PS3 Hands-On: Warhawk

One of the PS3's most tangible titles steps up to the reality check.

Sony's pre-E3 briefing last week had many ups and downs (mostly downs, depending on who you ask) but there was one game that stood out by virtue of its controls alone: Warhawk. The game that was considered an also-ran when Sony ran its target renders last year was one of the big games at E3 this year, and the seemingly gimmicky tilt-controls are a big part of the reason why.

Sony's shoehorning of the tilt-sensing feature into the new controller took many people by surprise, and when Phil Harrison brought Incognito lead developer Dylan Jobe on stage to duck and dive like he was having a fit, it seemed even more of a joke. But here's the thing: look past the apparent Wii controller rip-off and you'll find a game that really does work well with its new handling scheme.

Jobe told me two days later on the show floor that even though Sony confirmed that the controller would feature tilt-controls less than six months ago, Incognito had been hoping for it all along, coding hooks, as it were, to slot in the technology. And it shows. Controlling your high-tech hover-jet is beguiling at first, but once you start to throw yourself into it, it feels spot-on.

You turn and tilt the controller as if it were a flight wheel - tilt back to pull up, forward to dive, left to bank; back-and-left to turn, etc. The surprising part is how responsive it all feels. Your craft will sometimes wobble a little, especially in your first few ginger minutes and when it's almost at a standstill, but controlling it accurately isn't too much of a chore. I noticed quite a few people having difficulty coming to grips with it, but this could also have something to do with their reticence to get really into it with people flocking around them.

It's hard to get a bead on the game because the demo shows so little of it. The E3 demo was all about letting you feel the controller - it was, after all, the only game at the show that used it - and less about giving you an insight into what you can expect from the final product. Even still, taking out drones and bigger ships was a lot of fun, and the whole experience was smooth.

Targeting enemies is as simple as passing the reticule over them, giving you a chance to fling off a few missiles. Your main gun is quite effective too at shooting enemies out the sky, but, again, this could be a result of the demo being dumbed down for the sake of the controls.

Warhawk was not the best game that Sony had at its booth, but it was also far from being the worst. Maybe it was because people realized that the controls actually worked well in the game, but I noticed almost no hostility to it at the show, which is quite a different story from the general feeling toward it at Sony's press conference. My time with Warhawk was brief but it left me wanting more. There aren't all the many must-buys yet on the PlayStation 3, but this is definitely among the should-plays.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo.com