Cutscenes, mission briefings and the chatter of your AI teammates in the air is filled with military jargon, political commentary and a weird hatred for drone jets which, after all, would render the pilots at the core of Ace Combat obsolete. The storyline underpinning everything is completely bonkers, vague filler which serves mostly to get you pinwheeling through in flight overalls.

Dropping bombs or taking out slower targets pales in comparison slightly, and despite the fact you’re joyriding a multimillion dollar jet plane at several hundred miles an hour, it can feel a little stale. Ace Combat’s challenge comes from trying to take into account your speed and direction and your enemies, lining up your spins and turns so that you come in at the perfect angle to get a missile lock or the burst of gunfire that can take down an errant plane that is also tearing around. This is useful, because unlike the faux military stylings of many aerial combat games, Ace Combat will throw just about anything at you if it thinks it might be fun: battles against swarms of fighters are punctuated with bombing radar towers, escaping collapsing skyscrapers or trying to take down particularly tricky enemy aces who corkscrew around the air with ease. Aerial combat games have always split into two different camps: the arcade shooting shenanigans of titles like H.A.W.X and Afterburner or the realistic “I just crashed because I didn’t realise I’d forgotten to put my landing gear down before landing” seriousness of titles like IL-2 Sturmovik or Falcon 4.0.Īce Combat is definitely part of the first group, and despite having an arcade and simulation control set, it’s never particularly difficult to do what you want to do with whichever plane you take to the skies in. This is Ace Combat’s wheelhouse, in a way. Ace Combat 7 is – in short – Top Gun by way of Neon Genesis Evangelion, offering a unique opportunity to mix flying fighter jets with wondering about the meaning of human consciousness.

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