Why, StarHawk, why? You were one of my top picks for ‘the’ games of the 2012; but after everything was said, done, and played I had enough content for a Mini Game Review (please note that Mini Game Reviews aren’t in themselves bad, but just smaller than my regular review – usually due to minimal content on the games themselves (and for StarHawk that’s not a good sign)). Well let’s get this over with.
Now for those who don’t know StarHawk is the spiritual successor to WarHawk a semi-large multiplayer first person shooter. So the story in this game has nothing to do with the first game (which had no story – more on that later). Players take on the role of Emmett Graves; and combination Wild West mercenary and outer space oil rigger. He drives off bandits and the like from trying to steal an omnipotent source of energy called Rift which people need to practically anything in the game. Of course it has the habit of turning people into glowing mutant freaks but I’m sure that will never be addressed in the game. Anyway, Graves’ next mission is on a planet called Dust where a town called White Sands needs protection from new form of raider call Outcasts. Organized and deadly they pose a direct threat to the town and strange enough, have a connection to Rift Energy. So it’s up to Graves to defeat the Outcasts, discover they’re secrets, and confront this own past on the planet called Dust.
StarHawk is a 3rd person shooter with an interesting concept: weapons, vehicles and even building on demand. Allow me to explain: whether in single or multiplayer – your objectives are killing enemies and gathering rift energy (by killing enemies and destroying stuff). With the rift energy players can summon building and installations that range from attacking, defense and support to even spawning weapons, vehicles and even other players. Dropping buildings on your enemies (mancaking they call it) is a very popular technique, but difficult one to master. With an arsenal at ones finger tips it’s easy for coordinated teams of players to litter the battlefield with war machines and provide interesting online matches. However…
Ranking
I’ll be honest people, the single player was the best part of the game; it wasn’t an impressive story (as about as formulaic as you can get) but the action in the game was well balanced. The multiplayer however is either pure uncontrolled chaos or a lesson in spawn camp & spanking. Chances are new players will show up while a match is already going on: if they’re on a team that’s winning then they have nothing to do nor can they build anything because the ‘build limit’ had been reached – if they’re on a team that’s losing then no matter what they do it will only end up fragged because a well-organized team can keep you bottled up for the whole match especially when players can build spawn points anywhere on the map. There are different modes of course, but like I said before the two main things you have to do to make headway is killing enemies and gathering rift energy and without the ability to do one it’s very difficult to do the other. Not that the game is broken or unbalanced (well it’s a little unbalanced) to the point unplayability, but you’ll have a lot of frustrated nights trying to master this title and I, for one, simply don’t have the time. My recommendation? Rent it or wait for Dust 514 to do this whole massive multiplayer online first/third person shooter right (hopefully).
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