I’ve been playing a bunch of Ace Combat 4 (known variously as Shattered Skies or Distant Thunder depending on where in the world you are) and, frankly, I’m gobsmacked.

This is a game that came out in 2001 for the PlayStation 2, sporting visuals that are still reasonably impressive (albeit low-resolution) today, and which run at an absolutely rock-solid 60 frames per second without breaking a sweat.

More importantly, though, it’s a game that manages to be utterly compelling, addictive and thrilling while treating the player with respect and, at the same time, telling an interesting story in a rather unusual manner.

Given what I’ve experienced of Ace Combat 4 to date, it’s easy to see why Ace Combat veterans were a little miffed at Assault Horizon — though I maintain that was an enjoyable enough game in its own right.

Ace Combat 4 is a lot more distinctive than Assault Horizon, though. While the newer game is clad in that unmistakeable “triple-A veneer” that makes a lot of modern games look gorgeous but lack a clearly defined visual identity compared to their contemporaries, Ace Combat 4 is immediately recognisable (although some may argue its interface takes more than a few cues from Metal Gear Solid).

At heart, it’s a solid jet fighter sim that throws the odd bit of realism out of the window in the name of fun. Your plane carries an implausibly huge stock of missiles, for example, which is useful, because you’ll find yourself shooting down an awful lot of planes and blowing up an awful lot of ground targets in each mission. You can’t just fire them off willy-nilly, however — well, maybe you can at ground targets — since enemies will dodge and evade missiles, just like you can. To get a solid lock, you need to manoeuvre carefully behind an enemy and keep them in your sites as you fire off the missiles — and, unlike Assault Horizon with its Dogfight Mode, you have to do this manually rather than pressing a button to do so. It’s a lot more challenging, but also a lot more satisfying, too.

The missions are far less scripted than Assault Horizon, too — though that’s not to say they don’t have interesting things going on. Throughout the first part of the game, you’re often under threat from the enemy forces’ superweapon Stonehenge, for example, and when you’re warned it’s about to fire you’d better make sure you’re hugging the ground if you don’t want to be blown to smithereens. In one particularly memorable mission, you have to fly back to your base while Stonehenge is firing at you, and the only means of getting low enough to stay under its devastating blasts is to fly through a rather perilous canyon.

I’m impressed with the storytelling, too. The game runs two parallel storylines throughout its campaign — one presented in a rather faceless manner to the player, a la many flight and space sims over the years, and another much more personal tale from the perspective of a child living in an occupied city. As you progress through the campaign, the effects of your victories are mirrored in this parallel storyline, until in its later stages you’re referred to more explicitly, particularly after the mission where you shoot down the primary sort-of-antagonist-but-not-really’s wingman. I haven’t yet finished the game, but the smart money is on an epic final confrontation between Mobius One (me) and Yellow Thirteen before the credits roll.

I’ve been having an absolute blast so far, then. I don’t think I’m far off the end of the game, and I’m looking forward to seeing what its sequels have in store.

Now why didn’t I discover this series thirteen years ago?