I don't think there will ever be another jet fighter game like this ever again in terms of game-play it is very unique and underrated. The story is pretty much a run of the mill cookie cutter terrorist plot.
At first I enjoyed this, I was looking for an arcade style flight sim, and the variety of missions (Dog fights, Attack Helicopters, Spectre Gunships) seemed like it had everything I was looking for, but eventually I made it to a mission were that same feeling so many flight sims have came back - the endless chasing of an enemy that never quite stays in your sights and you spend a ton of time just flying in circles. When the game made me repeatedly restart a level after downing 10+ enemies that way, but still judged me not good enough to continue, I was done.
It's no AC4, 5, Zero, or 7, but I thought it was fun for what it was. The setting not being strangereal was a missed opportunity though, and some of the dogfights felt a little scripted, which felt cool in the moment, but not so much after the fact, when you realized that. Solid game, but it has nothing on the other Ace Combat titles.
At least it was entertaining. But that's all I'll say about this Michael Bay dumpster fire
The dog fighting system they implemented is bad. It hurts the entire game. They also tried to introduce more vehicles to play with, watering down the jet combat.
Worth playing if you are an Ace Combat fan, but can't measure up to Ace Combat 6 or 7.
Worth playing if you are an Ace Combat fan, but can't measure up to Ace Combat 6 or 7.
What the fuck was their problem?
Imagine, if you will, a scale. On one end is dedicated flight simulation, and on the other is arcade design philosophies. In my humble opinion, Ace Combat is at its strongest when these two sides sit in equilibrium with each other, a perfect balance. Ace Combat: Assault Horizon feels like it slammed down so hard on the "arcade" side of the scale that it sent the "flight sim" side into orbit (say hi to Captain Nagase up there, will ya?), and then broke the scale in the process.
This title's big feature is Dogfight mode (DFM), a mode you manually activate that sends you into a hot pursuit behind an enemy. By keeping your sights trained on your enemy, you can fire off missiles with enhanced homing and damage output. It's mostly on autopilot, but enemies can still shake you off or counter your DFM, chasing you with their own version of DFM (which you can also counter). The problem with DFM is that the game is downright reliant on it. You cannot play this game like a regular Ace Combat game, and to that extent, it doesn't feel like my skill at flying a virtual aircraft is being tested. Air-to-air special weapons are effectively useless due to how fucking fast enemy planes are, and their health is inflated to the point where the extra damage you deal in DFM is essentially mandatory.
This game also tries to spice things up with types of gameplay that are new to Ace Combat, to wildly varying degrees of success. There's on-rails missions where you fire a machine gun from the comfort of a chopper (reasonable enough), missions where you manually aim bombing runs via the perspective of a surveillance camera (this one was extremely irritating), and missions where you gun down entire cities as a chopper (braindead). Weirdly enough, one of my bigger beefs with the game is the camera. There's a point where you need to stop pretending you're filming a war documentary and let me see what the fuck I'm actually doing. Your plane feels like it takes up much more screen space than usual, and the camera has a tendency to drift around aimlessly. It was so distracting that using first-person cockpit view felt like a requirement. Same goes for the chopper, it takes up like half the screen, obscuring the targets you're supposed to be aiming at.
To a degree, this Ace Combat game feels a lot closer to an action game in spirit. The music in this game honestly sounds like it wouldn't be out of place in a game like Metal Gear Rising in many cases. There's a big focus on scripted sequences, and often leads to a plethora of do-or-die moments. There's no time to breathe between missions. DFM sometimes takes you on a ride, grazing past crumbling buildings and explosions. But when you activate DFM on a plane scripted to do that, sometimes they take a nosedive straight downward, only to sharply level out so they can follow the designated setpiece trail. This caused me to break off from DFM on more than one occasion, sending me careening into the ground, and it never felt fair (one of these times was during the tutorial). Also, what the FUCK do you mean "your health regenerates automatically"? Does the plane repair itself in real time, independent of the pilot? Fuck off. I hate this aspect so much, especially since the game boasts the spectacle of the aircraft getting torn to shreds by bullet fire and the like. These concepts directly clash with one another, it distracts me to no end. "Oops, I'm taking too much damage, better flee the current conflict for a little bit." Eat my rudder, Bandai Namco.
The story is a god damn blur. Your name: John Combat. (That is a joke.) Your mission: Kill the Russians. (That is not a joke.) Yeah, this game ditches Ace Combat's "Strangereal" universe for the real universe. No Strangereal means no fantastical elements; no drones, space elevators, super-duper future planes, any of that fun stuff. You play as a military man with a military plan, fighting a very black-and-white conflict from the perspective of "we're America, of course we're the heroes!" There's no nuance to any of it. Also, normally I wouldn't touch upon this kinda shit, but misogyny! Listen, I get it. You make a fictional story about the U.S. Army, and you probably want to represent the male power fantasy that comes with it. I don't think you needed to bring sexism in the workplace into the picture though. The one playable female pilot in this game is more than capable, but she's surrounded by a bunch of dickheaded jocks. The game's box mentions that the story is written by "NY Times best-selling military author Jim DeFelice", and without looking into the reception of his literary works, I'm sorry, but this guy just sounds like a hack.
The one saving grace about this game is that it seems to be a spinoff. The game that released after this one was explicitly titled "Ace Combat 7", after all. That doesn't excuse this game's general lack of polish though, it doesn't live up to the pedigree that the series had established up to this point. Truthfully, I didn't quite finish this game. I got stuck at an absurdly strict segment right before the final boss. Reading people's complaints about the underwhelming final boss didn't inspire me with the confidence to see it through, but I feel like I came close enough. Maybe the online co-op/versus is supposed to be the main draw of this game? Half the game's achievements are dedicated to it. Who knows? I really don't care enough to find out. Lowkey wish that Ace Combat Infinity wasn't a long-defunct live service title, otherwise this wouldn't be the sole Ace Combat offering available on the PS3.
This title's big feature is Dogfight mode (DFM), a mode you manually activate that sends you into a hot pursuit behind an enemy. By keeping your sights trained on your enemy, you can fire off missiles with enhanced homing and damage output. It's mostly on autopilot, but enemies can still shake you off or counter your DFM, chasing you with their own version of DFM (which you can also counter). The problem with DFM is that the game is downright reliant on it. You cannot play this game like a regular Ace Combat game, and to that extent, it doesn't feel like my skill at flying a virtual aircraft is being tested. Air-to-air special weapons are effectively useless due to how fucking fast enemy planes are, and their health is inflated to the point where the extra damage you deal in DFM is essentially mandatory.
This game also tries to spice things up with types of gameplay that are new to Ace Combat, to wildly varying degrees of success. There's on-rails missions where you fire a machine gun from the comfort of a chopper (reasonable enough), missions where you manually aim bombing runs via the perspective of a surveillance camera (this one was extremely irritating), and missions where you gun down entire cities as a chopper (braindead). Weirdly enough, one of my bigger beefs with the game is the camera. There's a point where you need to stop pretending you're filming a war documentary and let me see what the fuck I'm actually doing. Your plane feels like it takes up much more screen space than usual, and the camera has a tendency to drift around aimlessly. It was so distracting that using first-person cockpit view felt like a requirement. Same goes for the chopper, it takes up like half the screen, obscuring the targets you're supposed to be aiming at.
To a degree, this Ace Combat game feels a lot closer to an action game in spirit. The music in this game honestly sounds like it wouldn't be out of place in a game like Metal Gear Rising in many cases. There's a big focus on scripted sequences, and often leads to a plethora of do-or-die moments. There's no time to breathe between missions. DFM sometimes takes you on a ride, grazing past crumbling buildings and explosions. But when you activate DFM on a plane scripted to do that, sometimes they take a nosedive straight downward, only to sharply level out so they can follow the designated setpiece trail. This caused me to break off from DFM on more than one occasion, sending me careening into the ground, and it never felt fair (one of these times was during the tutorial). Also, what the FUCK do you mean "your health regenerates automatically"? Does the plane repair itself in real time, independent of the pilot? Fuck off. I hate this aspect so much, especially since the game boasts the spectacle of the aircraft getting torn to shreds by bullet fire and the like. These concepts directly clash with one another, it distracts me to no end. "Oops, I'm taking too much damage, better flee the current conflict for a little bit." Eat my rudder, Bandai Namco.
The story is a god damn blur. Your name: John Combat. (That is a joke.) Your mission: Kill the Russians. (That is not a joke.) Yeah, this game ditches Ace Combat's "Strangereal" universe for the real universe. No Strangereal means no fantastical elements; no drones, space elevators, super-duper future planes, any of that fun stuff. You play as a military man with a military plan, fighting a very black-and-white conflict from the perspective of "we're America, of course we're the heroes!" There's no nuance to any of it. Also, normally I wouldn't touch upon this kinda shit, but misogyny! Listen, I get it. You make a fictional story about the U.S. Army, and you probably want to represent the male power fantasy that comes with it. I don't think you needed to bring sexism in the workplace into the picture though. The one playable female pilot in this game is more than capable, but she's surrounded by a bunch of dickheaded jocks. The game's box mentions that the story is written by "NY Times best-selling military author Jim DeFelice", and without looking into the reception of his literary works, I'm sorry, but this guy just sounds like a hack.
The one saving grace about this game is that it seems to be a spinoff. The game that released after this one was explicitly titled "Ace Combat 7", after all. That doesn't excuse this game's general lack of polish though, it doesn't live up to the pedigree that the series had established up to this point. Truthfully, I didn't quite finish this game. I got stuck at an absurdly strict segment right before the final boss. Reading people's complaints about the underwhelming final boss didn't inspire me with the confidence to see it through, but I feel like I came close enough. Maybe the online co-op/versus is supposed to be the main draw of this game? Half the game's achievements are dedicated to it. Who knows? I really don't care enough to find out. Lowkey wish that Ace Combat Infinity wasn't a long-defunct live service title, otherwise this wouldn't be the sole Ace Combat offering available on the PS3.
god this is bad
Mindnumbing. So many explosions michael bay would ask them to calm down. Poor attempt to take CODs market and money and insanely repititive and boring.
I'll start with the elephant in the room. Yes the DFM system sucks and I'm thankful the franchise didn't continue it. It can be pretty cool to look at it but being the main system? nah.
But the game was actually still quite good honestly. The badass music, the actual cool story, and even with DFM, fun gameplay. I would never like to see the franchise at this point again but I'm happy that it did happen as it gave us a cool unique title.
But the game was actually still quite good honestly. The badass music, the actual cool story, and even with DFM, fun gameplay. I would never like to see the franchise at this point again but I'm happy that it did happen as it gave us a cool unique title.
So this is what it feels like playing Call of Duty at the Ace Combat's home.
The story goes like this. You're taking the role of a John Ace and your goal is to combat russians who got their hands on a super nuke. You also have a couple of friends, Jack Apache and Jane Bomber. They will give you small intermissions when you get tired of chasing enemy planes on a jet. But don't get cocky, evil russians have their own Ivan Aceov who will be the last boss of your story. He'll try to super nuke your favourite goddamn country. And it's up to you, Ace, to stop the evildoers and protect our taxpaying citizens! Oorah!
The dog fight mode which this game advertised as much as it could was a mistake. The point of it is that you press button - you get epic blockbusting sequence of you chasing fleeing enemy, exploding their plane with your testosterone missiles and get an influx of endorphins from oil and debris hitting your face. "Make metal bleed" they said on the cover. Unfortunately, this system works like auto-pilot and boy is it fun to sit there scratching your ass doing nothing but pressing a button to shoot missiles. Moreover, some jets have their scripted sequences of you chasing them through falling cranes, exploding warships and so on. And God forbid you from entering the chase mode in some off-script location. The enemy will take maneuvers designed to explode your insides just to get to the starting point of a scenic route and you can't even damage it. This is atrociously bad in the last boss chase as it took me five or ten minutes fruitlessly chasing Ivan just to understand that he's invincible until the background chatter is over and I knew that I killed his wife and daughter back in Saraevo and he's trying to get revenge.
The apache attack part was a mistake. This mode has two or three missions and for some reason each of them is taking more than one fucking hour of real time to complete. Add to it wonky camera placement and movement, so your flying brick takes half of a screen (the most important half in the center, of course). And add to it braindead gameplay of just flying from point A to point B pressing R2+Square over and over again watching blue rebel Fords blow up. And don't forget, half of the cast is owing you an infinite amount of beer when they get back to base. Oorah.
The helicopter minigun part was a mistake. In this obligatory turret sequence from every shooter from PS360 era you press a button. This button sends enemies along with your camera to shit. It's next to impossible targeting anything so you just press a button and wiggle the stick until someone on the radio says they own you another can of beer. Yes, the AC130 part is still a turret sequence with a thermal filter on top of it.
The bomber part wasn't a mistake. It's scripted as fuck, yes, but I had fun navigating almost straight paths occasionally dropping bombs and looking at explosions. These missions I really can count as actual intermissions to relax a bit after insufferable abomination of a system that is dog fighting mode. I also like callsign Spooky very much, thanks for asking.
Music part is meh, lot of orchestral fluff with no kick to it. And it hurts knowing that that Keiki Kobayashi actually wrote music for this. Looks like every department fumbled it this time. Dogfight theme is pretty cool though.
Eh, could be worse.
The story goes like this. You're taking the role of a John Ace and your goal is to combat russians who got their hands on a super nuke. You also have a couple of friends, Jack Apache and Jane Bomber. They will give you small intermissions when you get tired of chasing enemy planes on a jet. But don't get cocky, evil russians have their own Ivan Aceov who will be the last boss of your story. He'll try to super nuke your favourite goddamn country. And it's up to you, Ace, to stop the evildoers and protect our taxpaying citizens! Oorah!
The dog fight mode which this game advertised as much as it could was a mistake. The point of it is that you press button - you get epic blockbusting sequence of you chasing fleeing enemy, exploding their plane with your testosterone missiles and get an influx of endorphins from oil and debris hitting your face. "Make metal bleed" they said on the cover. Unfortunately, this system works like auto-pilot and boy is it fun to sit there scratching your ass doing nothing but pressing a button to shoot missiles. Moreover, some jets have their scripted sequences of you chasing them through falling cranes, exploding warships and so on. And God forbid you from entering the chase mode in some off-script location. The enemy will take maneuvers designed to explode your insides just to get to the starting point of a scenic route and you can't even damage it. This is atrociously bad in the last boss chase as it took me five or ten minutes fruitlessly chasing Ivan just to understand that he's invincible until the background chatter is over and I knew that I killed his wife and daughter back in Saraevo and he's trying to get revenge.
The apache attack part was a mistake. This mode has two or three missions and for some reason each of them is taking more than one fucking hour of real time to complete. Add to it wonky camera placement and movement, so your flying brick takes half of a screen (the most important half in the center, of course). And add to it braindead gameplay of just flying from point A to point B pressing R2+Square over and over again watching blue rebel Fords blow up. And don't forget, half of the cast is owing you an infinite amount of beer when they get back to base. Oorah.
The helicopter minigun part was a mistake. In this obligatory turret sequence from every shooter from PS360 era you press a button. This button sends enemies along with your camera to shit. It's next to impossible targeting anything so you just press a button and wiggle the stick until someone on the radio says they own you another can of beer. Yes, the AC130 part is still a turret sequence with a thermal filter on top of it.
The bomber part wasn't a mistake. It's scripted as fuck, yes, but I had fun navigating almost straight paths occasionally dropping bombs and looking at explosions. These missions I really can count as actual intermissions to relax a bit after insufferable abomination of a system that is dog fighting mode. I also like callsign Spooky very much, thanks for asking.
Music part is meh, lot of orchestral fluff with no kick to it. And it hurts knowing that that Keiki Kobayashi actually wrote music for this. Looks like every department fumbled it this time. Dogfight theme is pretty cool though.
Eh, could be worse.
project aces tried making cod style ace combat and failed
By variety and soundtrack Assault Horizon way better than Ace combat 7 but gameplay ruined the game somehow
fodase
Ace Combat's DmC
Limited Edition