Starhawk Beta Provides Ample Opportunity for "Sweet Kills"

[This guest article was written by Mike Hidalgo Pittman]

I never played the original Warhawk.

I had heard about it and it certainly looked cool but I had an Xbox360 at the time and couldn't play it. Fast forward five years and I've jumped on the PS3 bandwagon (*cough* The Last Guardian *cough*) so I downloaded the Starhawk beta a couple weeks ago. Boy am I glad I downloaded this beauty that Light Box Interactive has produced. If you have watched the feed you may know that I like games that are challenging or are difficult to master. In other words, I love games like Super Meat Boy, Dark Souls, Vanquish, IWBTG, Smash Bros: Melee, etc. The Starhawk multiplayer is an extension of that kind of fast paced, challenging gameplay that will keep you on the edge of your seat as you traverse the map on foot, jetpack, vehicle or mech. If 4 different modes of traversal isn't enough for you, you also have access to RTS build-n-battle abilities that allow you to fortify your initial spawn point, build other bases around the map, and launch unique offensive strategies against your enemy. Energy for creating structures is gathered from large collectors at your initial spawn point or from glowing barrels that are scattered across the map. The more energy you have, the better chance you have of building a good defense or a solid offense.

The beta gives access to two maps and two game modes. One map is set in Space and the other set on a planet colony surrounded by sea of acid and the game modes are capture the flag (CTF) and team death match (TDM). The way in which you play varies between each game mode. For instance with capture the flag it is usually best to have someone hang back and fortify your flag with a strong base so the enemy team won't be able to easily capture it. In team death match, most people generally take the offensive to rack up those sweet kills but my experience has taught me that it is good to have a fortified base that you can attack from no matter which mode you are playing. Be careful though, anything that you build can also be destroyed for XP. Which leads me to my next point...

The leveling system. You accumulate XP for kills, building structures, destroying structures and having other people use your structures. For example you can earn a Battler trophy every time you destroy 5 enemy structures. Every 5 structures you build you earn a Builder trophy. If ten people use one of the structures you built (like a Hawk station) you receive the Supplier trophy. I think this is an excellent way to offer incentive in battle and provides multiple ways to play a map instead of just killing everyone in sight. Sometimes you come across a team that is just plain better than you and will destroy you in battle - but that's OK. In Starhawk you can take out their base while they're off killing, destroy their supplies and still gain a decent amount of XP. Every 2 levels give you access to certain 'Perks' that you can utilize in battle. There is a catch - you must complete the task that particular perk has set before you can unlock and use it. Right now I'm going for the sneak perk which will allow me to traverse the map without showing up on the enemy's mini-map. This would be quite useful for sniping and surprise attacks but in order to unlock it, I need to execute ten melee kills in a single match. In my opinion this kind of leveling system is ingenious - it forces you to level up your twitch skills in real life before you can access certain perks. This makes for more intense battles and creative strategy as players now have perks that accent their play style combined with their mastery over the game mechanics.

Starhawk is developed by Lightbox Studios and published by Sony Computer Entertainment America. The game is set for release on May 8, 2012 on the Playstation 3.