Starhawk Review

Incognito Entertainment released the addictively fun game Warhawk in 2007, five years later and that studio has split apart with most members going into either Eat Sleep Play or LightBox Interactive.

Starhawk
Developer: LightBox Interactive
Price: $60
Platform: PS3 (reviewed)

It’s LightBox who have decided to give us a sort of spiritual successor by flinging Warhawk into the future with Starhawk. LightBox basically took the Warhawk formula, threw in some RTS elements, a little bit of tower defense, and came out with their golden egg. It’s hard to explain in words why this addition to the game changes so much in each game you’re in, but you really have to play it to see.

So the game opens up introducing you to Emmett Graves who has the lovely job of hunting down Outcasts, people who have been tainted by a new resource called Rift energy and turned into crazed creatures. Early on you find out your long dead brother isn’t really dead but is leading an army of Outcasts against regular humans and it’s your brotherly duty to put him down. The setting and story hits all the marks of catching interest, but playing through the actual campaign doesn’t really give any sort of satisfaction if you’re playing it for a story. Each mission is basically designed to ease you into how to use the many items you’ll encounter in multiplayer matches. It all ends up being a 5 or so hour tutorial which is nice of them to do a campaign instead of a half-assed tutorial, but it begs the question of if you’d rather have a 30 minute tutorial that quickly explained everything in return for more effort going into the multiplayer. The kind of stuff you can expect to drop down from space include bunkers, bikes, shield generators, jetpacks, tanks, buggies, and more. I’ve got to say, I think the Sideswipe bike has got to my both one of my top designed bikes and most fun to drive. That power-slide man, that fucking power-slide.

Now that we’re done with that nonsense, let’s get on to the meat of the game, the online. You’ll be able to partake in 32 player battles across half a dozen maps that each contain totally different variations, so in truth it’s really a dozen maps. Fantastic news is that Lightbox revealed that all future map packs will be released for free so as to not fracture the community which is fantastic news considering Warhawk was split into 4 different ways because of the 3 DLC packs which was infuriating. The returning game modes for multiplayer include capture the flag, deathmatch, team deathmatch, and zones. The TDM and CTF modes are pretty standard, but with the added build & battle system the chances of you playing the same game twice are pretty slim. Each game I played had people building their defenses completely differently, they’d even adjust to how the other team played in the next round. Zones is sort of the marquee mode of Warhawk and it’s back in this game. The goal is to capture each zone and stay in the area long enough for it to grow into a level 3 zone; the more zones you have the more points are fed into your ticker, winner is the team with the most. These games are the most hectic with teams shifting control of the field constantly throughout matches with smart players able to pull ahead from a possible loss easily.

Just as in Warhawk there is a sort of crushing feeling you get when you play against the clearly better players. You’ll find them roaming servers in groups and utterly smash your disorganized squad with their building placements and beautiful hawk control. It’s a real annoyance when entire games can shift in favor of a team with just a small group of these guys, but thankfully Lightbox has made it so that even the players who aren’t doing much can still be rewarded. On both sides, if you simply build emplacements for your team, keep everything repaired, and kill the occasional enemy who wanders into your camp you’ll be earning support medals; this way players on teams with better players are still rewarded for helping out a little and the players going against these guys will still earn points for delaying their victory. Warhawk did have a massive difficulty curve, but I feel it’s been toned considerably down this time around. A friend of mine who was complete rubbish at Warhawk was able to pick this up quick and contribute more in one match than he did in days of playing Warhawk. There’s also a co-op mode called Prospector; this mode feels more like a defense game than the multiplayer because you’ll be alerted to the type of enemies incoming, their direction, and it’s up to you to decide which structures would work best to handle the next wave.

Warhawk veterans should be happy to know that the ridiculous requirements to rank up are completely gone and replaced with a simple XP system. You might not have that prestige of showing off you hit General, but you’ll be able to show off your weapon mastery instead in your player profile with ranks going from bronze to gold. As you level up you’ll unlock skill points and customization options for your character and vehicles. Skill points are used to purchase ‘perks’ you can equip (only one) to help you out; each perk is fully unlocked by completing a certain challenge like scoring 10 melee kills in a single match as well, once the challenge in met you can then purchase it. To those groaning about Call of Duty infecting your game don’t fret, these are very minor and are all support related perks. You’ll see things like viewing all enemies on your radar, slowly regenerate vehicles you’re in, reduced respawn time, bonus XP, and more. They can be switched whenever you want, but you can only have one active at a time. It is slightly annoying that you can’t access the skills page when you’re not playing in a game; sure it’s not a big deal once you’ve unlocked most of them, but it’s just a weird thing for Lightbox to have done. In the customization menu you’ll be able to pimp out your character, select the paint job you want other players to view on each vehicle you enter (you can equip separate paint jobs per vehicle which is a nice touch), and customize a decal that will appear on your character and vehicles. You’ll be able to change the pieces of clothing for each body part with quite a lot of options.

The graphics aren’t ground breaking, but everything has a very nice look to it. I’m not a fan of how the desert areas look, but the actual alien planets and space stages look brilliant and are well designed. One thing I do love is the way the buildings you drop begin to construct themselves; there’s just something incredibly satisfying about dropping a bunker down and watching as it quickly pulls itself together. If you didn’t bother preordering it because of Gamestop I’d highly recommend buying the soundtrack off PSN because it’s simply fantastic. It’s a damn shame they didn’t bother including a physical CD since that cover for the album is too good to waste.

The Final Word
The first thing you need to decide is whether you want to drop $60 on a multiplayer game. Sure, there’s a story to play, but it’s not really that interesting and mainly serves as a guide to elements you’ll experience online. Warhawk veterans should fall in love with this just as they did before and newcomers will be able to jump right in as well.

– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good