We’re just coming out of Peak Videogame Hype Season, and of course I dutifully watched the States of Play and the Directs and the ..whatever the other things were.  There were a lot of neat trailers – I’m especially looking forward to Stellar Blade 2 – but the one I did NOT expect was the one for Ace Combat 8, at least partially because it reminded me that Ace Combat is a series of video games that exists.

I realize that is a harsh thing to say about a series that has, according to Wikipedia – and, on this, I believe we can probably trust Wikipedia – 14 games since 1995.  It’s got pedigree!

On the other hand, there has only been one entry in the series released in the last ten years, and somehow it wound up in my Steam library.  I think I bought it sometime after seeing Top Gun: Maverick, because who wouldn’t want to fly cool planes fast after that?

I also seem to own Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, but I think I bought that purely because you could dress up the planes in Idolmaster-themed skins and Steam says that my play time is in the 35 minute range.  It apparently did not stick with me.  Also it’s fairly universally considered to be a bad entry and not part of the mainline series so I’m not sure it will ever get past that 35 minutes.

Anyway.  Ace Combat 8.  It’s a thing that is coming later this year!  It looked cool!  It reminded me to play Ace Combat 7!

And, 20ish hours later, I’ve …saved the world?  Well, I’m not sure how much I saved the world.  But I shot down a bunch of planes and drones that were piloted by bad people or malevolent artificial intelligences and it ended on a hopeful note.  So let’s go with saved the world, to an extent.

I will say that the story ramps up pretty quickly from the introduction.  The introduction is pretty low stakes, but by the end of things you’re dealing with the effects of war on a global scale.

…not to say that there aren’t some comedic beats thrown in to ease the dramatic tension from time to time.

Couple of takeaways:

First, it is not afraid to kill you.  Even on easy.  I wound up dying a lot, often because I flew directly into other planes, or buildings, or occasionally the ground.

I didn’t get shot down often.  That’s probably where “easy” was saving me.  From other planes.  Nothing could save me from myself, though.

And when you die, you are taken back to the last checkpoint, which can be quite a while back.  This can get very old and I did find myself gripping the controller a little more tightly than strictly necessary a time or two.

It’s also not afraid to have very strict time limits on missions, and some of them I finished at the very last second, or to suddenly drop a new mission objective on you just when you think it’s time to fly into the sunset.

Basically, it was actually a challenge!  But, really, in a good way.  It wasn’t your Souls-style masocore you-will-fight-this-boss-until-you-git-gud sort of challenge, but rather a challenge where I needed to unravel each level as a puzzle box and figure out which planes and which special weapons would give me the best odds of success.

OK, most of the time I just flew the coolest-looking plane I’d unlocked.  But, you know, that’s a strategy of sorts.  Cool planes fly faster.  It is known.

It also throws a great curveball towards the end, where suddenly you get training wheels yanked away from you that you didn’t even know were training wheels.  I won’t spoil it but it was both mildly rage-inducing and also really neat.

Oh, and while there are Idolmaster themed emblems you can stick on your planes, they have two major issues. First, you can’t actually put cosmetics on your plane until you complete the campaign for the first time, which is I guess FINE for the sake of immersion, and second…

No Ritsuko.  Why is Best Girl always snubbed?

Also, did Assault Horizon have the same limitation on cosmetics in the campaign?  Maybe that’s why I didn’t play it very long if, all I wanted to do was play Pretty Princess Dress Up with fighter jets and it was not letting me.

I don’t play many games in this genre.  Actually, this may be the first one I’ve ever played to completion.  I did play a lot of Galactic Starfighter mode in Battlefront II, but I don’t think that really counts.  That’s purely multiplayer and you don’t really have the same sort of overarching story.

So, I guess I’m going to call this an Experiment in Trying Something New, and a successful one at that.  Not sure it’s translating into an Ace Combat 8 preorder, but… well, you know, eventually it will go on sale and I may take another spin through the Wild Blue Yonder.

Side note: I was traveling for part of the time I was playing through the campaign and I had my MacBook with me rather than my Linux laptop.  Can happily report that it plays brilliantly via Crossover, though it did drain my battery in a hurry when I tried to play it away from a wall outlet.