Hawx 2 - Tom Clancy

HAWX 2 takes combat flight sim realism to a whole new level. Last night, while battling helicopter gunships over insurgent-held oil platforms in the Persian Gulf, I managed to crash four times, writing off four very expensive jets in the process. This morning, when I went to fly the next campaign sortie, I discovered I’d been grounded.

There was no cutscene or message – the game simply refused to start. Clever Ubisoft have obviously included a secret Sim Squadron Leaderô feature that punishes profligacy with periods of forced heel-cooling. Brilliant!

Tired of fighting the West with guerilla tactics, insurgents are now insurging openly with conventional weapons such as jets and frigates. In the guise of various vacuous military pilots, it’s up to us to vanguard the counter-insurgency. Most of the time this means tearing around the sky spewing missiles at red squares (and, on one occasion, Red Square).Occasionally, you get to do something a little less manic, like refuelling on the wing, landing, guiding a UAV, or directing a gunship’s gatling gun at vehicles in a sleeping Middle Eastern town.

How fantastic you find all this depends largely on how many flight games you’ve played in the past and how satisfying you find pressing fire when a target icon changes colour. If you’ve tasted the aerial ambrosia that is Crimson Skies, Wings of Prey, or Red Baron, it’s all going to seem decidedly second-rate. Those titles made their sky duels feel more meaningful or murderous; realism or imagination always kept unflattering FPS comparisons at bay.