Warhawk hit the PlayStation 3 in 2007 with no single-player campaign and no apology for it. Incognito Entertainment took the original PlayStation flight combat game of the same name and rebuilt it as a team-based third-person shooter, with ground vehicles and aircraft fighting over the same ground. Sony Computer Entertainment published it. It was the first PlayStation 3 game available both physically and digitally on the PlayStation Network.
Trailer, via IGN.
Five Maps, Four Game Types
Warhawk launched with five maps, each with five possible configurations, and four game types: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Zones and Capture the Flag. The 1.4 update added Hero and Collection modes, bringing the count to six. Three optional expansion packs pushed the map total to eight.
That’s a thin package by modern standards. It worked because the maps were built for 32-player online battles, and the game never pretended to be anything else. The digital release was Sony testing a storefront model that is now standard. In 2007 it was an experiment.
Eucadians, Chernovans, and the AS-3 Tow Missile
Warhawk sets a science fictional perpetual war between the Eucadian Republic and the Chernovan Empire — blue team and red team. The fiction is thin. The tools are not.
Two ground vehicles, a jeep and a tank. An armored personnel carrier arrives with the Operation: Broken Mirror expansion. Two air vehicles, the Warhawk and the Nemesis, cosmetically different and mechanically identical, each carrying nine weapons. The Omega Dawn expansion adds a dropship. Fallen Star adds a jetpack. Three turrets cover the ground: anti-air missile, anti-air flak, and a .50 caliber anti-infantry machine gun.
The AS-3 Tow Missile system stands apart. It is the only weapon in the game the player guides directly. Your screen devotes itself to steering the missile, which leaves you open to getting hit. The payoff is massive damage and the largest explosion in the game.
Tilting the Controller
Warhawk uses the PlayStation 3 Sixaxis and DualShock 3 controllers. The motion sensing function can control aircraft and ground vehicles by tilting the controller rather than using the D-pad or analog sticks. The traditional scheme is the default. That tells you how Incognito felt about its own gimmick.
Offline play allows 1-4 players in splitscreen, without bots. Online supports up to 32-player battles, with up to four players on one PlayStation 3 in splitscreen on non-ranked servers that permit it. Players 2-4 can enter or exit mid-match.
Ranks run from Recruit to General across 20 levels, unlocking personnel and aircraft customization at each one. Medals and rewards are handed out for certain tasks.
The Launch Was Rough
For a few months after launch, Warhawk was plagued by connection and server issues, including ranking problems. Updates corrected them. That’s worth stating plainly, because a multiplayer-only game with broken servers is a dead game, and Warhawk spent its first months in that condition.
The single-player element was canceled during development. Incognito concluded it was inferior to the multiplayer component. That decision is the whole game in miniature: a studio cutting the part that wasn’t working rather than shipping it.
Why the Cancellation Was Correct
Most shooters of that era bolted a campaign onto multiplayer to justify the price. Warhawk refused. The result is a game with no filler and no tutorial mode dressed up as a story.
The vehicle roster does the heavy lifting. A jeep, a tank, two aircraft and three turrets create constant role-switching. The AS-3 Tow Missile is the best example — a weapon that takes you out of the fight to guide it, trading your safety for the biggest hit on the map.
20 Ranks and a 2012 Successor
The 20-rank progression and the medal system gave players reasons to keep returning. The expansion packs kept the map count climbing to eight. Starhawk, the spiritual successor, arrived in May 2012.
Warhawk’s real achievement is that it made a multiplayer-only console shooter work before that was a safe bet. The server problems cost it early momentum. The updates fixed them. What remained was a clean, focused game with no dead weight.
It is not a game you play for a story. It is a game you play because the fight between Eucadians and Chernovans is well built, and because guiding a missile into a tank never stops being satisfying.
Warhawk was a 2007 online multiplayer third-person shooter video game developed by Incognito Entertainment and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 3.
The Hard Numbers
- Release year: 2007
- Developer: Incognito Entertainment
- Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
- Platform: PlayStation 3
- Launch maps: 5 (5 configurations each)
- Launch game types: 4 (Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Zones, Capture the Flag)
- Maps after expansions: 8
- Max online players: 32
- Ranks: 20 (Recruit to General)
- Critic aggregate: 8.5/10 (5 outlets)
- Successor: Starhawk, May 2012
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