You don’t need me to tell you that
Ace Combat 7 is the former. You can
see by the screenshots, by the very
name, that this is about getting you
up in the air and feeling like
Maverick ASAP, laws of physics be
damned. It’s the latest
in a 23-year-old
franchise devoted to
just that, no less. And
on those terms, it’s a
roaring success.
As with its
predecessors, there are
two different flight
models available here,
one professing to offer a simplified
handling experience while the other
offers a deeper simulation. In truth,
neither one is particularly taxing and
the most discernible difference
between them seems to be increased
control of yaw and pitch in
simulation mode. It’s Need for Speed
handling in the air then, essentially,
and there’s nothing inherently wrong
with that. After an hour or so of
chucking a fighter jet about with
abandon, though, you do feel a desire
to test your flight skills further than
either model truly allows.
No, instead that challenge must be
gleaned from Ace Combat 7’s
missions. They start off pedestrian,
but kick into gear after three or fourlevels to reveal an unhinged
campaign. What begins as 15 minutes
of shooting at radar towers and the
odd enemy fighter quickly descends
into boss fights against impossible
constructions, battles with drone
swarms and
navigational setpieces
straight from a
Universal Studios ride.
The demands of Ace
Combat 7’s campaign
are matched perfectly
with its accessible
approach to flight
simulation, throwing
improbable machines and scenarios
at you simply because it can.
Make it back to base after one of
these delirious encounters and you’ll
earn some currency to spend on new
weapons, plane upgrades, and
entirely new aircraft via a huge and
elaborate tech tree. The
improvements to manoeuvrability are
subtle when you upgrade a plane, but
weapon additions can make you
much more effective in certain
missions – plus each new jet speaks
to the five-year-old in all of us who
finds them impossibly, unspeakably
cool. Ace Combat knows this very
well, you suspect, as it lingers on
shots of them in selection screens
before your sortie.But is there enough variety? It
seems ungrateful to even ask when
you’ve just concluded a mission that
requires you to navigate collapsing
skyscrapers, but no, perhaps there
isn’t. Despite all the bluster, it’s hard
to shake the fatigue that comes with
your 100th dogfight or ground attack.
The settings change around, and
sometimes the environment itself
poses a hazard, but in the simplest
terms the gameplay loop doesn’t
evolve beyond aim, lock and fire.
That’s as much a genre problem as
anything Ace Combat 7 does wrong in
particular, and if you’re reading this
review you’ve likely already made
your peace with arcade flight
simulator eccentricities. Still, that
frustration exists.TURBULENCE
There are more obvious negatives,
though, like the unengaging
cutscenes between missions, which
hand on heart I really did try to
follow, but quickly exceeded my
threshold for narrative codswallop to
the point where the words just didn’t
register. Previous Ace Combat
instalments made it their ‘thing’ to
bark absurd dialogue at you until it
became endearing. Some of that
remains here, but Ace Combat 7
appears to want to be taken seriously
for large chunks of time, and it
doesn’t have the characterisation –
scratch that, enough of a semblance
of sense – to really earn it.
I’ll not dwell on what’s ultimately
a subjective aspect of the game,
though, but will instead sing Ace
Combat 7’s praises for looking great
without overly taxing your PC
(there’s even a downsampling
option!), but mostly for keeping the
early ’90s arcade flight sim alive,
prettier and weirder than ever.NEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
Accessible dogfighting
andbafflingcutscenes,
in that order.
EXPECT TO PAY
£50
DEVELOPER
Bandai Namco Studios
PUBLISHER
Bandai Namco
Entertainment
REVIEWED ON
Core i5 6500,
GTX 1070, 16GB RAM
MULTIPLAYER
Up to eight players
LINK
http://www.bandai
namcoent.com/
games/ace-combat-775
Uncomplicated but
gratifying flying, in
scenarios of increasing
silliness and likeability.
Te d i o u s s to r y, th o u g h.VERDICTEach new
jet speaks
to the
five-year-old
in all of usA
erial combat games can be split down the middle, more or
less, according to which half of the ’90s they hark back to. Is
it an ode to After Burner, all effortless loops and rolls? Or is
it the kind of rigorous flight sim that flew so high in the
decade’s latter half, almost invariably taking its name from a
plane (see Falcon 4.0, B-17 Flying Fortress, et al), where even correctly
retracting your landing gear is a real achievement.PILOT EPISODE
Flying high since ’95, ACE COMBAT 7: SKIES UNKNOWN
presents a spruced-up goose. By Phil Iwaniuk
COME FLY WITH ME
NavigatingAce Combat 7’s aircraft treeF-4E
Where it all
begins. It’s
capable and
nippy, but those
stats... yeesh.SU-30M2
A formidable
Russian Air
Force classic, all
undulating lines
and missiles.F-22A
The priciest
fighter, and with
reason: these
are $150m per
unit IRL.Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
REVIEW