Bandai NamcoAce Combat 7: Skies Unknown (PS4)

This is a fantastic return to form after the last 'good' Ace Combat (AC) game - AC6 Fires of Liberation. This scraps away the on-rails, cinematic experiment that was AC Assault Horizon and completely ignores AC Infinity, returning to familiar lands, fast jets and a featuring a generous campaign.Pros+ A good, length campaign with varied, interesting missions. Sure there are standard 'destroy everything' missions but there are now stealth & escort missions, spectacular boss fights all livened up by...+ Spectacular weather effects and much improved topography. Diving into cloud cover to escape a missile lock, hunting fuel lorries in a sandstorm, dog-fighting through mountains in a thunder storm, it looks excellent and really impacts on the games fun factor. Terrain and cities in particular have seen vast improvements in appearances.+ Beautiful graphics. Really this game needs a dedicated photo mode - the sun dappling through the clouds, the missile streaks and of course, the planes themselves - excellent.+ Sound design. This is particularly good although the constant missile blare can annoy, wearing headphones is very immersive! Music is great across the board, particularly the boss battles and the penultimate level (although nothing compares to 'The Liberation of Gracemaria', youtube it) and the voice acting is adequate with the usual silly lines.+ Generous campaign. Its a good length available with three difficulty levels, 20 levels and two control options (pro hint - play with Expert, much more immersive and this should be the default - looking at you IGN...) with 'normal' being suitably challenging.+ Fandom. After some wobbly games this is a real gift back to the Ace Combat fans, big levels, big missions and battles. In an age where content is being cut left, right and centre - this feels like a (mostly) full package.+ VR. At last a game that really goes for VR, three special missions (although quite ordinary in themselves) that really utilise the VR with the Playstation. Worth buying just for this (its short but sweet).+ Improved multiplayer options. Its a step in the right direction and it is quite fun (see cons however)+ No loot boxes, no EA, no pay to win, no in game currency, no collectors cards, no Konami etc.Cons (the below are mostly negligible)- They couldn't resist a 'season pass' however, shame. Apparently this will include several extra planes and three new missions, time will tell if this is any good.- Cut-scenes galore. Look you can just skip them, and the core of the story is quite good (suicide squad with jet planes?) but many of the cut-scenes are just...well plain boring. It gets better and heck, they certainly tried and put good money into it! (6 x better story then Fallout 76).- Timed missions. This is a bit of a headscratcher to be honest, i'm not really sure what they were thinking with one or two of the missions and the tough timer requirements. I've never failed to a time out...but its been close occasionally.- Online multiplayer is dominated by pro players who have already unlocked the best planes by day 2 - wait until you are suitably experienced!OverallIf you have a passing interest in jet planes, or historically liked games such as Burnout and Metal Gear Solid (basically those two things combined, with jet planes), this is everything you could hope for. Ace Combat fans rejoice, Aces rule the skies once more!Note 1 - Total flight time in the (normal) campaign was measured at six and a half hours, plus probably another two hours of cut scenes, VR is plus another hour give or take.Note 2 - What is it with final missions in these sort of games making you fly down tiny tunnels??

A long time ago I played to completion Ace Combat 2 and was expecting good things from the much updated version.The graphics are good, the missions are interesting and there are some really good elements that make missions more challenging. The video and story are decent, although a bit cliched but it’s very playable.The reason that I say it’s ok and am not more fond of it is two fold. Firstly there used to be some very unique aircraft such as the Tornado in the second one, that’s long gone and although you do get a rather cool Star Fighter, it would be nice to have more varied planes. That’s a small issue.The bigger one is flight controls, limits on planes doing full rolls or pitching past a certain point are really frustrating. Also small point, but some more varied plane skins would be cool, having an A10 in grey etc is just a bit dull.It’s playable and absorbing, but once completed won’t be played regularly, unlike the previous one.

In recent years games developers have shown a real talent for completely wrecking a franchise by either losing sight of what made a game's predecessors so good (Gran Turismo being a perfect example), neglecting long-standing fans (Gran Turismo being a perfect example) or just allowing characters and storylines to be ruined by Political Correctness and Social Justice, either making a game unrealistic, difficult for the majority of people to identify with or just feeling like some kind of progressive morality lecture. Thankfully, Bandai Namco have managed to avoid all of these pitfalls (although the "badass" young female character in the cinematic story cutaways isn't particularly believeable, especially when she starts trash-talking her own dad!) and have come up with superb addition to the Ace Combat series.All of the stuff you loved about previous games is there, but it still feels fresh and exciting thanks to some clever new mission ideas, an involving story and of course the even better graphics and physics. I've been a fan of these games ever since Air Combat on the PS1 and this really doesn't disappoint.My only criticisms:-It's pretty much impossible to compare aircraft stats thanks to the bizarre choice of using numberless bars to indicate stats, and not even giving the ability to easily move straight from one aircraft to another. It's pretty frustrating when you want to conserve your in-game currency and try to get the most bang for your buck when upgrading your aircraft. Thankfully someone on Reddit has painstakingly gone through and worked out numbers for every aircraft, but it seems like a massive oversight for what would have been such a simple detail of just adding a number next to the bar indicator.-The drone-focused missions are just too chaotic. You're basically just frantically flying around all over the place rather than thinking about tactics or strategy and, even within the allowances of a computer game, these missions just seem to feel rushed and lose their realism.-The storyline can be a bit confusing with all of the similar-sounding country names and the fact that they all talk with an American accent!-It would have been nice to see a wider selection of aircraft. There are quite a lot, but the number and variety in the earlier games is missing.These are minor criticisms though so I'm still giving it 5 stars. It's a superb game and will have tons of replay value thanks to the different mission replay options. I haven't even tried out the online multiplayer or VR modes yet either.

Worth getting great radio talking on it