Starhawk

So I've been quite slack with these reviews lately, for no better reaso than I'm lazy. So to make up for that, I'll do two reviews tonight. Sound good? I'm thinking Starhawk and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Let's get on with it!

STORY
In the distant future, humans are colonizing planets all across the galaxy, at the same time harvesting a new resource known as Rift Energy. The rift miners (known as rifters) would mine this precious resource, and occasionally become infected by it, turning into monstrous outcasts. The protagonist of Starhawk, Emmett Graves is a former Rifter, who turned to gunslinging after an incident tht left his brother suposedly dead and himself changed forever; becoming half-man, half-outcast.

The game picks up as Emmett and his business partner Cutter help to protect the local Rifter operations from outcasts as they learn more about what happened to the other Graves brother.

The story is a mixed bag, with an interesting premise and setting, but mostly uninteresting characters and very cliched plot twists. The "space-western" setting and vibe are very cool, and the story certainly had potential. But the characters are just very boring, with Emmett being a really angry guy, for almost no reason.

PRESENTATION
While the game's story is largely very average, it's visuals and music are quite awesome. The variety of locations, from desert-like planet's surface, to futuristic space station, to the remains of a gutted mining rig on a very eery asteroid. They all look quite cool, and theres a surprising amount of colour in this game.

The animations are quite smooth, without a whole lot of variation, however the Hawk transformations are particularly awesome.
The music ramps up in all the right moments, giving the game a nice sense of frantic action when the gameplay really picks up. The voice acting is unfortunately not as good, with characters being forgettable and overall quite average.

GAMEPLAY
So at this point, you're probably thinking that I absolutely hated this game. Well, that's not quite true, as much as some things about this game annoy me. I want to get this out there ASAP: If you don't play multiplayer, and you're quite single player focused- STAY AWAY. The gameplay works, but the single player campaign just isn't engaging. What it IS, however, is a decent tutorial on how to play the multiplayer.

Starhawk is an interesting beast; part 3rd person shooter, part RTS. And the strangest thing is, it works. Now because the single player was so meh, we'll just apply everything I say here for multiplayer.

The controls and interface are surprisingly simple, considering the amount of stuff you can do. Let's start with the basics: Shooting and moving all feels really good. Along with this, the vehicles handle nicely too. Then things get strange.

You're able to bring up a radial menu that gives you a number of options to reign down upon your enemies. Armories, landing pads, garages, AA Guns and shield generators are available to fortify your team's base, allowing for a number of ways to approach the battle.

The best thing about this isn't just the variety, but also the surprising level of balance. Yes, people will be flying in jets that turn into mechs, or driving along in machine gun equipped jeeps, but they have their disadvantages, allowing even one soldier on foot to stand up to them. This isn't just me talking in theory. I literally shot down a Hawk while on foot. And it was AWESOME.

Now, you can't just spawn facilities whenever you like. It all depends on your amount of rift energy, and this helps the game avoid being a massive cluster fuck.

REPLAYABILITY
Starhawk has a fairly robust multiplayer, despite it's single player short comings. On top of the fantastic gameplay, there are also a number of cosmetic unlocks and gameplay unlocks (perks) to help you switch up your look and game. I can see people giving this a fairly large amount of time (maybe not as much as CoD, but not bad).

OVERVIEW
To the single player gamer, Starhawk is terrible: it has a short campaign, the story is forgettable despite it's potential ridden setting, and the characters don't evoke any emotional response. The functional gameplay won't do a whole lot to keep players here.
However, if you like to get your MP on, Starhawk is pretty unforgettable. There are some sweet HOLY CRAP moments that can occur, but the tight and balanced gameplay makes this better than many other multiplayer focused games out there.