In a nutshell, Nighthawk is a shoot-'em up game, however, it requires a lot of lateral thinking. If you go around blasting everything to pieces, you'll find that you won't last very long as you're up again droids with far greater fire power than yourself. The droids are fairly stupid compared to a human though, so you have that in your favour. You are a droid and you have to destroy droids occupying a fleet of reclaimed starships. You start out as a 002 Paradroid with very poor firepower and shielding. However, you have the ability to transfer your programs over to a new droid, effectively taking it over. As you take control of bigger and better droids, you''ll gain better firepower and shielding.