switch to OFF mode, spin around mid air, and nail 'em.

* [[Code Name]]: You only know your wingmen by their call sign. Strangely, your own call sign is rather underused, with most people calling you by your real name.

* [[Corrupt Corporate Executive]]: Adrian Dewinter and presumably the other Artemis executives.

* [[Crew of One]]: [[Averted Trope|Averted]] in the [[Justified Tutorial]], played straight in the rest.

* [[Dueling Games]]: With [[Ace Combat]].

* [[Eagle Land]]: Las Trinidad views America as Flavor 2.

* [[Easy Logistics]]: The only explanation for how Artemis managed to invade the US.

* EMP: The satellite control center and its generators are protected by EMPs. The EMP in the game avoids the "temporarily-disabled only" aspect of the trope, but still isn't completely realistic as it causes your plane to [[Made of Explodium|explode in a spectacular burst]] of [[You Fail Physics Forever|electricity]] instead of simply disabling your plane and causing it to crash.

* [[Escort Mission]]: There are a few missions that have these, though none of them are extremely bad. The fact that enemies will ignore your target and attack you if you manage to get within their "target circle" helps.

* [[Fog of War]]: If your opponent is using radar jammers, your radar and Tac-Map will be obscured in an effect that's very similar to this trope in [[Real Time Strategy]] games. This is especially apparent during Operation Iron Arrow, where the only area that's visible (and defensible, as your missiles don't work in the "fog") is the area surrounding your AWACs plane. Luckily, this area gets progressively bigger the more jammers you destroy.

* [[Justified Tutorial]]: The mission that teaches the player OFF mode is worked into the story.

* [[Kaizo Trap]]: It is still possible to crash your plane and die after you completed all the objectives in a mission. The sequel has landing sequences, which makes this trope happen even more often.

** The Ultranationalist Russians in the sequel have access to a [[Kill Sat]] as well, and kill many of your allies with it.

* [[Lightning Bruiser]]: The best planes (like the [[Cool Plane|F-22 Raptor]] and the [[Rare Vehicles|Su-47 Berkut]]) are like this.

* [[Made of Iron]]: Enemy bombers and transport planes are like this. Planes that you can fly that are like this include the A-10 Thunderbolt II and the Su-25 Frogfoot.

* [[Mighty Glacier]]: The ground support planes, particularly the A-10 Thunderbolt II, tend to be like this.

* [[Misguided Missile]]: The point behind the Target Override Pod. The missile is redirected from another plane to yours.

* [[NGO Superpower]]: Artemis Global Security apparently has the resources to maintain its own air force and navy, complete with a state-of-the-art battlecruiser and cutting edge cyber weapons.

** They also manage to have enough resources to ''invade America''.

** [[Fridge Brilliance]]: One way to disable a nuke is to [[Cutting the Knot|shoot it]], because nukes require precisely timed explosions to go critical, with only a small fraction of a second of error. Thus, blowing it up will still cause radiation to blanket a rather large area, but it will not destroy a whole city.

* [[No, I Am Behind You]]: This is one of the things you can do with the supermanuverability granted in OFF mode.

* [[Pass Through the Rings]]: The ERS in this game is possibly the only [[Justified Trope|justified]] use of this trope. Not only is it actually helpful and not very frustrating to use (and there are only a few instances in the game where you ''have'' to use it), this sort of technology is actually in development right now.

* [[Rare Vehicles]]: Many. There's the typical ones like the Su-47 Berkut (which is just [[Rule of Cool|too]] [[Cool Plane|cool]] to pass up) and the YF-23 Black Widow II/Grey Ghost ([[Rule of Cool|like]][[Cool Plane|wise]]), but it's the most ridiculous with the A-12 Avenger II. Although it's just a [[Preorder Bonus]], the A-12 Avenger II in [[Real Life]] never had a working prototype before it was [[Screwed by the Network|cancelled]] by the government due to [[Awesome but Impractical|cost overruns and delays]].

* [[Scenery Porn]]: The GeoEye imaging looks absolutely ''gorgeous'' in this game (that is, until you get too close to the ground).

* [[Screw the Rules, I Have a Nuke]]: Artemis manages to control ''all'' of America's nukes, actually, and naturally uses that to blackmail the U.S. into complying with its demands. The final mission involves you trying to prevent them from carrying out their threat.

* [[Squad Controls]]: There's in extremely simple one in this game, with the only two controls being attack and defend. Attack causes your wingmen to attack your highlighted target, and defend means your wingmen return and fly behind you.

* [[Short-Range Long-Range Weapon]]: Missile ranges aren't as bad as in [[Ace Combat]], but they are still much shorter than in [[Real Life]]. Of course, sniping at each other over long distances is much less [[Rule of Fun|fun]] than dogfighting, so [[Tropes Are Not Bad]].

* [[The Cavalry]]: A flight of F-16s fly in just in time to save Washington D.C from falling to enemy forces.

* [[Timed Mission]]: Some missions force you to complete a series of objectives in a certain amount of time. However, since you're flying a faster-than-sound aircraft, there's usually enough time to finish the mission.

* [[Training Dummy]]: The OFF Mode Certification mission has no actual enemies, with targets mainly being flying drones to teach you how to fly in OFF Mode. Even the armed drones fire dummy missiles that do not do any real damage (the effects of damaging, like the fuzzing screen, however, is simulated).

* [[Universal Driver's License]]: [[Handwaved]] by you being in an "elite", experimental squadron, but it's still pretty ridiculous to be able to fly many different planes (including [[Rare Vehicles|rare or non-existent ones]]) with ease.

* [[Wing Man]]: Who somehow manage to fly faster than you when needed, [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|even if they have an inferior plane]]. [[Artificial Stupidity|And then they refuse to actually do anything useful unless explicitly ordered to.]]

* [[With This Herring]]: You start with dinky planes and have to work your way up. [[New Game+|Planes that are unlocked, however, stay unlocked, allowing you to refly old missions with the best hardware.]]

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