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As far back as I can remember I have always enjoyed action movies involving dog-fights. Whether that was Independence day, or watching the Rebel Alliance take on the Sith in the Star Wars movies. As such I always look to play enjoyable games that put me back in the action, such as Rogue Leader on the GameCube or Crimson Skies on the original Xbox.
So when I saw 2011's Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, a dog-fighting modern aeroplane game, on sale with Steam, you couldn't hold me back from purchasing it!
At first I felt like I was in my element. I learned the controls pretty quickly, not too difficult on an Xbox 360 controller, and started flying my first mission (which is obviously the tutorial). Everything looked the part, and soon I was chasing planes with my missiles armed. But I very soon began to feel the game's limitations.
The story is your typical unimaginative middle-east warzone plot that gives your missions a point, but is in no way linked to any real events or people, blah-de-blah.
There are various types of plane and they each seem to be piloted almost perfectly resulting in repetition and no sense of luck to your shots. Fire your homing missiles at the grunts and generally two of them will finish them off. Fire them at the lead targets and they will almost always use flares to mess up the targeting systems on the missiles. Instead go into a high-speed chase at the press of a button combination and try to damage them with rockets and bullets at closer range. Then repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat (you get the picture) until the mission is complete.
There are other types of mission. Some see you manning the guns of aircraft where the game is piloted for you and you just aim your cursor and fire. Others involve flying a helicopter around destroying ground targets and other helicopters. These are slower missions and are plagued with the same repetition of the first two modes.
Considering the game is at least four years old (at the time of writing), it is certainly a pretty enough game. It sounds nice too and the controls are easy enough. But this game seems to suck out all of the fun that dog-fighting games from previous generations seemed to get so right.
I was hoping to test the multiplayer modes in case they made up for the single-player let downs. However, either the servers are shut down, or there just isn't anyone playing. Again, with the age of the game, it would have to be an utterly amazing game to keep people playing for this long.
I am afraid Assault Horizon hasn't really re-lit my fire when it comes to the good old dog-fight game and as such I couldn't bring myself to sit through more that a handful of missions before losing the will to replay a mission on failure. If it's not fun, then what's the point? Fly past this one, try something else. You have nothing to lose by skipping this one. Trust me, I'm watching your 6 here.
So when I saw 2011's Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, a dog-fighting modern aeroplane game, on sale with Steam, you couldn't hold me back from purchasing it!
At first I felt like I was in my element. I learned the controls pretty quickly, not too difficult on an Xbox 360 controller, and started flying my first mission (which is obviously the tutorial). Everything looked the part, and soon I was chasing planes with my missiles armed. But I very soon began to feel the game's limitations.
The story is your typical unimaginative middle-east warzone plot that gives your missions a point, but is in no way linked to any real events or people, blah-de-blah.
There are various types of plane and they each seem to be piloted almost perfectly resulting in repetition and no sense of luck to your shots. Fire your homing missiles at the grunts and generally two of them will finish them off. Fire them at the lead targets and they will almost always use flares to mess up the targeting systems on the missiles. Instead go into a high-speed chase at the press of a button combination and try to damage them with rockets and bullets at closer range. Then repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat (you get the picture) until the mission is complete.
There are other types of mission. Some see you manning the guns of aircraft where the game is piloted for you and you just aim your cursor and fire. Others involve flying a helicopter around destroying ground targets and other helicopters. These are slower missions and are plagued with the same repetition of the first two modes.
Considering the game is at least four years old (at the time of writing), it is certainly a pretty enough game. It sounds nice too and the controls are easy enough. But this game seems to suck out all of the fun that dog-fighting games from previous generations seemed to get so right.
I was hoping to test the multiplayer modes in case they made up for the single-player let downs. However, either the servers are shut down, or there just isn't anyone playing. Again, with the age of the game, it would have to be an utterly amazing game to keep people playing for this long.
I am afraid Assault Horizon hasn't really re-lit my fire when it comes to the good old dog-fight game and as such I couldn't bring myself to sit through more that a handful of missions before losing the will to replay a mission on failure. If it's not fun, then what's the point? Fly past this one, try something else. You have nothing to lose by skipping this one. Trust me, I'm watching your 6 here.
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As far back as I can remember I have always enjoyed action movies involving dog-fights. Whether that was Independence day, or watching the Rebel Alliance take on the Sith in the Star Wars movies. As such I always look to play enjoyable games that put me back in the action, such as Rogue Leader on the GameCube or Crimson Skies on the original Xbox.
So when I saw 2011's Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, a dog-fighting modern aeroplane game, on sale with Steam, you couldn't hold me back from purchasing it!
At first I felt like I was in my element. I learned the controls pretty quickly, not too difficult on an Xbox 360 controller, and started flying my first mission (which is obviously the tutorial). Everything looked the part, and soon I was chasing planes with my missiles armed. But I very soon began to feel the game's limitations.
The story is your typical unimaginative middle-east warzone plot that gives your missions a point, but is in no way linked to any real events or people, blah-de-blah.
There are various types of plane and they each seem to be piloted almost perfectly resulting in repetition and no sense of luck to your shots. Fire your homing missiles at the grunts and generally two of them will finish them off. Fire them at the lead targets and they will almost always use flares to mess up the targeting systems on the missiles. Instead go into a high-speed chase at the press of a button combination and try to damage them with rockets and bullets at closer range. Then repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat (you get the picture) until the mission is complete.
There are other types of mission. Some see you manning the guns of aircraft where the game is piloted for you and you just aim your cursor and fire. Others involve flying a helicopter around destroying ground targets and other helicopters. These are slower missions and are plagued with the same repetition of the first two modes.
Considering the game is at least four years old (at the time of writing), it is certainly a pretty enough game. It sounds nice too and the controls are easy enough. But this game seems to suck out all of the fun that dog-fighting games from previous generations seemed to get so right.
I was hoping to test the multiplayer modes in case they made up for the single-player let downs. However, either the servers are shut down, or there just isn't anyone playing. Again, with the age of the game, it would have to be an utterly amazing game to keep people playing for this long.
I am afraid Assault Horizon hasn't really re-lit my fire when it comes to the good old dog-fight game and as such I couldn't bring myself to sit through more that a handful of missions before losing the will to replay a mission on failure. If it's not fun, then what's the point? Fly past this one, try something else. You have nothing to lose by skipping this one. Trust me, I'm watching your 6 here.
So when I saw 2011's Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, a dog-fighting modern aeroplane game, on sale with Steam, you couldn't hold me back from purchasing it!
At first I felt like I was in my element. I learned the controls pretty quickly, not too difficult on an Xbox 360 controller, and started flying my first mission (which is obviously the tutorial). Everything looked the part, and soon I was chasing planes with my missiles armed. But I very soon began to feel the game's limitations.
The story is your typical unimaginative middle-east warzone plot that gives your missions a point, but is in no way linked to any real events or people, blah-de-blah.
There are various types of plane and they each seem to be piloted almost perfectly resulting in repetition and no sense of luck to your shots. Fire your homing missiles at the grunts and generally two of them will finish them off. Fire them at the lead targets and they will almost always use flares to mess up the targeting systems on the missiles. Instead go into a high-speed chase at the press of a button combination and try to damage them with rockets and bullets at closer range. Then repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat (you get the picture) until the mission is complete.
There are other types of mission. Some see you manning the guns of aircraft where the game is piloted for you and you just aim your cursor and fire. Others involve flying a helicopter around destroying ground targets and other helicopters. These are slower missions and are plagued with the same repetition of the first two modes.
Considering the game is at least four years old (at the time of writing), it is certainly a pretty enough game. It sounds nice too and the controls are easy enough. But this game seems to suck out all of the fun that dog-fighting games from previous generations seemed to get so right.
I was hoping to test the multiplayer modes in case they made up for the single-player let downs. However, either the servers are shut down, or there just isn't anyone playing. Again, with the age of the game, it would have to be an utterly amazing game to keep people playing for this long.
I am afraid Assault Horizon hasn't really re-lit my fire when it comes to the good old dog-fight game and as such I couldn't bring myself to sit through more that a handful of missions before losing the will to replay a mission on failure. If it's not fun, then what's the point? Fly past this one, try something else. You have nothing to lose by skipping this one. Trust me, I'm watching your 6 here.