Tom Clancy’s HAWX is a flying action simulation game where you get to fly all war planes that exsit to this current date. Even working prototypes. The game is basically about shooting everything that is considered hostile. Not everything is just fly in deliver the load and fly out, in the missions, you do get some interesting and difficult task like protect air force one and provide close support for your AWACS. Thou i will say that it might look very nice and realistic but to me it just looks very movie like, you the best pilot can do everything. The game allows you the pilot to push your plane to its extreme limits to simulate almost any awesome stunt war move which practically allows you to dominate the air. These moves are like swivelling  around at mach 1 dodging missles by the inch and doing backflips in the air. Even the most unrealistic thing that players like me tend to ignore is that the plane can carry over 100 missles or about over 200 payloads, which in reality i don’t think a real jet can carry more than 10.  But come on, its a game and i just want to blast everything in the air. Sadly i couldn’t get any screen captures from my PC as i do not know why i can’t print screen for this game, so here are some random pics from IGN.com

Target Locked and missiles away

The graphics is a thumbs up from me. The gameplay is adreneline pumping as the game packs the sky and groud with alot of targets which you can blast all the way. You can never get tired of the locking sound of your missle ready to go caseu thats is what you will always be waiting for. The hard part well would be evading missiles i guess. And hard would mean dodging a few missiles with AA firing upon you at the same time. That is extreme, but its a game.

Flares!!!

Dont know how to fly? Well there is the ERS (Enhanced Reality System). Long story short, it tells the pilot on what is the best course to fly the plane to get the best hit on the target. I rarely use this as i prefer freestyle flying. But in some missions this is useful, especially for ground strike targets because you have to strike targets at hard to reach places like in the middle of the city with tall buildings. You could do it without the ERS, just dont fly straight into the building in front of you. i would suggest not to rely on it too much as sometimes the enemy will jam the ERS frequency and disable it.

ERS flight path

Overall the game is a nice game to play. If you’re a simulation fan who likes action, its a good recommendation. The requirements would be:

Operating System: Windows XP SP3 / Windows Vista SP1

Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2.0 GHz / AMD Athlon XP 2000+ or higher (Intel Core 2 Duo 6320 / AMD Athlon X2 4000+ or higher recommended)

RAM: 1 GB (2 GB recomended)

Video card: NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900 128MB / ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB or higher (256MB video memory recommended)

Sound card: DirectX 9.0c compatible

DirectX version: DirectX 9.0 or 10.0 libraries, support 10.1.

Hard drive space: 7 GB

Dawn of War 2. The sequel to the warhammer strategy game series. I have never played the first dawn of war, but have played Dark Crusade and SoulStorm however. Seems that dawn of war was a different gameplay from the usual 40K series. It follows the Company of Heroes style where you dont get to build anything but just capture locations and Kill the boss, probably due to Essence Game Engine 2.0.

mission deployment screen

The variety is very limited in Dawn of War 2. There are about 9 maps common maps in the whole game and if i recall about 2-4 special assignment related maps, where its only playable due to special mission assignments. The objective is always the same, go in and kill the boss, you could however take the time to hunt down all the enemies in the maps and capture strategic locations, which would help you boost some power ups. Overall its a fast pace game, every map took me about 5 – 20 mins at most, i believe you could actually finish the game in a day (if you rush).

your units for the entire game

There are 6 characters you would get in the game, and you only get to play as the space marine factions. You start with the Force Commander (you the commander) and Tarkus (terminator squad), then you would get Cyrus (scout) and Avitus (another Terminator squad using chainguns), soon after you will come across Thadeous (Jump Jet Assault squad) and later Davian thule(Dreadnaught). You’ll play with the first 4 units for quite a while before getting the Dreadnaught. You get the Dreadnaught when finishing one of the tyranid main missions, something about getting the original sample of the hive.

The Force commander, and collected war gear

“i’ve come to destroy you”, woo hoo, the dreadnaught

Each Squad is good with their own abilities, and during the game you get war gears which would allow you to upgrade your character. Each character has a max level of 20 and the amount of points does not allow you to cover all their attributes, so choose wisely when giving each character points.

Avitus in terminator armor, carrying big chaingun and missle backpack ranged damage 1800++

Near the end you will come across something called terminator Armor, well its one of the only wargear that doesn’t get dropped so far i’ve played but comes as a reward for completing3 main missions only, so you only get 3 terminator armors. Personally i don’t find the terminator armor that grand as the normal armor has better performance and you would also loose alot of the nice abilities when you equip the terminator armor. However you get to equip terminator weapons which obviously deals a hell lot more damage which makes up for the lack of armor i guess.

Anyway, my final conclusion is, if you’re looking for a fast pace and alot of strategy thinking because you only have very limited units (you do get reinforcements), this is the game for you.

Requirements: Windows XP SP2 / Windows Vista SP1

Minimum: P4 3.2 or any Intel Core 2 Duo, 1GB RAM (XP) 1.5GB RAM (Vista), 5.5 GB HDD space, 128 MB Nvidia GeForce 6600 GT / 128 MB ATI X1600, or equivalent (must have Shader Model 3.0 to run the game), Soundcard 100% DirectX 9.0c compliant card 

Recommended: AMD Athlon 64×2 4400+ or any Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.0 GB (Windows XP and Vista), 256 MB Nvidia GeForce 7800 GT / 256 MB ATI X1900, or equivalent, 100% DirectX 9.0c compliant card sound hardware

*the left green bar you see on my pictures is due to my geforce performance monitor which i do not know how to turn it off, its not a game bug or anything.

Tomb Raider Underworld, also known as tomb raider 8. I have been playing tomb raider since the Legend series because the graphic performace was quite nice since that time. From tomb raider legend till now the game engine is by crystal dynamics and the scenery has been fantastic throughout the game.

This time, the tomb raider series continues from the legend series but there are characters from the anniversary. It seems the anniversary series came out just to remind us of a character which would appear in the unerworld series. (Tomb raider anniversary is a remake of tomb raider 1, with better graphics). Now we have characters from the Legend and anniversary series which both of the older series are from different time and story lines.

The game scenery is fantastic as before. Gameplay is also quite good with new environment interaction. The storyline is quite ok. Thou i would say that the puzzles were not as hard as it seems ( just had to slam my head on the keyboard a couple of times think out of the box ). Lara this time looks more mature and abit more aggresive now. I suppose because of the series legend, she found out that she could somehow save her mother and the cause of her mothers disappearence is due to her.

Overall i would give an 8 out of 10. I like good graphic performace, good graphic content and a good gameplay to go with it. The story line however is abit short for my preference, the ending is abit sad thou, Lara had to kill her mutated mother somewhere near the end (spoiler).

Requirements: Windows XP or Windows Vista OS

Minimum: Intel Pentium 4 3+GHz or AMD Athlon 2.5+GHz, 1GB RAM (Windows XP) / 2GB RAM (Windows Vista), 8 GB of free space, NVIDIA GeForce 6 series 6800GT (or better) / ATI 1800XT (or better), DirectX 9.0c compliant card

Recommended: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz or Athlon 64 X2 4400+, 2 GB RAM, 8 GB of free space, NVidia GeForce 9800 GTX or ATI HD4800, DirectX 9.0c compliant card

Need For Speed Undercover. Latest NFS series on 2008 also known as NFS 12. My one word to describe it: Disappointment. With all the previous series like Most Wanted and Pro Street, atleast there is something to look up to like good storyline, good gameplay or good graphics. Undercover on the other hand, is just a pure let down in my eyes. The gameplay is to arcade or fake to me (no real driving skill needed), the story line looks just too lame, the graphics are just ridiculous (even most wanted, 3 series back is better) and the realism is just not there (1 min in sprint, and i can count no more than 20 cars on the highway).

i have only played Need for Speed Undercover for 2 hours, and i have no idea what they are introducing, talking about or want me to get excited about. To me, the most wanted series so far is the best for gameplay and pro street is the best in terms of graphics and Carbon is quite OK. Anything before that is quite just leisure racing.

With most wanted, carbon and prostreet being quite good in certain perspectives, i expected undercover to deliver much more, but what a let down. I won’t even bother explaining more now, this is such a let down for me that i really don’t know what to brag about in this undercover series. My opinion: “it’s not what it looks”.

Command & Conquer Red Alert 3. Released at the end of october 2008 for PCs and mid november for Xbox 360. For me, i’ve played the whole C&C series on PCs since the first Red Alert. For this end of the year 2008, Red Alert 3 seems to have a wild imaginative story. Now it seems that the russions have built a time machine and messed up the past. The result is 3 factions, the allies vs the russions and the additional Empire of the Rising Sun (Japan). With Generals and Tiberium Wars having 3 factions, Red Alert doesn’t want to be left out as well. So what do we have next? 4 way battle royale?

So far Red Alert 3 still keeps the classic stuff like the Iron Curtain, Chronosphere, Appocalypse Tank, Tanya, Tesla coil and a few more. The main new stuff however are quite a shock. For the first time in the C&C series (if i recall) you can build on water (yes, you heard me right). Airfields, power plants, defense structures… about everything so far, except for barracks (obviously). Some tanks are amphibious so you could only build the amphibious ones on water. Cool or Weird?

Another new thing so far is the Co-op mode. Now you have an ally in all missions. Ally as in another player playing by your side (in campaign mode/skirmish optional). This ally can be the AI or play online with friends to complete a mission. The thing about co-op mode is that you share resources (yes, you heard me right again). Something irritating if i were to say, but you’ll get the hang of it.

Other than that are just modifications and tweaks on units and structures. 

Each faction has 9 missions. Total of 27 in the game. Computer AI this time is way better than before (they know when to retreat, regroup and backstab). Overall i’ll give it a 7 out of 10. I’ve been a fan of C&C and i’ll always keep a look out for its new series.

Requirements:

Minimum: Windows XP SP2, AMD Athlon 3000+/Intel P4 2.2GHz or equivalent, 1GB of RAM, 6GB free on HD, nVidia GeForce 6 series/ATI X800 or better, DX9c or 10 compatible sound.

Recommended: Windows Vista SP1, AMD Athlon X2 (3500+)/Intel Core 2 Duo (2.6GHz) or equivalent, 2GB of RAM, 10GB free on HD, nVidia GeForce 6800 or better/ATI X900 or better.

An internet connection is required to activate for online gaming.