Starhawk
Reviewed By Stephen Pastic
A spiritual sequel to 2007's PS3 exclusive Warhawk, Starhawk attempts to carve its own niche by melding a third person shooter with slight RTS elements. An interesting conceit, but does it translate to a worthwhile purchase in the finished product?
The plot of Starhawk revolves around the mining of a substance known as Rift Energy. However, this substance is less than 100% safe and some unfortunate souls exposed to the energy have been transformed into savage creatures known as Outcasts. Much of the story revolves around the efforts of the rift miners trying to secure energy sources, whilst the Outcasts are hell bent on attacking these sites for some reason.
Players control Emmett Graves, a sort of gun-for-hire working to assist the rift miners on various jobs that are subject to Outcast attacks. Whilst the narrative certainly isn't going to win any awards, it does do a serviceable job in framing both the world and the missions such that the player isn't completely clueless as to what's going on. Backup is provided by Emmett's friend and partner Cutter, who assists the player in providing both guidance and dropping structures onto the battlefield from high above.
Gameplay involves three core tenets: third person shooting on foot, third person aerial combat and a light touch of RTS gameplay while on the ground. As Emmett works his way through the battlefield on foot, he also has the ability via Cutter to call for structures such as walls, turrets, launchpads, sniper towers and supply depots to be dropped onto the landscape. Each of these units has a particular rift energy cost, and Emmett can replenish his personal supply either by killing enemies, or by shooting particular barrels which store a small amount of energy.
Furthermore, in many levels the player will be able to switch between being on the ground and taking to the sky as they see fit - albeit, in most scenarios it is pretty clear which will be most effective, so for the most part being on foot or in the sky is dictated by the game as opposed to any kind of on-the-fly choice.
Much of the moment to moment player objectives involves either eliminating all enemies at a certain location, or preparing defences to hold off an incoming wave of attackers. In the latter instances, the RTS elements prove particularly useful in giving the player some breathing room, or possibly eliminating much of the attacking force if one were to line up a bunch of turrets, for example.
Gameplay wise, everything fits together well and there isn't much to speak of in the way of control issues - even the interface to access structures and turrets is sufficiently streamlined so that it can all be pulled off in the middle of a firefight.
One could quite easily see the entire single player campaign as training of sorts for the multiplayer component of the game - especially given the pedigree of Warhawk being an exclusively multiplayer title. All of the mechanics from single player are available for various multiplayer gametypes including capture the flag and deathmatch among others. It must be said multiplayer in Starhawk is not a game for "lone wolf" players - communication and good teamwork are absolutely essential if one even hopes to smell victory.
When one finds themselves in such a game, Starhawk is very entertaining. Problem is, when this is not happening (which was quite often in my experience) it becomes very messy, and dare i say it, boring. When players find themselves on a team of people doing their own thing, one can reasonably expect to spend most of their time respawing, running around stupidly for five seconds and then repeating the pattern ad nauseum.
Which essentially brings me to my biggest gripe with Starhawk - it seems that the level of enjoyment one will get out of it is so ludicrously influenced by the other people you are playing with. Whilst this might be true almost by definition with multiplayer centric titles, it really is turned up to eleven here. The divide between my level of enjoyment from game to game was massive. When everyone was working together, everything comes together well and really allows for players to get creative with how to go about their objective. When this is not the case however, Starhawk can be an exercise in frustration when you get eliminated for the tenth time before you can achieve anything worthwhile.
Another minor point is that the third person shooting mechanics feel a little insubstantial as a whole - run, jump, and move targeting reticule is pretty much everything available to players outside of the whole "dropping things from above" angle. It feels a bit weird to say given the disparate gameplay elements available, but it almost leads to feeling like three individually underdeveloped gameplay types that happen to flow from one to the other fluidly.
Finally, don't expect to begin playing immediately after inserting the disc either - due to a combination of updates, agreements to terms and conditions and inputting online pass codes, you can comfortably assume that you will have a good half an hour to fill when starting up first time - a very minor point, but i have never experienced so many interruptions before even reaching a title screen.
In summation, Starhawk is a good game with its own unique identity - when you happen to get a good online game going, it is great fun. Just either be prepared to have many less than stellar experiences in order to get to that point, or make sure you have plenty of likeminded PSN friends to play with.
Rating: 80%
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Game: Starhawk
System: Playstation 3
Developer/Co-Developer: Lightbox Interactive
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
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