If you and your friends have ever wanted to pretend to be Maverick, Jester, and Iceman from Top Gun and chase each other throughout the skies, you’ll get your chance when Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X. comes out. Ubisoft has revealed the game’s multiplayer mode at this year’s E3, and it’s a blast. That is, if you don’t suck at flying like I do.

H.A.W.X. is set in 2012, and you play a pilot who works for a private military company (PMC). I wasn’t told more about the story details, but throughout the course of the game you end up working for different PMCs and have to decide on which side you want to be. At times you’ll fight other PMCs, possibly even your former employers. The game originally had a September release date, but it’s been pushed to early 2009.

What makes H.A.W.X. stand out from other air combat/flight simulation games is its painstaking attention to detail. Ubisoft Senior Brand Manager Tom Yu mentioned that Ace Combat 6 takes place in a fictionalized world and has mainly fictional planes. The locations in H.A.W.X. on the other hand, were created using the most advanced satellite imaging. “It’s like Google Earth on steroids,” Yu said. Therefore, when you fly over Cape Canaveral, you’re pretty much flying over a virtual replica of it. Similarly, the 50 planes in the game are extremely accurate, down to the last wheel.

In the demo, I had the chance to try out multiplayer mode on the Xbox 360 version, teaming up with Yu against some other Ubisoft reps. Although it was originally announced that up to 15 people can play together, it has been reduced to eight, with up to four people on each team. Yu explained that in testing the game they found that eight people onscreen at a time is the optimal number.