#FF00AA

We already knew the game looked great, so let’s get that over with: the graphics are very nice, and even flying close to the ground looks almost realistic (there aren’t quite as many building boxes as drawn on the floor, but you’re flying fast enough that it doesn’t really matter).

Interestingly, the demo’s first mission (and I never realized there was a second mission until I checked out internet writeups) focuses on the game’s original, ambitious and controversial “assists off” mode, which pulls the camera wayyy back and lets you actually see what your plane is doing — not even letting you move the camera manually, so that you have to focus on how to reach your target.

If you’re the kind of simulation guy who insists that the right way to play a car racing game is in the dashboard view, you’re gonna hate this; but I’m not, because I’ve long realized that in order to drive you’re supposed to be aware of your surroundings in a way that can simply not be emulated by a video game unless you’re using an external viewpoint. And, since planes are so much faster and more nimble than cars, the external camera has to pull back farther in order to be useful. It’s a little less pretty and shiny, with your plane so small on the screen, and it doesn’t make you feel like you’re really in the cockpit, but it’s a fantastic way to make you actually feel how your plane handles. Although I guess people are justified to complain that there’s no way to mix and match — either you play with all assists and the cockpit view (or nose or tail view), or you turn them off and you can only use what commenters are describing as “radio-controlled plane” view.

Now, with the camera hovering so far away from the plane, and aligned with your target rather than your jet’s nose, the question is: how do you actually control it? There are two modes: the “expert” controls leave you with the plane’s stick under your thumb, but they’re exceedingly hard to master because you have to always be aware of your orientation — if you roll upside-down, the camera doesn’t follow you, so you have to mentally adjust (think driving in reverse, only to the power of a thousand). The “normal” controls, without which they could never have shipped that external view, remind me of Halo’s vehicles: you still control pitch as you would, but left and right become stage-left and stage-right instead of roll; if you keep your stick all the way to the left, for instance, your plane will do clean horizontal donuts instead of rolling on itself.

Like I said, this is heresy to any simulation fan. But it just makes sense. This is the first time I’ve actually been aware of what my plane was actually doing when I was maneuvering to dodge a missile or align with a target; the first time I could feel, and comprehend, what happened when I cut the gas and hit the brakes to loop back behind an enemy. In a nutshell, it’s arcade-y in a Project Gotham Racing way, not a Mario Kart way — the physics and everything feel pretty right, but the controls are a bit assisted.

And it’s so fun.

Once you’re done learning how to recover from a stall, the second mission drops you in the middle of a big invasion of Rio — which feels overwhelming the first few times, then more manageable and not so threatening after all (and you might want to replay it if you enjoy the gameplay, because you have three different fighter jets to unlock with your experience points). Other than the frustration of being offered to load from the last checkpoint when you crash, only to find out that there’s a huge first chunk of the mission that doesn’t have any checkpoints, it’s also a lot of fun.

Bear in mind, I’m not a flight-sim nut. But I’m not a mindless arcade fan, either — I’m the kind of gamer who prefers Project Gotham Racing over Forza, but can’t imagine playing Saints Row because you have to drive with the face buttons. And why am I always coming back to car-racing analogies? Because I don’t think there’s ever been a flying game quite like Hawx, such a mix of realism and accessibility.

Oh, speaking of accessibility, I forgot: the triangles-in-the-sky assistance that you might have seen in videos, which helps you evade attackers or position yourself behind an enemy or drop a missile on a tank hidden between buildings, is a great tool to learn the right maneuvers, as I expected, and it’s also optional — you have to trigger it by pressing’ X.’ Which I didn’t expect, and is great for people who don’t want the training wheels.

The game also nicely embeds Xbox Live right into the campaign menu, showing you how many open games are available for joining as you’re about to start, but… as you should already know, I don’t do co-op with strangers, so I haven’t tried it. According to xbox.com, it’s four-player co-op, so that’s not too shabby.

It’s too bad that the immediate reaction of aficionados will be to reject the compulsory outside view; for once, I think Ubisoft, in its neverending quest to dumb down gameplay, has done something really new and interesting. Fortunately, the Tom Clancy brand should help sell the game to the people who will actually like it. Definitely recommended, and I insist you force yourself a bit to try and get used to the game’s unique perspective.