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[Duuvian]

I searched to see if this game had a topic, but failed to find one. I will leave a series of disjointed thoughts about why I recommend giving it a try if you can before the free Steam period is up. It's also on sale I think.

It's somewhat arcadey but not overly so if that makes sense. By that I mean the planes carry a few hundred of the standard lock on missiles; though maybe that's only on Easy mode.

What I found best about it was how it ran nearly flawlessly on my lowly machine. I played on easy as I figure playing with keyboard and mouse I was probably going to be at the computer's mercy otherwise. It is quite a pretty game from the cutscenes to the actual gameplay. I was alarmed by the lack of graphics options to turn to the lowest settings but it ran very well to my surprise. My machine can barely run the gpu side of planetside 2 even lower than what can be set in that games menu but it seemed to have no issues with this Ace Combat game.

My only gripe is that the Apache missions are clunky as heck to someone used to flying an ESF in Planetside 2. I got used to it though and other than that I had great fun once I turned on classic controls to be able to fly the jets. My ancient Aces over Pacific/Europe skills did me right while playing and I had only a little trouble readjusting to only having keyboard controls for the jets.

The campaign was fun, the last dogfight left me sweating. I liked the jet pilot missions the most but the others were fun too. I'm going to see if I can squeeze in a multiplayer match or two before the free period ends so I can see just how bad I am compared to someone who is really good at it. I'll also try out the other difficulties to see how bad the computer whoops on me. (the last dogfight was hard even on Easy. Easy must let you take a lot of damage because I was taking missiles to the chin frequently until I figured out rudder plus a turn in the F22 means his plane can't get it's nose on me so he spews five or six missiles that go wide before he goes after his objective again. It's takes forever to hit the guy, but that's good fun.)

I'd give it a 9/10 (though I'm only speaking for playing the campaign on this free weekend so far). I haven't played any flight sims in a while and the campaign hit the right notes for a kind of arcadey flight game. It was kind of fun to use the ol' arrow keys to steer an airplane around again.

I'll post a bit more in a little while, going to check out the other difficulties and see if I can squeeze in an MP match.

[ukulele]

I loved most of Ace Combat games, but i must say, i didnt liked the "chasing" (i dont remember the name) thing in this one, when you lock onto an enemy and auto-chase it, i tought it took a lot form the game, also the story isnt no where near as good as the previous games.

[Duuvian]

I agree, I was bemused by the dogfighting mode thing that is essentially an autopilot that sticks you to the tail of a chosen enemy. It makes the game a lot easier. However watching the last boss dodge all those missiles made me sort of appreciate it, and it does look cool and they had the foresight to have most of the missions have enemies that once locked onto do special evasive stuff on a pre planned course which is fun. The ground attack version of the dogfighting mode was annoying as heck too, it was hard to tell which way you had to fly into the entrance to correctly be able to trigger it and it jerked your aircraft around all unnatural like to set you on the predetermined course. Once done it also makes the game a lot easier. I got the feeling the game was intended to be released on consoles which might explain both the lack of graphics options as well as the odd controls for helicopters and the lockon thing. I also agree about the story, there is a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense, primarily where the bad guys got all those airplanes I blew up. I figure that doesn't matter though as much as having planes to blow up for free on a weekend.

That said I still enjoyed it and thought even if I can't make a purchase I can say some good things about the people who made it. They made a much better than average quality game overall to play for a weekend (no idea if it would have staying power so to speak where I would keep playing it for a long period) and I appreciate being able to try it. You say the others in the series are better? I will definitely give them a try if I see them free for a weekend.

EDIT: To try a harder difficulty I chose an early campaign level in the mode that completing the campaign unlocks. That mode lets you replay campaign missions but doesn't limit you to certain planes to use like you were the first time. The flight leader of the enemy squadron, despite being in a Mig 21and being outnumbered probably 10 to 1 was totally untouchable. Perhaps it requires going into the autopilot dogfighting mode to beat them, but I didn't try that time before I got bored because I was having fun watching him dodge my missiles. The Ai leader effortlessly dodged approximately 150 of the standard and about 20 special high accuracy missiles I fired at him from an American fighter plane so advanced it hasn't entered production as far as the public knows. On Easy, I hardly saw any AI use flares, but on the middle difficulty the leader AI dropped flares every single salvo I fired. I tried sending out a decoy missile to get the AI to drop flares but it would do so and then just effortlessly dodge the second normal and then the following two staggered advanced missiles that have better tracking. It was quite impressive to watch. Also, the AI wingmates did nothing useful while trying to chase the AI leader, so they might be useless if they face an AI a 'tier' above them I guess.

I tried to join a multiplayer game but alas, after making the mistake of impatiently exiting the first and only game lobby I saw after fumbling about for a couple minutes there were no more games to be found.

One thing shooting all those missiles at that untouchable AI made me think of was that it would be cool to fly against something like that in an X-com game during early interception of alien ships before you capture and study some of their goodies.