The infinite blue of the open skies awaits not only veteran but also budding flying aces in Ace Combat Infinity. Evolving the legendary series with a brand new story and innovative multiplayer, the game turns the sky into an endless blue battleground, bursting with aerial drama and destruction. Whether a combat-ready pro or a battle-shy beginner, Ace Combat Infinity will let every player become a deadly flying ace, as they embark on a series of high velocity missions. In the solo story Campaign mode, players will be immersed in a brand new story and unleash aerial devastation with surgical precision. The new Online Co-op Mission multiplayer mode lets aces team up to see who can inflict the most damage on the enemy. Execute pre-flight checks -- the endless blue awaits.
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The campaign missions are a decent time though, with the remastered levels from previous games really standing out for being arguably better from a gameplay perspective than the original thanks to the better AI, better visuals, and greater density of enemies. Naturally, it lacks the narrative framing that made those levels classics to begin with, but as remastered experiences, they are worth the price of admission. The story this game creates is actually kind of interesting, though it only gets the chance to create the basic of the narrative before it ends, with no continuation to that storyline following. A shame to be sure, but a small price to pay to kill the systems at play in the multiplayer.
The multiplayer is what this game was built for, being a free-to-play game and all (campaign missions are sold separately for a cost). The gameplay revolves around a co-op score attack game mode where you compete with the other players for points on specific maps that run the gamut of Ace Combat gameplay from air-to-air to air-to-ground. the gameplay loop here was actually quite fun, and I do miss that competitive PvE experience in recent entries, and hope it comes back.
There is an unlock tree for the planes and weapons that keeps the best ones for those who grind for them, which in itself is fine. However, when combined with the fuel system to limit sorties, requiring real-world time to pass before you can play again, that grind becomes a real problem. That fuel system is just the most infuriating thing to experience in a console release from a franchise like this, and is a permanent stain on the name of the series.
The campaign missions here are a fun time, and worth playing through for some classic Ace Combat gameplay; they are probably the best Ace Combat offering on the PS3. However, the multiplayer systems in place for this game are truly predatory and anti-consumer, and I'm glad they died with it. It's a shame to have that black mark on the series, especially when the mainline release at the time was Xbox exclusive, but thankfully, this wasn't the end of Ace Combat, and the franchise would rise again to the heights of old.