Remember Falcon 3.0, the harcore PC flight sim by Spectrum HoloByte? That game had a 250+ page manual and took a good hour to figure out how to take off without stalling and crashing several million dollars worth of virtual military technology. Namco's Ace Combat: Assault Horizon (AC:AH) is the polar opposite of that game. It's the 'Top Gun' of flight games - loud, dumb, and a ton of fun!!
AC:AH takes pretty much all of the complexity out of flying and focuses on providing as cinematic and action-packed experience as possible. The in-flight controls for planes are very basic - throttle with the triggers, the left stick is to pitch and roll, the bumbers control yaw. The physics are ludicrously loose - you can pull off any kind of harebrained maneuver without worry of blacking out and it takes an act of God to stall your plane. You also can't do a barrel roll for some reason.
Once you engage enemy fighters, you can use cannons and heat-seaking missiles to take down bogeys but the most fun comes when you get in close behind another plane and engage DFM ('Dog Fight Mode'.....yeah, I know...). You have to follow an enemy close for a few seconds before you can engage DFM but once you do (by pressing both bumpers together), the game basically takes control of 90% of the flying for you, zooms the camera close in and you're controlling a reticule to try and target your bogey. The combination of the visuals, sound design and controls makes this an incredibly thrilling experience. Because the computer is doing most of the flying for you (you're basically moving left or right to generally keep up with the fleeing target) it can create situations where you're occasionally flying between city buildings trying to shoot down another plane. When you do fire off the kill shot the camera dynamically follows the rocket in, shows your victim going up in flames and then cuts back. This never got old for me. The end of game stats showed I had shot down a couple of hundred planes by the end and I never once got bored of this mechanic.
The CPU pilots can also target you and if they close in behind you there's a neat feature where, while trying to evade/shake your tail, you can line up two markers and then perform 'a counter' whereby you flip your plane and instantly loop around behind your pursuer. It sounds dumb but it's incredibly cool to see/do and adds another demension to the dogflighting.
There's a similar mechanic for ground targeting that's just as fun called ASM (...ahem....'Air Strike Mode'....) where you have to line up with a designated entry point for a bombing run and once again the computer takes control of a large portion of the flying controls (you still can bank left or right) and you focus on raining hell on ground troops.
Unlike previous Ace Combat games you also get to control helicopters. These missions are mostly support missions for ground troops in populated areas and have their own neat mechanics. You often have to use buildings for cover and with simplified controls it's easy to duck and weave between buildings. If someone fires a missile/rocket at you - no problem, just do a barrel roll to evade it....in a chopper (try not think about it too much).
Amazingly, for a Japanese game at least, AC:AH has a story penned by an actual 'writer' (we'll use that term lightly) - Jim DeFelice who's written a number of military thrillers. Unfortunately, though not unexpectedly, the the story is pretty rote and predictable but still a lot more involved than I thought it would be. The game takes place in 2015 where you play as Lt. Colonel William Bishop of the 108th Task Force (a multinational UN task force composed of NATO and Russian troops). You're leader of Warwolf Squadron and by the end of the game you have some semblance of attachment to the pilots in your squadron - contrast this to Ghost Recon: Future Soldier where you spend 10 hours with 3 other soldiers and I couldn't tell you their names to save my life.
The 108th Task Force is charged with stopping a Russian insurgent group, SRN, who are funded by the Russian mafia. This is all just an excuse for you to go flying missions around the world from East Africa, to Dubai, to Miami and a number of other locations. There are twists and turns in the story but you can see most of them coming a mile away. You also have a nemesis - Colonel Andrei Markov (you have to read that in a thick Russian accent) - who is the world's best fighter pilot or something. No prizes for guessing whom you fight near the end of the game. It's dumb, but it's dumb fun and I quite enjoyed the campyness of it all.
Graphically, this game is very, very pretty. There are a ton of different planes you can fly (and fly against) and there all modelled beautifully. Explosions are gorgeous as are the particle and smoke effects. Ground details, particularly around the cities are fantastic. Miami and Dubai are two particularly well presented cities with buildings galore to fly in and around.
Sound design is similarly impressive with immersive comms chatter and some very good use of surround sound with missiles and explosions all around. There is also a very rousing and grandiose orchestral score. The voice acting sits on the wrong side of the 'bad' vs. 'so bad it's good' line which is a shame because truly awful voice acting combined with the campy story would have made the narrative experience that much more fun.
Regardless of the apathetic voice acting, AC:AH is a bucket-load of over-the-top fun. An average mission generally starts with an overly dramatic cut-scene furthering the silly story, then you're suddenly in the air and have to shoot down 20-30 planes in a single mission - don't worry, your plane can somehow carry 50-60 missiles! Throughout the dog-fighting you're routinely pulling 10G turns with the greatest of ease. Then at some point you're up against the opposition squadron's top dogfighter and on occasion you have to chase down an ICBM and shoot it out of mid-air. It' crazy, it's stupid and it's fun.
The game takes about 5-6 hours to finish which I felt was the perfect amount of time - any longer and I could see myself getting a bit bored but those 5-6 hours were an absolute blast. Best of all, the game can easily be bought new for $20-30 which is very reasonable and solid value for money.
If you're looking for anything approaching a flight sim I'd stay well clear, but if you're open to playing the the Air Force version of a Michael Bay summer blockbuster I think you'll have a blast.
Lavan
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