Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy Review

Game: Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy

Developer: Project Aces

Publisher: Namco Bandai

Available on: Nintendo 3DS Only

It was Orville the Duck who once sang: “I wish I could fly, right up to the sky”. With these words, he might have just been dreaming of an existence spent without a hand up his rectum, but it is more likely he may have been warbling about the possibilities of soaring in the sky; a sentiment shared by men and woman throughout mankind’s turbulent history. Once our species had mastered the art of creating flying machines, our attentions turned to implementing one of our other primal desires – blowing stuff up.

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy is Namco Bandai’s attempt at bringing virtual blow-stuff-up-in-the-sky to the Nintendo 3DS. I’m strapped into my cockpit and there are bogies everywhere (I have a cold). Time to take the highway to the Danger Zone!

STORY: In Assault Horizon Legacy, you are a fighter pilot, taking on a rebel faction who are taking over islands, threatening to launch nukes, and generally being mean and nasty. The narrative is presented with mission briefings and radio chatter, with the cheesiest dialogue you could ever imagine for a Japanese-developed military game, delivered with so much ham, you might just get the meat sweats. Don’t expect there to be an engaging story; this is generic stuff that you’ve seen in any/every war film.

GRAPHICS: I’m rather torn with Assault Horizon Legacy’s graphics, on the one hand, everything is incredibly simplistic, with little detail to the aircraft, and even less going on with the environment, but on the other hand, there is some incredibly effective 3D on display here. Planes come flying towards you and around you, and you really get a great feeling of depth that really helps to create a sense of atmosphere, that the drab visuals don’t (especially when using the cockpit view instead of the default external view). Even when choosing equipment in the hanger before missions, the reflections from the room’s shiny floor look fantastic. It’s these little details that are easily missed, but are appreciated when noticed.

Occasionally, when in actual combat, firing missiles triggers a cutscene showing the missiles hitting the intended target, or sailing past. These little scenes do not intrude on the gameplay, and help add a little more excitement to the battle, even if they do highlight the simplistic aircraft models (I should mention that these aircraft are all licensed from real manufacturers).

SOUND: Much like the game’s visuals, the audio is a mixed bag. As mentioned earlier, the dialogue is pure ham & cheese, delivered in a hilariously bad way, almost bringing back memories of early CD-based game dialogue. However, the music is really enjoyable and the various pieces of music (collected from previous Ace Combat games) works well. Spanning various genres (you’ve never seen a more eclectic mix of cheesy metal riffs, electronic synth and ballads), the game’s soundtrack is surprisingly pleasant; especially in contrast to the generic sound effects and terrible dialogue.

GAMEPLAY: As you would imagine in a game about planes shooting other planes, the entirety of Assault Horizon Legacy takes place in the air. Before a mission you are given a briefing on what you need to do to complete the mission (complete with an animated diagram), but it all boils down to destroying everything you can target. Some targets are labelled with “TAR” in red, and as long as you destroy them before your enemies shoot you down, then everything is peachy.

No matter what plane is chosen, the controls are the same, circle pad to move around, shoulder buttons to accelerate/decelerate, B button to fire your machine gun and A button to fire your chosen missile. The main feature of the game, is a bar in the bottom-right hand side of the top screen, that fills up when chasing an enemy plane, once full, a press of the Y button will cause a brief animation to appear, placing you right behind your chosen target. This feature makes the majority of missions far too easy, but is damn near essential in the later missions.

The main issue with this game, is that there is simply no variety to the campaign. While aerial combat starts off as exhilarating and heart-pounding, it is almost exactly the same in every single level, leading to dogfights becoming an annoyance rather than an exciting tussle between expensive military hardware. There is little to separate the first mission from the last, which is a real problem; I can’t think of a single memorable moment from my playtime.

LONGEVITY: There is a lot of content in Assault Horizon Legacy. The main campaign may only take less than five hours to finish and there are a couple of occasions where there is the option to take different routes, encouraging repeat playthoughs (with multiple difficulties available as well). There are tons of planes to unlock and purchase, plus a large quantity of unlockable/purchasable parts to customise your aircraft to how you like it – It will take a while to stump up the cash for all of these items, should you want to.

There is also a Challenge Mode, offering the chance to improve rankings on Campaign missions or take part in all new missions, designed to test your piloting skills.

If you like the game enough to get past the lack of variety in missions; there is a lot here to sink your teeth into, offering a good 10-15 hours of play. It’s just a shame there is no sort of multiplayer options implemented at all, as this is the kind of game that is crying out for local battles at the very least, or even online functionality.

VERDICT: If you fancy being a Top Gun and can stand the monotony of the Campaign, there is a solid, and dare I say it, entertaining game here. Its mission-based structure works well as a handheld title and while the graphics are a little uninspiring, the use of 3D is implemented better here than many other Nintendo 3DS titles. It’s just a shame that the lack of gameplay variety and multiplayer functionality holds back what could have been a really good title.

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