Ace Combat: Assault Horizons: New entry in ageing franchise shows it's not yet time to quit
BY NICK SMITH
I first played Ace Combat: Assault Horizon at a game expo earlier this year and I was not overly impressed with it having never really been a fan of arcade style flight sims, instead preferring ones focused more on reality, such as IL-2.
However, putting my snobbery aside, I decided to give this game a proper go and I was not left disappointed.
It’s not the best game and has plenty of flaws, but it is fun to fly a plane at over 1000 knots and take out an entire enemy base in seconds, however unrealistic it may be.
Graphically it is pretty impressive. Whilst it is nothing groundbreaking it faithfully recreates real word locations as they would appear in a war torn landscape, such as Dubai and Miami. It really is something to weave in and out of skyscrapers and collapsing structures in a dog fight.
In terms of the actual gameplay, it is very arcade and it is played in very repetitive stages for each kill. You get in position for an attack on an enemy fighter, get in close enough, activate ‘dogfight mode,’ lock on, fire away and then repeat until they and all the other enemies are gone. Despite this, it is still good fun.
There really is not much skill in this, which I’m not used to as when I play flight sims usually, it is all about skill and I spent more time plummeting to earth than I do in a dog fight.
One positive element about the gameplay is the bombing runs; it really is great fun to see scores of foes exploding below you thanks to the huge weapons arsenal your planes carry.
There is also a pretty decent storyline behind the game too.
Whilst it is not going to set the world alight by any means, the latest game in Namco’s long running franchise, 2012 will be 20 years since the first title was released, has definitely shown that it is not time to quit yet.
