Attn Twitter: AC now stands for Ace Combat. Please adjust acronym interpretations accordingly

Anyway I'm playing AC4

My primary take is look how rad this UI is

There are like a million games from this era that were all kinda going for the same "high-tech military briefing" aesthetic but this is def a particularly execution of it

I don't really have strong Ace Combat opinions I just like aeroplanes a lot. Played some of 7 and enjoyed it but stopped because I hit a weird grind wall and had to go replay a bunch of missions to get money for upgrades or something and it felt weird and annoying

I remember seeing TV commercials for this and thinking it looked unbelievably realistic

honestly still holds up amazingly well

Obviously "a gigantic photograph of the ground" is a pretty realistic depiction of the ground lol

but there's a lot of *really* good color work to blend the photo textures with the atmosphere and keep the planes looking consistent with everything else

The subtle camera sway and super long telephoto lens really sells the aerial photography aesthetic too

also check out the blue bounce lighting on the underside of that AWACS

fighter jets are pretty cool but you know what would be cooler

big robot with knives on a flying surfboard

"War is bad, but there is nothing more noble than when, free of ideology, men who are really good at fighting in fighter jets get in fighter jet fights"

Are there any dogfighter games that solved the problem where you just end up chasing the target arrow in circles for like minutes at a time?

It's a *really* hard design problem but it kinda makes every one of these games feel pretty samey imo

Ubisoft's Tom's Clancy's H.A.W.X. just gave you giant superman rings to fly through that would automatically put you behind your target, which seemed... effective but even more boring

does Strike Vector count? Strike Vector owned

Project Sylpheed eventually just gave you Itano Circus missiles that shredded fighters, thus rendering dogfights mostly irrelevant, becoming a game mostly about flying attack runs on heavily-defended battleships

Project Sylpheed rules you should play it

every time the Namco logo appears and isn't accompanied by the Soul Calibur guy going NAMCOOO I get sad

COME ON MAN

also huh apparently I tweeted this exact same tangent about arrow-chasing in dogfighting games two years ago lmao

if your game's equipment-selection screen doesn't have a sick-ass screamtracker slap bass sample what are you even doing

also check out the chromatic aberration just drawn right into the texture for those light flares. super clever move

NORMAL CRUISE MISSILE TRAJECTORY

I am extremely Mad At Videogames rn lol that was like five minutes of chasing one target while it dodged something like 30 missiles because it LITERALLY NEVER STOPS TURNING

Good design thing:
There are a whole bunch of really long difficult levels in a row, and then the next briefing is like WE NEED A MIRACLE and then you just bomb a ton of mostly-defenseless ground targets while everyone on the radio freaks out about your godlike piloting skills

The Sukhoi Su-37: Apparently the first aircraft in human history that can turn

I have completed Asexual Combat Four

It's short! Yay! If I'd played this in 2001 I'd probably get super into replaying and unlocking everything

interesting that games kinda stopped being about replaying missions to get better scores/unlocks/etc at about the same rate I aged out of playing games that way

Last two missions are rad and I was really hoping they'd go Maximum Anime and give me like a macross jet that can do backflips or something but I guess that's not actually what this franchise is about lol

extremely funny that the entire plot is about becoming a Worthy Opponent to the greatest ace alive or whatever and then the actual way that you kill him is by just buying the plane that shoots missiles he can't dodge

wikipedia's plot summary has more plot details than are actually contained in the game