Starhawk Review

For many years, fans of Warhawk were waiting for a successor to the game that soaked up hours upon hours of their time. It was never a game that blew anyone away with amazing visuals. No, where Warhawk excelled was its engaging gameplay. So when rumours of a game called Starhawk started buzzing around, the fan base got rather excited. After all, while Warhawk was primarily a terrestrial-based combat game, Starhawk promised to be a game that saw space combat become a realistic possibility. Those aspirations were never truly realised, but Starhawk is still a game that should be considered a worthy successor; it brings a lot to the table.

One of Warhawk's strongest facets was that the developers decided to ditch the proposed single-player campaign and just focus on the multiplayer. It's not a choice that's been replicated with Starhawk, but it's easy to see why. Many games try to offer a single-player campaign that acts as a tutorial for the online experience, but many fail to do so in an effective manner. With Starhawk the concept works perfectly.

On the surface, Starhawk is a game that's pretty generic. You're a soldier, you can shoot stuff and also get behind the controls of a few vehicles. Where the single-player has emphasis though, is with the new build mechanic, and the utilisation of Hawks.

It's quite a short, but sweet affair and it's certainly not going to win any awards for the strength of its narrative. However, the single-player campaign does what it needs to do and when you do go online, you'll at least have a better understanding of the types of structures you can build and where they're applicable.

Shifting over to the realm of online multiplayer, there's some good, but also some bad. The good is that the developers have tried to introduce some new elements, like the build mechanic. They've also tried to balance the game somewhat. The bad, is that some of the new elements don't seem all that fleshed out and that the majority of the game is the same as Warhawk, just not quite as fun.

To give a bit more depth around the build mechanic, here's a brief rundown. As you go through games, you'll collect Rift Points. This can either be for doing an action like killing someone, or capturing a zone. But it can also be from destroying Rift barrels, or just existing in a zone that you occupy. You can then use these Rift Points to buy buildings, although your team can only have a maximum of 32 structures at a time.