Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
PC, PS4, Xbox One
After every sortie in Ace Combat 7, you’re immediately given the opportunity to watch the whole thing again. These replays automatically switch between a variety of camera angles, and at a passing glance could occasionally be mistaken for real flight footage: a testament to the game’s outstanding presentation, from its lovingly rendered plane models to the way sunlight glints off the cockpit glass. The only giveaway is your aircraft’s twitchy movement. Every nudge of the stick is all too apparent as the camera jerks awkwardly to keep you in shot. If the series is designed to fulfil the fantasy of being an ace of the skies, these moments are a reminder that you’re just an amateur.
They also sum up the tension at the heart of this series. How closely should a game seek to replicate the experience of flying a jet fighter? How hard should it be to target, pursue and take down airborne opponents? Ace Combat has always found itself somewhere between the immediate thrill of an arcade game and the more cerebral pleasures of a simulation. It offers new players more intuitive controls that let you turn with the left stick, while an advanced option for more experienced pilots invites you to master the use of pitch and roll instead. Skies Unknown’s missions feel better-tuned to the latter: this way, you can bank and twist more sharply to more effectively track elusive rivals, and to dodge incoming missiles without resorting to wild climbs and plunging dives when you’ve run out of chaff flares. The regular setting is more immediate, but you’ll regularly find yourself outmanoeuvred by nimbler opponents. You can switch between the two at any time, though Skies Unknown makes no real attempt to show newcomers the ropes: the first mission runs through the various inputs without offering the slightest suggestion about best practice. The difficulty cannot be changed once you’ve started the campaign, which would be less of a problem were the challenge not so erratic. Missions begin with a single goal, but that often changes – though the unexpected arrival of a new wave of enemies isn’t quite so unexpected the fifth time it happens. There’s usually a pause for a checkpoint, whether a fresh threat is introduced by cutscene or a radio warning. This normally comes as a relief, since it means you no longer have to start again when you die – in fact, some missions feel as if you’re designed to fail them first time around, not least when you’re carrying fewer missiles than there are targets, with no way of restocking. While your final two standard missiles will regenerate, at times your only option is to die and restart from the most recent checkpoint. Though on occasion that option equates to a restart: even when there’s an obvious break, you might be forced not just to begin again, but to sit through the same preamble. All of which discourages you from taking the kind of risks a real ace would.
If and when you’re feel outgunned, you can replay missions or head online to earn the points you need to unlock better planes, weapons and parts. Choosing between bombers, fighters and multi-purpose craft before each sortie introduces an element of light strategy, though it can feel unfair when a mission to destroy ground targets culminates in you battling an airborne threat with an unwieldy bomber. Otherwise, it’s a little more open-ended on how you get the job done – up to a point. Missions still force you to prioritise obvious threats, and while others might give you additional targets, you’ll focus on the high-value ones when time is tight. Which it tends to be.
Still, given for the most part you’re either shooting down targets on the ground or the air, Skies Unknown’s missions are delightfully varied. You weave your way through narrow corridors of airspace between the enemy’s radar coverage, or use cloud cover to avoid powerful AA guns, only peeking above it to blow up critical targets. You act as a decoy, disrupting the enemy until you’re belatedly given permission to return fire. And later, you fly low to locate a missile silo, circling it to keep the target locked for an incoming bomb while under heavy fire. Sometimes a simple change of scenery freshens things up: your journey takes you from clear skies over lush fields to ravaged cities and storm-lashed excursions into narrow canyons, with lightning frazzling your radar so you’re really flying blind.
At its best, Skies Unknown will have you gripping your controller more tightly than you have in a long time. So it’s a pity when it resorts to pitting you against waves of unmanned drones, which feels less like you’re outwitting a rival so much as swatting a swarm of angry wasps. At times their volume turns a minor irritant – the red flashes, blaring alarms and insistent warnings of approaching missiles – into a nagging cacophony, perhaps even obscuring key radio chatter. Not that the script is up to much. Its preposterous story is told with a straight face, which leads to several moments of accidental comedy: at one stage you’re asked to “defend Stonehenge” before a request to “take out that Arsenal Bird”. Even so, an early-game twist gives your playercharacter plausible motivation to prove themself, which in the face of barracking from superiors makes the ‘mission accomplished’ screen all the more satisfying. The cutscenes might be stultifyingly dull, but at least that means the most exciting stuff is happening while you’re playing rather than watching.
Until it comes to those replays – well, sometimes. Though half the time they frame the action beautifully, tracking missiles as they streak towards the target, just as often you’re denied your moment of glory by an untimely cut. That’s Skies Unknown in a nutshell: its magic can feel frustratingly elusive, but the thrill of chasing it down just about makes it worthwhile.
Somewhere between the immediate thrill of an arcade game and the more cerebral pleasures of a simulation