Ace Combat: Assault Horizon – Review – Xbox 360

Dancing with the angels or swimming with the fishes? Does the seventh game in the Ace Combat series deserve to be dissed because it strays from the normal ways of previous titles? I think not!

Story: You play as Colonel Bishop in the U.S. Air Force affectionately call-signed “War Wolf 1″. After flying a mission in Miami, FL you learn that there is a new Weapon of Mass Destruction called “Trinity”. Then after a sudden attack by an unlikely foe, it is your job to stop them from creating anymore decimation across the globe.

Gameplay: The game is a flight simulation. They added a cool feature called Dog Fighting Mode (DFM), a first-person, in your face, fast-paced scene which lets you go one on one with your enemy, as long as you can keep up or destroy them. They also use this mode to counter missiles by aligning 2 arrows on the HUD and activating the DFM. The campaign mode is pretty long, 16 missions in total, the missions themselves are long as well. Each mission is packed with action and equally with drama. The controls are simple and easy to use. The game shies away from the fantasy-type of gameplay known in past titles, bringing real world locations, and planes. There is also lack of gigantic super weapons as end bosses, which has upset some fans. They also added “Free Mission” which is basically “mission select” in other games, and allows you to replay missions that you have completed with any plane you want.

Sound/Graphics There are 30 aircraft ranging from the F-18 Hornet to the MIG-21 Fishbed to the A-10 Thunderbolt to the Stealth Bomber to the AC-130! Namco-Bandai added helicopters as well, though they were not used very often. Some of the locations that were used in the game include: Miami, an African oil refinery, and a lot of Russian. This is a change from previous games which were set in the made up countries of Estovakia and Grace Meria. While the planes and scenery are cool, some of it looks foggy. The game has a few cut-scene where planes explode, but you see the same explosion occurring over and over again, not really creative. There is a point in the game where you even get to fly through a hurricane! The voices are mixtures between English and Russian.

Multiplayer: There are 4 different modes in multiplayer: Capital Conquest, Domination, Deathmatch, and Co-op Mission. Capital Conquest is an attack and defend match, first to lose their headquarters loses. Domination makes you capture enemy locations. Deathmatch is just you versus the world. In Co-op mission, you can replay any of the missions in the campaign with 2 other people. In the other modes, there are up to 16 players, 8 on each side for team based games. There are 5 maps that you can choose from for competitive mode, and 8 for co-op.

Overall: If you liked previous games in the series, H.A.W.X., IL-2 Sturmovik, Snoopy Flying Ace, or any of the games in the genre I would recommend this game if you don’t mind the fact that it not like the other games in the series.

Pros:

• great story

• fun multiplayer

• cool planes

Cons

• strays away from previous games (good or bad)

• graphics are sometimes meh

Score: 8.5 out of 10

A copy of this game was provided to the reviewer for reviewing purposes.

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