#oneaday Day 47: Skies Unknown

I'm going to write more about this on MoeGamer soon, but I thought I'd share some initial thoughts about Ace Combat 7.

Short version: it's fantastic. It's Ace Combat for the latest generation of consoles, and it's a beautiful thing. Namco hasn't tampered with the formula too much, and that's very pleasing indeed; it feels like a proper Ace Combat game, which after Assault Horizon is exactly what everyone wanted and needed.

What do I mean by a "proper Ace Combat game"? Well, I mean real world jet fighters participating in a futuristic war. I mean going up against terrifying, impossible in the real world "superweapons". I mean insanely dramatic music. And I mean a thing showing up on your radar as "unknown" being a very scary thing indeed.

In many ways, Ace Combat does for flight sims what Metal Gear does for "soldier" games. It's grounded in real things and has an actual message about the real world to deliver to us, but it does so through exaggerated, comic book-style action with heroes and villains, triumph and tragedy, alliances and betrayals.

I won't go into too many details about the plot for now, but suffice to say it takes you through some enjoyable twists and turns, and keeps you in your toes. There are some memorable characters in there too; Ace Combat hasn't always emphasised characterisation, but it started making a few moves in this direction from 5 onwards with the while Wardog/Razgriz squadron, and it's doing some interesting things here.

It has to be said, it looks absolutely gorgeous, too. While Unreal Engine makes the PS4 fans run in overdrive as always, it's worth it for the magnificent visuals and its excellent sense of speed. The weather effects, the big new addition to this installment, are particularly cool – – there's one terrifying mission where you're flying through a thunderstorm, and yes, you can indeed get struck by lightning.

I'm probably about halfway through the campaign so far and am having great fun. I'm looking forward to how it all winds up — Ace Combat games tend to have absolutely amazing finales, and going by how things have been so far, this one is likely to be no exception!

Now, I've been playing it all evening so I should probably get some sleep… Trigger out.