Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (2019)

And the combat is amazing. Dodging missiles, while doing high g turns and trying to outmaneuver the opponent is amazing. Doing all that in VR is stellar, shame that there are only 3 missions about that. The visuals are stunning, the cloud effects are amazing and the music is phenomenal. Hiding from rockets in the clouds is great fun. Apparently, the game has sold over 3 million units in total, being the best-selling game of the franchise.

But my enthusiasm dropped gradually, sadly. I definitely would've enjoyed the game a whole lot more if it didn't have such tight winning conditions.

There are a lot of score attacks mission, some escort ones and they all impose a time limit. Now I wouldn't really mind a challenge all that much, but what eventually became a deal breaker for me was the checkpoint system. Some missions don't have any checkpoints, and I eventually got tired of having to redo the whole mission again and again. I heard some people say that the timit limit is necessary because otherwise the game would be too easy. Whatever the case may be, the time/score constraints were too stressful for me and combined with the lack of checkpoints made the experience needlessly frustrating. The mission design is otherwise very good, they always find a way to switch things up. I also didn't find any in-game mention of the fact that if you keep pressing triangle the camera will automatically follow your target. In a game like this that's a huge thing not to point out to your players. Sure, I might not be very good at the game, but I suck at other games too, whereas I simply didn't have any fun doing things over and over again here. Of course, I played with expert controls.

A major disappointment was the story. Again, I did go into it with the expectation of something similar to Top Gun, and while I did try to remain open to it, I hardly knew what on earth the other characters were blabbering about while I was desperately trying to complete the score attack missions while simultaneously dodging missiles and having a context warning/missile alert voice notifications. Major events seemed to be happening all around and I hardly knew what was going on. At some points I didn't even knew who was who.

So, to conclude, for me, the game started very strong, but unfortunately I ended up having a pretty meh experience with it. I still wish they would release the entire game in VR, though.

This is the first Ace Combat game that I can remember playing, and I really had a lot of fun with this one. I only played through the campaign, but I may keep this one on the hard drive to revisit multiplayer later.

It has a pretty interesting story, with a ton of different unlockable weaponry and aircraft, and some really challenging arcade-style gameplay that will, at times, really put your finger dexterity and reflexes to the test.

There are 20 campaign missions, and like other games you've probably played before, it will give you a letter grade based on things like your time and score, with "S" being the highest. Each mission also has "Ace Pilots" that will spawn if you do certain things within each mission. Taking these guys down will give you things like nicknames and skins for your planes that you can use in multiplayer mode.

The graphics are also awesome in this game -- I found myself forgetting that I was playing a game during some of the cut scenes.

I found this game to be pretty addicting, especially trying to get "S" ranking on every mission. If you're looking for a challenge and you like flight games, I recommend this one.