First Impressions: Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Enhanced Edition (PC)

I've played three games in the Ace Combat series, all on hand held devices: Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception, Ace Combat Assault Horizon Legacy and Ace Combat: Joint Assault.  I however have  not played any of the games that have come out for consoles.  So I come from a background that likes this series from Namco and Project Aces.  I watched the trailers a couple of times and liked what I saw.  So, last summer when this game went on sale for 75% off, I jumped at it like a school boy who jumps at something he really wants.

I initially thought about playing this game with the keyboard and mouse, then decided that I liked the controller layout of the hand held games, so why mess with a good thing when I kind of knew what I was doing.  So I plugged in my 360 controller and was prepared to show the AI my impressive dog fighting skillz. (It also turned out that you cannot use the keyboard and mouse as control schemes, so I lucked out on this one).

Well, that didn't happen as quickly as I would have thought.  Apparently, AC:AHEE is one of those games that the gaming world feared when the Xbox One was announced, in that it requires that you be logged into Windows Live in order to play the game.  And before I could play the game, I had to create a Windows Live account.  It was at this time that I feared I would have to have the equivalent of an Xbox Live membership in order to play.  That would have been a quick end to a $7.50 game purchase.  I had and have no interest in paying a monthly subscription fee to play a game I already purchased "the rights" to play.

My fear however was not the case.  I created my account/profile, then made my Windows Mii equivalent Avatar, all in a separate window and exited out, finally returning to AC:AHEE after having spent roughly 40 minutes creating the account, confirming the account through my email, creating the Miiesque figure and updating the account and updating the game to the latest version.  

Finally, I am at the login screen when this happens:

At this point, I was again, very close to saying a quick "fuck it all to hell and back" and never reaping what my $7.50 was able to purchase.  My eyes saw "delete" and my brain interpreted that as either deleting the 40 minute profile and/or deleting the AC:AHEE.  Naturally, I tried not to panic, so I just powered the game down and restarted it, thinking that maybe I needed to give Windows Live and the game a few minutes to communicate.  Or something.

Five minutes later when I booted up the game, I was able to actually play the game.  Whew!

As with other games in the Aces series, I began my first run through of the game on Easy, just to get a feel for the game and the control setup as well as the new flying abilities such as the Close Range Assault's Dog Fight and Air Strike modes.  Plus I want to enjoy the game before I try to Ace-it-up the enemy's ass. . . as bad as that sounds.  So call me what you will for playing the game on Easy.

Some basics about the game first.  Like Ace Combat: Joint Assault, AC:AHEE takes place in the real world, albeit two years in the future, but the countries, locations, factions are more-or-less real.  At the moment all the planes are either real or based on actual planes.  I've yet to run into a Falken, which will not be very fun at all.  Missions are interspersed with full motion video cut scenes that occasionally let you split mission paths, as in other Ace Combat games. 

The first thing I noticed was that the missions in AC:AHEE are long.  In the previous Ace Combat games I've played, a "long" mission/level meant you had up to 15 minutes of fuel before you no longer could complete the mission.  In this game, long is upwards of 40 minutes in a multi stage/checkpoint mission.  For me, that's a bit too long.  10, 15 minutes?  That seems to me at least, the ideal length for a mission, but again, that's just someone from the ADHD generation talking, so what do I know.  And I'm not even talking about missions where I frequently died or failed and was no longer mission capable.

I easily heard this guy scream these lines at me at least 15 times.

It's true that in AC:AHEE, you not only control fighter planes, but also act as the gunner in helicopters and bombers and I thought I would love it.  As it turns out, piloting a helicopter is a pain in the ass.  I kept having to invert the Y-axis then switch it back depending on my camera angle.  If I wanted 1st person view, I had to have the Y-axis inverted; for 3rd person view, non-inverted.  One might ask why I switched between camera angles then.  I honestly don't remember exactly, but it had something to do with having a wider field of vision and I hunted enemy combatants versus firing upon moving trucks as they approached the above compound that I was supposed to be guarding.  Pain. In. The. Ass.

I should probably also talk about the cut scenes.  They are all full CG acted, moving parts and all, as opposed to the narrated stills from the hand held games.  Yes they're pretty, but I don't feel any closer to the characters and the story than I did with the other iteration of story telling and if anything, it's sometimes distracting.  Just give me the mission parameters and let me blow up some bogies.

Presently, I have six hours spent playing the game and I am only on the 5th mission where some serious shit goes down and you have to fight an ass-ton of enemies.  In this mission, in particular, the AI seems to be abnormally high.  I've even noticed this in other missions, that the enemy AI is agressively high for playing on Easy difficulty.  It is becoming somewhat frustrating trying to get past the same three minutes of a dogfight and only making it so far each time before giving up and saying "I'll get back to in later today or tomorrow."  I mean why do I even have regular missiles if the enemy dodges them 90% of the time if I'm not in one of the special Close Range Attack modes or if I successfully perform a counter maneuver which can only happen after an enemy locks onto me!?  If I wanted the level of challenge that I seem to be getting from the AI, I probably would have started out on Hard.  I'm almost afraid to see what Normal difficulty is like.

I know I'll get back to playing Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Enhanced Edition, I just don't know when that day will be.  The safety of the world will just have to wait a little longer.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

The Immortal Ones

I'm in love with my own ideas: Birds and Bees

So, I was listening to this podcast from Science Friday, about the sad plight of bees.  They really sound like they're up against a lot, and are very sensitive.  There's a problem of a lack of variety - corn, corn corn, too much, doesn't serve their purpose and they're malnourished.  And then there's pesticides, where only a few parts per billion can get into the bees systems from the pollen and then affect their behavior. 

So, of course, while listening to this I thought:  Video game!  Maybe an RTS, maybe a hybrid game.  But a bee colony has a set of behaviors, each bee is essentially grinding pollen, and/or on a fetch quest.  They've also got some rad other behaviors, like scouting, dancing and of course, making honey.  Why not have a game about it ?  What I like about this game is that it doesn't have to be *super duper* compelling game-play wise.  It can be basic, even a little boring.  But what it *does* have to do is be as accurate as possible (maybe a little bit of creative license, but there's always some of that, they call it 'theory').  And allow the players to take part in the different parts of running a bee colony.  Sim Bee!  Sim Colony!  TM TM TM!!!  Anyway, I think that would be great.  I also think it would be great to pilot a Bee in 3d space.  zip zip zip!

In addition, it wouldn't be hard to come up with a story arc.  Have a bee colony that's doing well, through the generations.  But then have it run into some of the bee colony problems listed above in the podcast.  Suddenly, there's a lack of nutritional variety, become more and more scarce, while on  the other hand, there's pesticides slowly finding their way in, fucking shit up.  Sadness.  But a good story, and valuable!

The second animal idea I had was bird flight simulator.  I suppose there could be some flocking that might happen. Birds come in many shapes and sizes and flying styles, not all can form those great 'V's we see overhead.  But birds have their own interesting qualities if you watch them.  I'm sure that the annals of ornithology have all sorts of fun data to play with in terms of gaming and simulation.  

Because- so many games are just simulators if you look at them right.  Mario Kart is a go-kart simulator.  But that was too boring, so they through in items and zips and combat and such. 

Mega Man is a running jumping and shooting simulator--  A Kinesiology simulator!  It's not very accurate though.  Same for Super Mario Bros.  Similar to how action figures are little humans, that just don't move right.  Those funny art pose figurines are much closer than GI Joe or HeMan ever were.

Anyway, I think educational and simulation games is where its at.  You can quote me on that.  Also, you can steal my ideas, since they aren't worth much on their own.  But I really want to stress that I think games based on educational and science topics can really be awesome.  Everyone loves physics engines, let's try to use them for something other than blowing shit up!  And if I'm right, then playing games that will teach us about the birds and the bees may help us be more compassionate, and that's a quality you can never have too much of.  

-D

Full Review: Ace Combat - Assault Horizon Legacy (3DS)

First off, my experiences with the Ace Combat franchise is somewhat limited.  I first came to this series with Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception for the PSP.  I'd never been one for air combat simulators or even arcade style games a la After Burner.  I do have a couple of air combat-type simulators but I can name those with just my right hand.........that's an expression right?  Anyway, I have Top Gun II: The Second Mission on the NES, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron on the N64 and Star Wars: Rogue Leader on the Gamecube.  The genre just never really held much of an interest for me.  Then I played ACX.

But this review is about AC:AHL, so let's get back to talking about that game.  Break it down!

Graphics

Holy crap!  The graphics are pretty amazing.  Having played two other Ace Combat games on the PSP, I was expecting something similar but not as clean and crisp.  Half the time I forget that I'm playing on the 3DS, which actually has a pseudo better screen size and resolution than the PSP (800x240 pixels vs 480x272 pixels & 32 bit color vs. 24 bit color).  The only time I feel that the game looses a bit of the graphics quality is when I'm using the after burners and the wind blowing by and the waves of heat behind the plane blur the crispness.  Basically the game looks beautiful in 2D as well as 3D, which brings us to:

3D Effectiveness

The 3D in AC:AHL looks great!  Have I used that adjective yet?  I've only played a couple of games that support 3D effects (what of it, I have a lot of DS games that I need to go through before I only start buying 3DS games) and this game, at the moment is the best looking game I've played.  I'll occasionally switch between 2D and 3D graphics  just to see what the difference is in level design and how the missions play.

For most of the game, I'll play in 3rd person view instead of the cockpit view or the HUD view, this is because I like having as much visual space around me as possible.  The cockpit view though looks fantastic in 3D and in replays, I'll switch to that visual just to look at how the cockpit glass stretches out and the control panel "comes to life," for lack of a better metaphor.

The only problems I had with the screen blurring, was when I was either trying to avoid enemy fire or trying to catch up with an enemy as they were banking around me.  During this, I would either lean in the direction I wanted to go or tilt the console.  So not a problem with the game, just being a gamer.

All in all, great us of the 3D.

Game Play

The game play is pretty similar to the previous two Ace Combat games on the PSP.  You have the standard/easy control scheme, which is what I usually play in lieu of the more complicated scheme of using the directional pad for the plane's yawl.  It's just something that I'd rather not deal with when the computer controlled opponents obviously don't have to deal with it either.

Something new in this iteration of Ace Combat is a meter in the lower right part of the screen that fills up and lets you do some sweet-ass maneuver in order to lock onto an enemy plane.  At first, I thought this was a cheap gimmick in order to "dumb down" the game for Nintendo's "younger, less advanced crowd."  I thought that at first.  Then I started using it and boy-damn is it fun and sometimes necessary, as in there are some enemies that you will never lock onto and hit with a missile if you don't use this.  In a similar vain, you can now perform defensive maneuvers in order to dodge enemy missiles.  Again, I thought it was cheap at first, but enemies use it too, so fuck it, I'm going to use it too.  It's not absolutely necessary to use the dodging technique, but again, it's fun.

About 1/4 of the way through the game, you're given the option of flying with another pilot at the cost of the points you earn from previous missions.  I like the option of having computer controlled companions since the idea of a single plane taking on and entire armada of ships (is that redundant?) and squadron of planes (again?), while is pretty heroic, is a bit far fetched.  I've yet to use this additional pilot as I don't want to spend the extra points/credits, but later when I don't care so much, or if it becomes necessary, I'll vie for one of the two options.

Aside from the main story mode, there's also a challenge setting and extra missions that lets you play levels that you've unlocked for an arcade-type game.  You play through a level that was in the main story line with some minor modifications and try to get a high score.  Scores are based on the number and types of enemies you kill, and the amount of time you took to pass the level.

So overall, the game play is what you would typically find from the Ace Combat games if you're familiar with the PSP titles, which again, are the only games in the series that I've played.  For some reason I feel like I need to mention that every so often because there's the Ace Combat Fan Boy who would say, "Nuh-uh, the controls in AC:5 were so much more fluid and more realistic, you don't know what you're talking about!  You mom's a fuckwad."

Story

The story isn't too involving, at least compared to ACX, which I found to be pretty awesome.  The story in Ace Combat: Joint Assault, which was so uninspiring that it's kept me from continually playing the game to buy additional planes.  So the story in AC:AHL is that you're part of a squadron that's trying to quell a rebellion from a government that as far as you know, is full of bad people.  Until you read some of the bios about the squadron leaders that you just shot down/killed, as in one of them has a family, children and is flying their last mission so they can settle down and retire believing that they're doing the right thing.  That's shit's harsh, but I'm still going to shoot the guy down when I replay missions.

After beating the main campaign on the easy setting (which I'll do just to see the differences in how the enemies are stacked against you in the harder difficulty levels), I found out that there was a whole intro movie that explains events leading up to the beginning of the game.  I only found this out because I hadn't pressed any buttons.  This is a pretty cool looking rendered movie with amazing graphics; in my opinion anyway.  I don't see why the movie wasn't played when you start a new game in story mode.  Just my thought.

One thing I wish was different was that when you're given the option to choose between missions, that they affect the game somehow.  As in, taking control of an enemy supply depo gives you extra count of your special weapon, or some minor change in the story.  Ultimately there is no change in how the last series of levels play regardless of which path you decide to choose.  The lack of this "option" isn't going to make me like the game any less, it's just something that I wish had been included.

Music

Apparently the music in the Ace Combat games is something to write home (or online) about.  The music in ACX wasn't so great (I turned the music off) and in AC:JA, I thought it was significantly better.  Here in AC:AHL, the music is pretty good.  I guess that's really all I can say about the music except that after beating the campaign, you're given access to the soundtrack, which I've yet to go through, but I will once the game no longer distracts me from playing it.

Final Thoughts

I think Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy is an incredibly fun and beautiful game.  Yes, it proves that blowing up enemy planes in clouds of fire and debris can be beautiful.  It has a lot of replayibility (not a word), especially since different difficulty levels with throw different enemies at you at different times or elongate a mission.  

Some reviews comment on the games short campaign, which is somewhat true.  A single playthrough on easy took me just over four hours to complete.  But that was on the easy difficulty setting, and only a single playthrough.  As with other games in the AC series, there are multiple paths to take during the campaign missions, so in order to play through all the levels on easy, it would take an additional four hours, making it eight hours for a complete run through.  But as mentioned earlier, levels change slightly depending on the difficulty setting, so four difficulty settings multiplied by eight hours a piece and now have a game that would take 32 hours.  This doesn't take into account the amount of time it would take to earn/buy all the planes, which I'm not always in the mood to try and do.  But, 32 hours to complete a game doesn't sound "short" to me, regardless of the genre.

All in all, a really fun game that was definitely worth the $19.99 I paid for it.

P.S.  And I just found out that AC:AHL is a remake of Ace Combat 2, which absolutely doesn't change my opinion of the game at all.  Except now Namco should remake all the other Ace Combat games for the 3DS.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Obligatory Top Gun Quote Goes Here