One of the best PS3 titles to date!

I've owned my PS3 ever since getting one of the very first 60GB units. (No, I didn't camp out for one on release day, but my brother had a job at a local toy store and got first dibs on one of 3 units that arrived there shortly afterwards. I immediately purchased it from him....)

I'm mostly a PC gamer, and unlike the other reviewer of this title, I never experienced the original Warhawk on the older Playstation.

With that in mind, my impression of Warhawk on PS3 is VERY good. I've generally been unhappy about the games costing $60 each in the store. I've bought 5 or 6 of them anyway, just to have some kind of "library" of things to play on this expensive console ... but they usually leave me underwhelmed.

Warhawk feels different. It's the type of game you know you'll get in the mood to pop in and play time after time, even a year or two down the road. (Doubly so if they start creating new maps and content for it to optionally download!)

It only has 5 maps to fight on, which initially sounds really bad - but it isn't. The maps are VAST, encompassing as much as 5 virtual MILES of space in one direction. Vehicles are sometimes *required* to get from one place to another. And furthermore, the game is smart enough to use only portions of a given map, depending on how many people are in a given battle. So 1 map can still feel fresh for quite a bit of play.

Since this game has no "single player" mode, smooth multiplayer play is critical - but Warhawk doesn't disappoint. I never felt any "lag" while playing at all. (It does have the ability to set a filter when browsing for servers to connect to, and I set mine not to display servers with ping times above 200. That may have something to do with it, but the fact you can even select this is a plus for a PS3 game!)

The controls take some getting used to, but with a little adjusting of the Sixaxis tilt settings to suit you, you can actually make decent use of it when flying the Warhawk plane. This may be the first PS3 game to use Sixais tilt functionality effectively! Just about every button and control on the controller is put to use in Warhawk too. I found I was constantly dying and getting frustrated with pressing the wrong buttons for things for about 15 minutes -- but it starts to come together if you stick with it. (I can understand why they might not have wanted to bother putting together single player missions for this game - but a single-player tutorial/training level might have been a good idea, to get people used to the controls.)

As others have said, the game compares most closely with something like Battlefield 2. You don't get to pick a "class" of soldier (such as medic, engineer, etc.), but you can pretty much define your own fighting style as you play. The game is biased towards doing air combat, yet I found it was just as much fun to dodge bombs and machine gun fire from the air by ducking under cover or inside structures, and trying to shoot them down with the missile or gun turrets. You'll always be playing from a 3rd. person perspective, too - which I like as a refreshing change from 1st. person 3D shooters we've all seen and played too much of. It can, however, make aiming a pistol or rifle a bit trickier. (I always have to remember to look where the gun site is drawn, vs. paying any attention to where it LOOKS like my guy is holding and pointing the weapon.)

I purchased this locally, in order to get the included Bluetooth headset. I think this is the way to go, vs. paying to download it online. Sure, you only pay $40 vs. $60 to get it online - but you can take your physical DVD disc anyplace to play on other PS3s. And $20 isn't bad at all for the headset they include. I'm using mine with my cellphone at the moment and I'm pretty happy with it!