Warhawk (PS3)

[talizker]

Is it still the original NTSC-uk clan from day 1? I played a little local Warhawk over the weekend to familiarise myself with the controls and will pick up the expansions shortly.

[C']

My copy arrived yesterday and I gave the training for on foot and ground vehicles a quick spin before work this morning.

Brother is likely to be trying out throughout the day but I'll give it a proper spin at the weekend most likely. Hopeto see some familiar faces online.

I do need to source some US PSN points cards though for the expansions as I got the US BD-ROM version.

[Darwock]

I'll drop you a clan invite too then mate

Is it still the original NTSC-uk clan from day 1? I played a little local Warhawk over the weekend to familiarise myself with the controls and will pick up the expansions shortly.

It's not.. we had to start a new one a few months ago as none of the original people could remember who the leader is (guess they don't play now), not sure if I can invite someone who's already in a clan but I'll try.

[Matt]

OK, so Chain chucked clan leader my way and I've sent you an invite Daragon. There are a few pending invites for people on here already actually.

Yeah, we had a brief "Let's Play!" interest in the online thread, so I chucked out invites accordingly.

I think John formed this clan, then made me leader as I was the only person playing after the first night. If I know there are set games on, I'll turn up though I'm not very good (if I ask to fly, Just Say No! - but let me have a tank ). I don't have any of the expansion packs.

[C']

Still not played yet (FFXI commitments mean, as I said earlier, no real time to commit at the weekend). but just been watching my brother for the last 30 mins or so and it looks a laugh.

Scale of the battles is very impressive.

[Darwock]

It is a really varied experience.. always different. It can be played just for hoots, and sometimes it turns into a real epic struggle. This happened the other night in CTF - the other team was going all out defensive, and our team managed to push forward over the course of half an hour until we had captured all the areas right up to their flag-holding base, and we were just trying one desperate assault after another.. I tried to go in myself a few times but it was so hairy that I retreated to the outpost nearby and tried to take out enemy warhawks from the ground. The tension was awesome when there was 5 minutes left on the clock and we were still 0-0. Quite surprising to get such a feeling of team effort without any voice or text communication being used.

I graduated to Wingman rank the other night and now I seem to be excluded from the rookie servers (this always happens, I get promoted above my skill level in these games), so it's getting a hell of a lot tougher. Last night I was trying to stay airborne but the other team had 3 or 4 warhawks in the sky, and one guy would repeatedly destroy me before I even knew what was happening. I checked the stats and that dude had 29 kills (7 or 8 were me) and 1 death (a suicide I saw him take, I thought it was my chance to get up there and he STILL killed me before I could get a bead on him). At least I knew it wasn't just me who couldn't take him down!

I don't know why I kept trying... should have gone looking for a SAM and dealt with him that way. Too stubborn I guess. That's why my KDR is abysmal!

Also picked up an awesome tactic for jetpack games - equip a pack, attach 4 land mines to a warhawk, fly it to an enemy flag/hero/base... boost directly towards the target and eject from the plane before it hits. Kamikaze without the risk!

[Darwock]

Last night I was dropped into a warhawk only team dogfighting server by quick join... I was a little bit wary of getting hammered but I'm trying hard to stick to my policy of not caring about death stats, and I thought it would be good flying practice.

In the first few games we were outnumbered which seems to make it a lot tougher to survive.. less available pick-ups for your team, more missile locks coming your way means more time spent evading instead of fighting etc. In the first few games I was only averaging about 5 kills, but I got lots of practice using the different weapons. In the final game we played at the Archipelago (love that map for flying) I did a much better job. There was at least one of the really ace players still on the enemy team so I hope the results were a good indication that my skill improved. However there were some noticably sluggish players around that were easy targets so I picked them off as much as possible. Took out the ace twice, but he killed me far more often.

I finished that game with a 2.5 KDR (and the ribbon for best KDR player in the game!) and second place on the losing team, and also got the Distinguished Combat medal as it took my total kills over 1000.

Next goal is far away.. I still need the team cross for winning 250 team games (current wins - 67) before I can get to commander rank. From here on I guess I'm going to be focusing on game objectives rather than combat.

Oh by the way, Rare - I guess you mean Moot is playing? If he wants a clan invite (free enlistee trophy!) then let me know his PSN ID. If you, daragon, tal & moot all join then we just need 1 more person for the magic 10...

[C']

Oh by the way, Rare - I guess you mean Moot is playing? If he wants a clan invite (free enlistee trophy!) then let me know his PSN ID. If you, daragon, tal & moot all join then we just need 1 more person for the magic 10...

It is but I'm not fully certain what his PSN ID is. I think it's MuteUK. I'll speak to him in a bit and doublecheck.

[Darwock]

Well blow me down, after how much I was amazed by Sackbook (the fan website that had access to all the LBP data) I have just discovered that a similar thing exists for Warhawk. How are people able to get all this information from the game servers?

http://myhawk.org/profile/profile.html?handle=Darwock&submit=find+player

I have never registered for this site, but all* my latest details are on there. I'm sure it has everyone. Surely if this is allowed to continue then Sackbook should be too!

*actually not all... it's nowhere near as comprehensive as the in-game stats, I can't look at my performance in individual vehicles for example.

Incidentally, Daragon and Rare, you guys have still never acceped the clan invite - realise you're not playing but there is a limit on maximum pending invites (and there are already a bunch still pending from when the clan was formed), so if you would be so kind as to accept or reject, cheers!

[Daragon]

I'll get onto that

[Darwock]

Over the last couple of days I *finally* managed to bag the last few of the situational trophies (as opposed to the ones for ranks/medals) on this, the ones that had me stuck for ages were..

1) Blow up an enemy aircraft using a cluster bomb. I got lucky here, it was the tail end of a game and a lot of people had left the room, I was strafing the grounded enemy warhawks and dropship at their base to make them all weaker, then I spotted someone running beneath me - took a chance and unloaded my cluster bomb, he got into the dropship and BOOM! Perfect timing

2) Capture 4 cores at once in collection mode. The problem here was just that I never got to play collection mode. I finally got a game (not many players though) and it turned out to be easy.

3) Shoot down an enemy warhawk in the central gorge at Vaporfield Glacier. This was a real bugger, I have been trying it every time I get a game on the glacier and have never succeeded. Usually I lay air mines all through the canyon and then try to get someone to chase me in, but nobody has ever taken the bait. Had a brain wave today when I noticed we were playing Hero mode.. did the same as usual, wasn't long until I was made the hero and then I knew I was guaranteed to get people coming in after me. They did, they hit my mines, I got the trophy! Woo!

4) Win a clan vs clan match. Obviously that's never gonna happen for real so I messaged a random clan person in one of the games I played who didn't have it yet and we set up a 1 vs 1 clan match.

The silver/gold trophies that are left will take the entire lifespan of the PS3 to achieve, and that's only if I don't play anything except Warhawk. Instead of worrying about those I'm targetting the master badges, and any medals that are within reach. Got 2 more of the medals this morning as well, the executive award and exemplary service medal. The targets are so high on these things that receiving them feels like being given a genuine medal, lol.

[Darwock]

As a perfect illustration of how ridiculously high the targets are in this game, I'm officially not a beginner any more after getting promoted to Sergeant Major. I can't join the rookie rooms now.

This is in a game I've been playing on/off for a year and a half, with 120 hours of game time clocked up.. and only now am I considered to be a fully fledged player!!

It feels like I've gone back to square one, the competition is so fierce ; ;

[Darwock]

Apologies for treating this thread like my personal Warhawk blog, but well.. it seems nobody else plays it!

I've had a really topsy turvy week - after concentrating on getting more air-to-ground kills with stealth and the bomb/TOW missile I found my performance improving, and everything was nice for a couple of days.

Then I switched to trying to earn the air combat medal, and everything fell apart. I have no idea why, but the performance graphs on myhawk show everything dropping like a stone. Maybe cos I was determined to stay in a plane until I got 5 air-to-air kills, whatever the cost... I took a lot of beatings.

A couple of times I got within 10 seconds of earning the medal (you need 100 points in a round as well as the 5 a2a kills) with 99 points on the board just as the game ended. Then yesterday I actually did it - managed to capture 4 flags (25 pts each) in a game. The problem was one of those flags was the winning capture, meaning the game ended before the medal got awarded. The way they have implemented the award system is really ****, if you meet the requirements before the round ends you should get the medal, not have to allow enough extra time for the game to process it. The game stats are available via the xml feed which prove I did it, but despite the healthy community, developer support for the game is non-existant these days so I have no choice but to suck it up and try to do it again.

I nearly gave up on the game after that, it was so demoralising. However last night I logged in to find the server list blank - must have had a reset - so took the opportunity to set up a dogfight deathmatch room limited to my rank or lower. I always try to do this but never get 8 people to join so it always stays unranked. Due to the limited number of games open I hit 8 people really quickly last night and (as I'd hoped) performed really well when there were no generals flying around to steal all the kills. Picked up my first DM win! So I only need 49 more for the DM medal ><

I can't win deathmatches on the ground, I find ground combat to be way too random. I guess I'd better hope for 49 more server outages so I can get the players in my a2a room lol