Genre: Action
Developer: SingleTrac
Publisher: Sony

Developer "SingleTrac" was like the "Insomniac Games" of the early days of the PSX-- pure wizardry. Warhawk's stages are very large, and each one is bright and colorful, featuring awesome graphical effects and a butter smooth framerate. Take the transparent water with the faux reflections in the canyon stage; or the incredible water splashes when shooting down one of the escort ships during the convoy scenario; or how about lightning in the final stage? Or being able to fly through the cloud layer on the volcano map, with real-time colored light mapping on the ship from the sun? The FMV cut-scenes barely look compressed, although they are oversharpened. The player ship visibly shows damage on its exterior, and in the cockput view the windshield can even get cracked!

This reviewer isn't a big fan of orchestral music generally, but Warhawk's corny, hyper-dramatic compositions and highly synthetic samples are winners: they bring the cheese in a delightful way, while also pumping up the player's blood. The title's various missile, gun, and explosion effects are crisp, and functionally tell the player what's going on around him. The acting in the FMV cut-scenes is predictably 90s melodramatic, and the actors do well with the source material they are given.

Controlling the ship in Warhawk is intuitive and easy. L2 and R2 adjust the forward and backward speeds; when traveling slowly, the ship operates like a helicopter, with L1 and R2 used for strafing-- but when moving fast, the ship works like an airplane, with L1 and R2 allowing for super sharp turns. The "Aggressive" control scheme is best, since it allows for easy holding of triangle and circle for simultaneous gun and missile shots. As the player ship takes damage, various parts of it start to malfunction-- pretty sweet. The levels are large, but not giant like those in "Desert Strike" or the 3DO's "Starfighter". Each one has a single objective, and they are all fun to play.

Warhawk is a linear action game with super cool graphics, a well-directed FMV-driven story, a nice soundtrack, a very well thought-through control scheme, and a length short enough that the title is fun to memorize and master-- on the "Granny" difficulty that is, and this leads to a major caveat: the title is almost impossible on its default difficulty, with infinite enemy fighters chewing apart the player's shielding in seconds, even in the first level! But setting aside the shame of turning the difficulty down to what should have been simply called "Normal", this is an enjoyable title that's easy to get into.