he original Warhawk on the PlayStation was a great way to start the legendary system off right. While it was a single-player title that featured only air combat, Sony is hoping to bring that magic back with a new PlayStation 3 version of Warhawk in the form of an online multiplayer-style game. But is an online-only game ready for consoles? We played test pilot and took Warhawk for a flight to find out.

Anyone who played the PSone version of Warhawk will no doubt have some fond memories of a really solid flight game, and Incognito made sure that although they were adding a lot more to the formula, the core of the title’s meaning was still intact. Players will now be able to hop out of the Warhawk and run on foot, drive tanks and jeeps and even man a turret. Taking a page from other online shooters, Warhawk will have various gameplay types, like deathmatch and zone capture with up to 32 players—all supporting voice chat. With 25 maps, a ton of weapons and five different planets to play across, Sony is hoping that no one will miss the absence of a single-player mode.

The skies are filled with weapons to collect

The typical game of Warhawk that we experienced played out one of two ways. The first is air-to-air only Warhawk combat that lets you fly around above one of the five worlds and collect different weapons like missiles, bigger missiles and even some disruptors by flying trough an icon to unleash on your opponents. Some of the weapons like the electronic disruptor were trickier than others to use but the kills were oh so sweet. The second type puts the choice of fighting style in the hands of the players. Teams will have a starting base and can find vehicles and weapons to charge into battle with. On foot, players have a bevy of weapons including machine guns, knives and the RPG. Teammates can also work together in some of the vehicles such as the jeep, one driving and the other manning the machine gun.

The PlayStation 3’s Sixaxis controller works extremely well. When in a Warhawk, there are two modes. The first is a hover mode that has limited maneuverability but allows for takeoffs and landings while also turning your Warhawk into a deadly mobile air turret that devastates troops below. Hit the triangle button and you move into flight mode, and the motion-sensing takes over. The motion steering is very intuitive and natural. Of course, you can turn this off if you would rather play with a more classic style control set. After you land your Warhawk and you hop out and start fighting the enemy on foot, the shooting felt tight and easy but knife fights were a little difficult. Driving also worked well and mowing down troops becomes a hilarious cinch.

Battles on foot can be quite crazy

Although it won’t win any graphics awards, Warhawk doesn’t look half bad. As mentioned before, there’s more of a cartoony feel to everything rather than an ultra-realistic presentation. The characters have exaggerated features, like large feet and hands. The game looks and feels much like THQ’s early Xbox 360 game, The Outfit. Players will be able to customize their characters and Warhawks with a variety of different heads, outfits and paintjobs. Although we didn’t play a final version of the game, the environments felt bland and generic. The few maps we did play were dominated by rocky cliffs and riverways with little to no plant life and a small amount of buildings.

Warhawk will no doubt have a pretty good replay value being an online-only game. However, since there is nothing amazing or attention-grabbing about the game and absolutely no single player, it may be tough for Sony to pull players to it in the first place. Current PlayStation 3 owners should definitely give it a go, but it’s not the title to buy one for. To answer the questions we had left over or that you may have now, we chatted with the Warhawk Game Director for Incognito, Dylan Jobe.

Game Informer: There seems to be a lot of confusion with Warhawk on whether it’s solely a downloadable game or if it’s also going to be a Blu-ray game—what’s the deal?

Dylan Jobe: I can’t mention anything specifically yet, because we haven’t announced our official distribution methods. I think we’re going to be informing people relatively soon. The only thing I can officially say right now is we’re still looking for a late summer/early fall release. At a personal level, I’m excited about taking advantage of all of Sony’s distribution methods, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

GI: Hypothetically, say the case is that you only offer this as a downloadable title. Why do you think people would care either way on how they’re getting the game if they get the game?

Jobe: I don’t know. Personally, as a gamer, sometimes I just like going into a game store and see what strikes my fancy and then pick up a title. I don’t have any data to see how many games are purchased via pure impulse purchase, but I think there might be some. I think it’s always a good idea to have a retail presence as well, but at the same time, I think we’re seeing a moving trend toward the convenience of digital distribution. And you can say many of the recent industry clichés, you know, iTunes and all of that stuff are very successful and pointing a finger at it, but I think the PlayStation Store is clearly the right extension. The thing I like about it is hypothetically, if you think about it, if Warhawk were to be available on the PlayStation network, that marks a very big shift in the type of content that is traditionally pulled down from your quote-unquote arcade download solutions. It’s a very deep game, it’s very broad, and it had very high production value. And I think we’re going to see more and more of that. Personally, I think I would probably download it. I’m a big fan of the 360 Live, and I download a lot of games—even if they’re demos that are a gig or so, I’ll wait to download them. So I can download them overnight, which is pretty convenient there. We’ll see. I think personally, as a gamer, I would probably download it. But we’ll see what Sony does.