Ok let me place it to you straight and don't get me wrong, I love combat flight simulation games such as Ace Combat, Colony Wars (meh ok, thats space but still flight combat), Jaeger (not sure on spelling here but this was one seriously overlooked Xbox original title which deserves a good play through, graphically nice for it's time and fun though very demanding on it's players skills) The list goes on, hopefully you've got the picture. All flight games, be they combat or not are repetitive. All FPS games are repetitive for the same reason all there is to do is shoot things and fly/run here and shoot more things. If it's not a combat flight game, just a flight game like Microsoft's flight simulator X then theres not even the shooty bit in the end and beginning of the fly here part.

HAWX is pretty cool, it's been developed much like Advanced Warfighter and other Tom Clancy games in the sense that as you fly missions and score kills you get points. The points then add up and give you a rank. The rank will then proceed to help you unlock more stuff. Not much different from the points = planes and add ons thing thats been going on for years with Ace Combat series. HAWX is probably the best flight combat sim out there for the PS3 which sadly is lacking in this genre of games, As for the Xbox 360, HAWX is a lot of good fun from what I've seen and played but it's not quite as good as AC06 imho though I haven't brought HAWX (played at a friends house the other day though) and I own AC06 I will probably pick my own copy up too.

As for if HAWX feels more arcade/confrontational than AC06? I'd say they're pretty equal. HAWX tends to focus more on bombing and dog fighting missions from start to finish whilst AC06 throws one or two curve balls with some nice recon/stealth/rescue missions available in the game, 1 of which is extremely challenging, irritating and eventually down right fraustrating on the higher levels (SPOILER)It involves shooting down barrage ballons with radar jammers on them within a set time limit and with no lockon possible and no radar to make things more interesting you've got a low mission roof so travelling at high speed and targetting is ill advised and to just make it a little more difficult you're flying in a fog so thick that you can't see further than 20 feet! But for the most part the two titles are pretty equal if you've got a PS3 and no 360 then get this game if you like flight combat sims and if you've got a 360 and liked AC06 then get this title too. I will say Ace Combat as a series especially since 4 upwards has often had deeper storylines than most other flight combat games developed since Colony Wars back in the day.