Fun For Everyone?
Project Aces/Ace Combat might as well be a genre onto itself these days.
To make a high fidelity flight simulator for a console is all but impossible. Making a game like Falcon 4.0, even on modern consoles, would require the developer to make concessions in terms of gameplay and controls to make things work on a console controller and the number of available inputs and keys.
As to whether or not games like AC are flight sims is a debate for another time.
As it stands here, ACAH is essentially an action game that takes place on rails at times should the player choose, but the overall theme of the game is absolute action that is beyond anything remotely realistic even though this is the first AC game that uses real places and names for a setting.
I say that ACAH is like a shooter on rails because the newest gameplay feature is DogFightMode or DFM. DFM is triggered when you get behind a fellow ace pilot and hit both bumpers which brings you upclose where you can keep your target inside your "assault circle" to build up stronger weapons modifiers. Essentially the longer you keep the target inside the circle, the more damage your guns and missiles do. Once you kill the target the game give yous a slo-mo shot of your target coming to pieces. During these moments all you are concerned about is getting a good shot on target. The game handles flying for the moment so you aren't worried about flying into the ground.
That gameplay device is antithetical to what Project Aces games were all about, but I don't see that as a bad thing. Instead it seems that Project Aces has finally accepted that making the Gran Tourismo of aerial combat on a console is either out of reach or not what the market demands. Either way, ACAH is a lot of fun to play.
ACAH goes for a more gritty and realistic feel, but this game is unabashedly absurd in its tone the way a Michael Bay film tries to have gravitas. The notion that modern fighter planes twisting and turning to get gunshots on each other a few thousand feet above sea level is...well...laughable and the idea that the pilots within these planes somehow have personal vendettas against each other is even more so inane. The theme being pursued here is more reminiscent of WW1 Knights of the Sky who came to know each other's heraldry over the Western Front. Either way, coming to ACAH for the narrative is like going to a Jason Statham movie for the plot and character development.
Too many times I found myself leaning one way or another when I'd turn, even though the flight model is foolishly simple, and shooting down an enemy Ace saw to me holding my breath and having the relax my grip o the controller. And as a 33 year old gamer too few games ever make me take pause and say "oh shit" but the first time a scripted event occurred in-mission where the game pauses, the camera pans out and I'm watching a plan I shot up cartwheel into cargo cranes while my plane ducks under the debris while the music swells and then the camera snaps back behind my fighter where the game continues without ever having to stop and load. The moment was purely cinematic and scripted and happens as soon as you enter DFM and shoot down a specific target, but it happens in such a natural manner that it makes mission all the more exciting and thrilling. Not too many games accomplish that.
I have never held Ace Combat games in high esteem, they always seem to fall short one way or another or felt like they so desperately wanted to be hardcore flight sims but were hamstrung by the platform. ACAH successfully finds a way to take its flight sim veneer to make a fun game to play.
Like it or not, ACAH is a step in a direction to keep Project Aces from being a forgotten series, and I think they were successful in making a fun game to play through.
