[Oldie] Ace Combat Assault Horizon

[Kasey Chang]

My hands are cramping after just three missions into this thing, and I already ran into an impossible mission (at least for me), but then, I tend not to like the arcade stuff. (And yes, I'm playing at Rookie Level. WTF?)

Basically I'm fighting the controls as much as I'm fighting the enemies. The helo controls are horrible, since your left/right turn also controls the aiming reticule. So half of the time I'm trying to figure out where the heck did my aiming cursor went. Inability to only fire a few rockets at a time instead of a whole salvo is a joke, esp. since there's a significant delay between salvoes. If there's enough time I can go around the edges and nibble them to death, but then the game throws you the "technicals rush" where a fleet of technicals rush the building from multiple sides, and you have to destroy them before they hit the building. Why are the Deltas not assaulting the building and instead trying to defend it from the open courtyard? Where are the transport helos with their miniguns? Why am I the only Apache who seem to be shooting any one?

But then when the planes carries like 300+ missiles and hit rate is like 20% (if you're lucky) this is just a fancy arcade game. I can see why I quit the first time I got to this mission. It was extremely frustrating, and I think I quit at an even earlier point.

[Kasey Chang]

Tried that mission three more times, and somehow, I muddled through this time. Didn't know what I did different, but somehow I made it through the technical gauntlet and killed them quickly enough so they didn't make it into the courtyard. Then killed two Hinds, and that's it for that mission.

Next mission was the AC-130 mission, and that I passed in first attempt. I was killing those targets left and right, using almost exclusively 40mm Bofors. I rarely use the 25 gatling or the 120 mortar. (I guess the Android game "Zombie Gunship" gave me plenty of practice)

[Kasey Chang]

Actually finished the whole thing, and none of the subsequent missions require more than 5 further attempts (except the "chase the ICBM" which required like 10)

It's exciting, but the dogfight mode was bit of a joke. It makes dogfighting way too easy.

[Daehawk]

I have this game in my backlog. Saw it on sale one day and thought the graphics looked really good so I picked it up hoping it had a cool single player story and lots of cutscenes. Just haven't gotten to it. Now Im not sure if I should.

Is it mouse and keyboard doable or would I have to dig out the ole joystick?

[Kasey Chang]

It works much much better with a controller. It did originate from a console.

The SP story is pretty good, actually. Some sort of rebel movement, heavily armed with modern weapons, are really screwing up Africa, and the nations requested UN intervention, and UN convened taskforce 108, composed of both US and Russian units. But two commands won't agree on tactics. Colonel Bishop and "Guts" are US pilots, Warwolf flight, Robinson was with the attack helos, and Major Riehl was doing AC-130 gunship and bombers. The Russian side was lead by General Tagliashev and Major Illich. But the intro was Bishop in a huge dogfight against Russian units over the skies of Miami... Was it memory? Or premonition? Soon, the war takes an even more dangerous turn when enemy revealed a micro-atomic warhead named "Trinity", which took out a good chunk of the city. But what is the endgame?

It really is twitch-y, as each mission is long as heck and you'll need to beat a LOT of enemies while dodging enemies behind you. You have to learn how to do a reverse, i.e. force the enemy behind you to the front. The Russians can do it with the Cobra maneuver, you need to do it with a high attach angle barrel roll, and in this game, you do it by slowing to ideal speed, simultaneous press both shoulder buttons (which levels the plane), then again to perform the maneuver AND triggers dogfight mode. The missions do scale up with the first mission serving as good training prompts. I'd say, give it a try, and as I eventually did pass all missions without cheats, it is quite doable.