Review: Ace Combat: Assault Horizon

Air combat games of this current generation have been a ‘mixed bag’, ranging from decent to outright atrocious attempts of making something incredibly difficult fun. The latest Ace Combat, Assault Horizon, is trying to change up the generic, and often boring, formula of rinse and repeat, ‘hold down the trigger and shoot things’ style combat we have become accustomed to. Without spoiling my own review too much, Namco has done a pretty darn good job with Assault Horizon.

The first thing that Ace Combat: Assault Horizon managed to do, was change my expectations and what I thought, I would be playing. Most air combat based games are build on several repetitive missions, strung together with generic cut scenes and boring voice over. Assault Horizon is not that. Namco was able to make me care about who I was going up against and why but especially, who I was fighting with, my squad. There are some well scripted and interactive, even though limited in scope, first person sequences where the player gets to explore home base as well as talk to squad mates and feel part of something, rather then just viewing some glued together news story on a fake TV channel.

Assault Horizon tells the story of Lieutenant Colonel William Bishop who leads the Warwolf Squadron, the game takes place in the year 2015. Bishop and his squad are facing some serious business as an anti-government group in Africa secured a powerful weapon called Trinity, without spoiling any of the plot, Bishop needs to kick some serious butt. While this may sound a little generic and typical, the story does a good job of pulling the player through the game.

Visually Assault Horizon looks pretty fantastic, the environments are based on some real satellite imagery and has enough variety to keep the missions interesting. As always, there are several different camera perspectives to chose from (including cockpit view) and all work well, even though I preferred the trailing cam. Assault Horizon does not only have jet fighter combat, as you could have imagined, there are also helicopter based missions, rail shooter inspired levels as well as the, now standard, AC 130 missions we have come so used to since the first Modern Warfare game. Even though flying a MiG or F-16 is where Assault Horizon puts its money, those missions make for a welcome switch up.

The main draw of Ace Combat: Assault Horizon is the improved, action based gameplay and the all new ‘dog fight mode’. The normal combat alone is probably some of the best air combat based gameplay of any modern day fighter title to date. Even though it isn’t a hardcore sim fan’s dream, the game simply makes this, often monotonous, gameplay fun and exciting again. It reminded me how much fun I had when playing F-16 on the PC over a decade ago.

Chasing behind other jets and maneuvering the nimble aircraft through the sky, just to get that sweet lock on sound, followed by a gorgeous explosion, is a blast in Assault Horizon and I really missed that recent games in the genre. To top it all off, Ace Combat includes the new ‘dog fight mode’, which allows players to lock onto the back of a fighter jet and engage in a machine gun fest or simply get the perfect lock on, before blowing it to bits. The way this new mode works is very fun to use and easy to pull off, players need to get close enough to engage into the semi rail shooting sequence. This allows players to focus on the shooting and not loosing the enemy out of sight, when they make sudden turns. To put it in simple turns, this new mechanism eliminates a lot of frustrations I have had with the genre.

Additionally Assault Horizon includes some fun and exciting multiplayer modes which can prolong your time with the game. There are several competitive modes like the traditional deathmatch type as well as strategic modes such as Capital Conquest and Domination. I was also pleased to see a coop mode where you can team up with two more players to go through specific missions.

Every year I seem to review a jet fighting title that sneaks up out of nowhere and usually it is an okay game, this year however, it is different. While I was still sort of surprised that Ace Combat was coming out, it is an absolutely excellent game. Assault Horizon didn’t revolutionize air combat games but it did make them fun again by spicing up the formula. Dog fights are a blast because of the new close range assault system and the story wasn’t just something to gloss over and hit skip repeatedly. Developer Project Aces has not just rehashed something we have seen a million times before but it took the time to develop not just an excellent air combat title but also a sublime overall experience.

Score: 8.5 / 10

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon was developed by Project Aces and published by Namco Bandai for Xbox 360 and PS3 on October 11th. A retail copy of the Xbox 360 version was provided to us by Namco Bandai for reviewing purposes.