Status Chovus Dec 30, 2022
Beat on Hard entirely in first person view. I would have used expert controls except the PSP does not have L2 and R2 buttons. I started with the F4 and died on the first mission as I learned how to play. The next attempt was flawless. I then tried out the A4 but did not like it at all because …
Beat on Hard entirely in first person view. I would have used expert controls except the PSP does not have L2 and R2 buttons. I started with the F4 and died on the first mission as I learned how to play. The next attempt was flawless. I then tried out the A4 but did not like it at all because of how easily it stalled. I stuck to the F4 and skipped buying new planes until the F16 came along, which ended up being my most used plane. I preferred a focus on air to air combat rather than bombing, so that was probably why I dominated enemy planes and struggled with taking hits from ground targets. I took the girl wingman on the first mission that I could and was not impressed with her performance. So I went solo from then on unless I failed a mission and decided I needed help. The later missions were difficult enough to need the help, and I took her after failing both missions that had ally units to protect. I crashed during the first canyon run mission; I hate flying a plane in tight quarters like that. A helicopter would make more tactical sense in that situation. I managed to beat the 2nd canyon run in the A10, which was too cool of a plane not to buy. I upgraded from the F16 to F14, then to the SU35, and finally the F22, skipping every other plane even though the F117 is super cool. I even skipped the F18 because the F14 was better at air to air. I had a difficult time telling whether the SU35 or F22 was better and alternated using them. Until I realized the F22 had 8 more missiles, making it the best. I missed a lot of bonus levels even though I went out of my way to shoot down every enemy plane and most ground targets. I did not get any kills in the high altitude chase mission because I kept stalling trying to get those X29s, and by the time I decided to ignore them and go for the targets, they had left the map. Then at the 2nd last mission to destroy a sub, I finally seen another opportunity to use the A10. It dominated, but was completely unable to catch up to the cruise missile so I seen the bad ending. So I did it again with the SU35 and it was too fast, overshooting the missile but I managed to shoot it down after more careful speed control. I did not like landing. I did land on the carrier but did not slow down enough and plopped into the ocean. The next time I decided to follow the instructions, but it had me fly in circles and I ran out of time. The 3rd landing I ignored the instructions and did it by intuition, successfully landing on the nice big runway.
Then I played through the game again on Hard extra plane mode, using a walkthrough to make sure I unlocked all the missions. I used the Mig21 early on, and bought the A6 for the mission to bomb the carrier; it did much better against ground targets. I soon upgraded to the F16, then TNDF3, then F15, and finally the ultimate XFA27. I used the F117 for the same canyon mission where I used the A10 last time. I missed 1 bonus mission on the B path from my first playthrough. Perhaps in the future I will play through again to unlock that. I did try to I lock it in free mode but that apparently does not work. I still failed to land on the carrier, twice. This game was excellent and immensely fun. The enemies were somewhat easy but if they were more difficult the game would be too tedious. Sometimes the enemy pilots did evasive maneuvers, loops and air breaking to fool me up. I found little point in doing loops or fancy maneuvers thus my strategy was to brake while making tight turns to get behind, then fire my missiles when they were not banking. I usually sped up to shove the missiles up their ass, and even got quite a few with my guns. I had the most trouble when they air braked due to the confusion of being so close to the enemy; I braked also making myself a sitting duck as I turned to try to find the guy. My overall strategy of methodically shooting down every enemy plane helped keep things from getting too hectic. Probably the best feature of this game was a lack of game over for stupid reasons, like crashing after finishing the mission, failing at landing and destroying non targets. Instead the game just gave money penalties. This game was a pure treat to play.
9.0/10
Update Dec 31 2022: Just found the disc for this game inside my playstation, so I must have played it long ago. The case is nowhere to be found so I stuck it in with Air Combat.