Reviewed: February 22, 2003
Reviewed by: Mark Smith
Publisher
JoWood Productions
Developer
Similis
Released: September 5, 2002
Genre: Action
Players: 1
ESRB: Teen
6
6
6
6
6.4
System Requirements
Recommended System
K.HAWK: Survival Instinct has been out for about six months now, and while it may have had the luxury of being a somewhat unique title when it released, there are all sorts of action-stealth games releasing that are offering some stiff competition.
In this particular game, players find themselves wearing the fatigues of sexy Navy S.E.A.L., Kitty Hawk, a helicopter pilot who is shot down on an island in the Pacific while delivering a commando for a top secret mission. Kitty manages to escape the burning wreckage but the commando, who also happens to be her boyfriend, is killed. From the moment Kitty steps foot on the beach she must take over the mission at hand and survive impossible odds. As she explores the island, Kitty crosses paths with an unscrupulous colonel, who, she finds out, is responsible for the downing of her helicopter and the death of her boyfriend. Together with his scientists, the Colonel is up to even more evil than meets the eye.
It would be easy to make plenty of comparisons to Metal Gear Solid. There are several interface and gameplay devices that resemble the adventures of Solid Snake, but the game does manage to break off and create its own unique niche. K.HAWK definitely favors stealth over combat. I played the first three missions without ever firing my gun. Well, that’s not entirely true. The few times I did fire my pistol I brought down the wrath of a small platoon of enemy soldiers, died, and had to reload. I quickly learned that stealth was the way this game was meant to be played.
K.HAWK is your typical third-person action title that has you moving with the WADS clusters and controlling your look and weapons with the mouse. One problem I had with the game was that I had to set my mouse sensitivity to maximum and Kitty still didn’t look around as fast as I wanted – as fast as you can look in other games. There are a variety of other commands that you can customize as you see fit. You are introduced to all of Kitty’s skills in a training scenario that takes place at a military facility. There is plenty of movement and target practice and this is where I encountered my first fatal bug in the game.
During the grenade tossing tutorial, the moment the grenade left my sweaty palm the game would kick me out to the desktop. I tried every possible configuration setting for both audio and video to make sure it wasn’t my fault. I contacted tech support (almost a month ago) and never heard back from them, although I did read that several other people are experiencing the same thing at the same place. It doesn’t affect the gameplay, but it is annoying and I couldn’t complete the tutorial, so I’m not sure exactly what I am missing after that particular test.
Once you get into the main game things settle down to a typical action experience with a heavy emphasis on stealth. K.HAWK uses a radar map display (much like MGS or IGI) that shows an outline of the terrain and the location of any enemy soldiers and their current position (updated in real-time) along with their cone/field of vision. One additional and quite advanced feature is the detection meter that appears as a circle around Kitty. If this circle touches an enemy then they can detect you. The circle shrinks or grows depending on whether Kitty is crouched or standing and it fills with red to indicate noise.
This is where my major complaint with the gameplay factors into the equation. The “rules” of this virtual world including enemy AI are totally regulated by the map display. What I mean by this is that you can be standing 6-feet from a soldier in “plain sight” in the 3D view but as long as the map doesn’t have his vision cone touching you or your sound circle touching him you are invisible. This promotes an unnatural reliance on the map and I found myself playing huge parts of the game looking at nothing but that green little window in the corner of my screen.
Enemy AI is above average, but I never saw any squad tactics implemented. The soldiers never worked in organized groups, luring me into traps or trying to flank me. And they also exhibited the behavior I hate so very much in these games where if you can avoid them for long enough they forget all about you and go back to their original business.
What these soldiers lack for in situational awareness they more than make up for in accuracy. These guys are all graduates from some sniper academy and can pick you off with a revolver from a mile away. Conversely, you will need to hit most of these guys 2-4 times before they go down. Even headshots are inconsistent without the precision of a sniper rifle and good luck getting one of those anytime soon. I’ll say it again – this game promotes stealth over combat because if you fight you die.
The overall mission is broken down into plenty of sub-missions with various objectives and waypoints and these are often updated on the fly. Your first mission has you navigating the outer island and making your way inside an enemy installation to use a radio to contact HQ. Once you get new orders it’s off to the interior to find an underground base.
Along the way you will acquire a small arsenal of weapons ranging from handguns to assault rifles and even the PSG-1 Sniper Rifle. The precision weapons can eliminate an enemy with a few hits but prepare to unload a clip or more if you use the automatic weapons. Avoiding those surveillance cameras and vision cones of the enemy is the easiest way through this game, and save your game often just in case you get spotted.
You can easily cycle through your weapons with the mouse wheel, and to make things interesting, when you have a weapon drawn you cannot use your map display. Inventory is handled a bit differently with an activation key and then a cycle key for left and right. I used the TAB to bring up the bar and the Q and E keys to move left or right through the item bar since there is no "leaning" in this game. It all worked really well.
There are a few puzzles that rely on flipping switches, avoiding cameras, learning patrol patterns and avoiding guards. None of it is rocket science and you should have no trouble figuring anything out other than how to stay alive long enough to complete your goals. There are a lot of “cheap shot” deaths that you only learn about by dying. One of these had me successfully sneaking across a large machine room with several guards. I opened the exit door, which “hissed” open – apparently an unlabeled airlock, and the resulting noise triggered a hailstorm of angry hot lead, and I was dead before I knew it.
The graphics range from pretty dull to pretty cool depending on where you are and just how much detail the designers decided to put into that part of the game. The outdoor levels are populated with sufficient foliage, rocks, and good looking earthen textures. The polygon mesh used to create the terrain is not that complex which means the ground isn’t as smooth or rounded as I’ve come to expect from more recent titles or those using more powerful engines. You will actually see the triangles used to create some surfaces and slopes.
Indoors, things start to look more promising. The textures are all decent and there are some nice lighting effects, smoke, shadows, etc. A lot of the indoor areas are very dark and force you to use your map device even more than you probably already are.
Character animation and design is just okay. Kitty is modeled with enough polygons to let you know she is definitely a female, but she’s not as smooth, rounded or as sexy as the last version of Lara Croft we saw over two years ago. The enemy soldiers and other supporting cast all have convincing textures and are animated well enough.
The overall interface is really well done starting with the opening menu that has Kitty’s head tracking the position of your mouse cursor as you move it around the screen. Once you are in the game you have two tiny status indicators for health and ammo and the map screen that you can position wherever you like. The inventory pop-up is nice and glows with a high-tech green tint.
The music is your typical military tunes mixed with some synthesized background tracks that really don’t stand out, but do a good job of not overwhelming the rest of the sound presentation.
The sound effects are really good and include plenty of environmental effects such as wind and the sounds of waves on the beach. Indoors you hear all the sounds appropriate to your area such as machinery, computers, whirring cameras, etc. The weapons are loud and the explosions are louder. The first time I got shot by a sniper in a tower while sneaking through the underbrush I must have jumped two-feet out of my chair.
The voices for the characters range from good to really good. The drill sergeant at the training grounds was the very stereotypical guy you’ve seen in the movies; always yelling everything he says. Kitty has an excellent voice but only speaks during scripted events. Apparently she hasn’t mastered the art of witty one-liners after killing someone.
Once you realize that you need to sneak a lot more than fight you can probably make your way through this game in 15-20 hours providing you save often. You never know when you are about to die from a stray bullet or get detected from a rogue camera, so if you aren’t careful you will replay major portions of this game.
There is no multiplayer and no real reason to go back and play this game after you finish it once. Even so, there is plenty of gameplay here; more than some of the AAA titles, and if you enjoy this type of game you will certainly get your money’s worth.
K.HAWK: Survival Instinct unfortunately doesn’t rely on a whole lot of “instinct” at all. Most of the game is spent working with or exploiting the “rules” of the game universe. The combat AI is totally slanted in favor of the computer making combat futile and frustrating. Of course, if you enjoy sneaking and stealth then this game will be perfect for you.
In a world with games like Metal Gear Solid, Splinter Cell, and the upcoming IGI-2: Covert Strike, this game definitely takes a backseat in technical achievements. Survival Instinct does manage to offer a certain level of fun, it doesn’t require a monster system to play it, and it’s budget priced at $29. I can’t tell you to run right out and buy it, but I won’t tell you not to either.