How long has it been since we’ve had a chance to jump into a cool fighter jet, get into an intense dogfight, and just blow up stuff up without having to memorize a thick flight manual? Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown brings the welcome return of a series – and a genre – that’s been long absent from gaming’s mainstream.
The exciting, arcadey flying and dogfighting gameplay that kept Ace Combat going from 1995 to 2014 is still present and a lot of fun. You’ll blow up bombers, chase down ace enemy pilots, and dismantle enemy bases one missile at a time across a wide array of scenarios and landscapes. And even though this is by no means a hardcore flight sim, there’s a fair bit of strategy in planning your attack — your plane is constantly moving, so you need to know what you want to hit and when you want to hit it. Maximizing your efficiency is crucial, because you are always under the gun — either due to a time limit or simply because you have a lot of planes to “splash.”
