K. Hawk's title character is Kitty Hawk, a helicopter pilot who flies Navy SEALs
back and forth to their missions. On one such mission in the South
Pacific, Kitty's chopper is shot down by a missile from the island she is trying
to land on. Kitty is the sole survivor of the attack and finds herself
alone and unarmed in a hostile situation. As Kitty, you must avoid the
mysterious enemy's patrols, get to a radio to call for help, and knock out the
enemy's base to put an end to their plans. Quite a tall order for a lone
soldier, but Kitty is up to the task.
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| Kitty lost on the island. |
K. Hawk - Survival Instinct is a third-person action game that stresses stealth
over firepower. Kitty is hopelessly outnumbered, and any attempt to go
blasting your way through the game will lead to a quick demise. Helping
you out is the one piece of equipment you salvaged from your chopper, your
Enhanced Positioning Unit (EPU). This handy device shows the position of
nearby enemies, as well as their cone of vision and the level of their awareness
of your presence. It even shows the radius of noise that you create by
moving - the faster you move the more noise you make and the bigger the cone.
There are some big downsides to the EPU, though. You can't use it while
handling a weapon and it seems to be permanently on the fritz, losing its
display to a screen of static. This last 'feature' is particularly
annoying as a slow-paced stealth game is made all the slower by the fact that
you must constantly stop and wait for your EPU to start working again before you
can continue moving.
Why not just look around and sneak about without the EPU's help? Because
it is pretty tough to do so without it. K. Hawk is a budget title and
comes with a budget title's graphics and control scheme. Textures are
blocky and the environments repetitive, which makes it hard enough to figure out
where you're going, let alone where the guards are located. Also, the
spotty collision detection combined with the touchy free look control combine to
make stealthy movement with more of an emphasis on movement than on stealth.
Who has time to watch for guards when you are struggling to point the mouse in
the right direction to allow you to pass through a gap or to un-stick yourself
from a rock wall?
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