Saturday, May 19, 2007

Warhawk - Get It Straight Up, Or With A Twist


Warhawk is one of those games that Sony just doesn't seem to know what to do with. First it had a single player campaign, then it was multiplayer only. First it was coming out on Blu-Ray, then it was only available by download. After that, it was Blu-Ray only again. And now it's both. Way to give a game emotional problems Sony...

As it stands right now, you'll be able to download Warhawk directly from the PlayStation Network if you want to save a few bucks and don't care about having the physical game disk. But, if you prefer, you will also be able to buy it in a store on Blu-Ray (probably for a few bucks more). As an added bonus for those folks that buy the disk, it will come packaged with a free Bluetooth headset for use with the game, and any other game that supports voice chat. That's a great bonus, as a decent headset can easily run $20-$40 bucks (or $60 if you're an Xbox 360 user).

Also of interest for this game is that it will feature an online beta starting May 24 (sorry, the sign up period has already passed). I'm thinking that the developers want to make sure people are satisfied with the multiplayer aspects of the game, since that's all they'll be getting. As I mentioned earlier, there will be no single player campaign out of the box. This is the biggest sticking point of the game for me. Sure, multiplayer is great, but what happens in a year or two when most people have moved on to other games? Putting together a match is going to become a real PITA. Of course, it's possible that Sony will release a single player option as a future download, but I hate microtransactions.

This game is currently scheduled to be released in the third quarter of the year, but that could change depending on the outcome of the beta. It'll certainly be worth a look when it does hit, and if the price is right, it may at least be worth the download. Right now, this game has some serious potential - let's hope it doesn't get wasted.

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