Sid Meier's Ace Patrol

There's so much to be excited about when it comes to Sid Meier's Ace Patrol. It's a tactical, turn-based World War I flight combat game. Usually you'd have to play what those old folks call board games to get this setting or one of those "flight simulators" (shudder). Ace Patrol will be conceptually familiar to anyone who just came off the recent XCOM train or played Factions. That said, in Ace Patrol, movement, rather than attacking and using abilities is where much of the strategy lies.

The free version of Ace Patrol gives you the first few missions of the British campaign, one of three in the game (the other two, American and German, can be purchased separately for $2 each). If you don't love how these feel - you may as well walk away. But be warned: even if you do enjoy these levels, some of the game's problems don't rear their hideous heads until a little further in. The major issue with the game is how it treats wounded and captured pilots. In fact, a recent patch of the game has tried to address this problem head on. While it's certainly a better balance now, it's still not great.

Each campaign is made up of a number of levels. You get some choice as to what kind of level you want to tackle next (defend a train, blow up enemies, take pictures of a balloon, etc). The level itself is made up of hexagon tiles that your planes fly over, moving (normally) 1 to 4 tiles at a time. The most interesting aspect of Ace Patrol is how movement works. The turns you have available to you (Bank Right, Dive Right, Level Flight) are all based on your altitude and your previously executed movement. For example, if you Bank Right on your first turn, you cannot Bank Left on your second turn, as the plane is till angled in that direction. You need to reorient (perhaps with Level Flight, which straightens you out) to Bank Left. Memorizing which moves you can do after which moves is a huge part of Ace Patrol, and so is keeping track of your altitude. Pilots also unlock more moves and some special moves as they level up (say move one more time!). One detail I love is how the game tells you which moves (agh) are high speed, or have high g-forces, though it doesn't make much effort to tell you how a high g-force move affects you gameplay wise.

Using this movement rule-set you try and destroy the enemy fighters or achieve your goal. Things fall apart when you start losing pilots, which you will at some point no doubt unless you're a real master. What's incredibly frustrating is how the game deals with lost pilots. If you are downed in enemy territory, you are a POW, and the pilot is lost until the next Christmas (when POWs are traded). Christmas can be many, many levels away. If the pilot is downed in friendly territory, their plane will need repairs (which could take a few missions) or they are in the hospital (and will recover after a few missions). The kicker is that you only have four pilots, ever, and some (most) missions have minimums of 2 or 3 pilots. What happens when you don't have enough? You have to skip the mission, take a failing grade on it, and move on. No, you can't replay it. No, you can't just wait for time to pass. You *can* of course buy three separate microtransactions (1 dollar each) to *speed up* the recovery time, but even if you do, which I stupidly did, you will still miss many, many missions. And it's not like there's some kind of branching storyline or anything like that. You just miss stuff so the game can punish you. It literally affects nothing else, at least nothing I've noticed. This recovery time issue is what Firaxis patched recently. Like I said, it's better, but the whole thing kind of stinks. It sucks really. I've written a lot about this in other iOS game reviews and I'm going to keep harping about it over and over again until either my mind melts or the world changes (guess which will happen first) but it is an awful feeling to lose because of money. It makes you hate games. I fucking love Sid Meier man. I would give up fast food to work with him, and the idea of Ace Patrol is so awesome, and the graphics are great, and it's likeable but god. damn. I've never been so disappointed in something as I was the prices in this game. Couldn't Firaxis test the waters with a different game? I know they're relatively new to iOS so if there's a silver lining it's probably that their next F2P won't be as broken.

If you are a lover of World War I planes, this could still be a great purchase for you. You owe it to yourself to at least check out the free levels. But for most us, the fact that the recovery time is frustratingly broken, that all the campaigns, special pilots and planes are microtransactions, is just too much garbage to accept, even for a Sid Meier game. That's a sentence every marketing team should memorize: even Sid Meier cannot and should not get away with this shit. It's a real shame because if Ace Patrol had just been a 10 dollar package, everything included, no bull shit pilot limit, this would be a much easier recommendation to anyone who isn't already burned out on these movement tactics games. The game can be a little dry or repetitive in places, but it's so nearly awesome. If we're lucky they'll repackage this for PSN and Live and strip out the rusty parts for good ones, but, frankly, based on how little talk there seems to be about this game, I'd label that possibility as dead as O-Ren. Oh yeah - there's a multiplayer I never played but I will say that it's cool they included pass and play.