Aceru Combatu 7!

#91

Yeah, F-22s were supposed to be enormously superior to previous generation fighters due to the enemy’s failure to lock on to them. So of course naturally we threw them away so we could spend multiple times as much on planes with inferior stealth and all other performance qualities apart from payload because I can’t even-- I assume it was graft that moved the USAF to go with the F-35, because they used to be so big on air superiority to the exclusion of other roles…

Anyway I’m annoyed with some of these AC7 scenarios where there are a million enemy dots converging from all directions and I don’t know which ones are more important to shoot. Are tanks more important than APCs? You’d think, but who knows, maybe it’s the infantry taking stuff over that I have to stop. I realize it’s silly arcade play, but even so I think I do about 99% of all damage on the entire battlefield with my allies just flying idly around shooting missiles and mostly missing things.

#92

If you’re talking about the missions where your goal is just to do damage, there is a point goal listed in the top left, and whatever you are locked on to will display a point value below that. Stuff like bombers taking off, enemy jets, SAM sites or fuel storage are usually worth more than things like warehouses, tanks or trucks. Fuel depots can also take out nearby structures so they’re good targets to go for.

#93

It’s an arcade shoot em up game, not a sim. So rage! rage until the big number is incrediblynormousgantic huge bigly big. Embiggen it some more. That’s it. Rage!

I want this game to come to PC. DCS is fun, but doing one arty battery in an A-10 is about all the raging a single jet can do in there.

#94

It will in a week.

#95

I can’t wait!

#96

I am afraid I can’t say. @tomchick threatened to delete my QT3 account if I aired our dirty laundry. Make of that what you will!

#97

Hey, I didn’t say that! I’m far more charitable to my wingmen!

#98
#99

Preload finished, only a mere couple of hours until I unplug my HOTAS and VR goggles, put in the xbox controller and start blasting fools and their drones. Chomp chomp chomp at the bit.

#100

This particular review really sells me on this game. Although the first third of the review focuses a little too much on presenting an editorial about how the narrative doesn’t necessarily match up with the action scenes, and how that compares to other games that try to make a point of demonstrating that, hey, War sucks and as a player you should feel bad for feeling good, once he delves into the actual gameplay I came away learning a lot more about the game than I knew previous.

I especially like that the game starts applying more restrictions to the players as different missions come and go, things like limiting altitude ceilings and such. Increasing the difficulty not by making the actual enemies harder, but by slowly and surely tying one or another hands behind the Pilot’s back and seeing how they do there. It does make the missions seem like they’ll be much more varied and offer a much greater variety of gameplay than simply fly and shoot, shoot shoot shoot every other mission.

I’ll be picking this up in the next day or so and probably will play it shortly after that. It’s been on my radar for a while, but I’ve been holding out because of the slew of games coming out at the end of January and through February, and I wanted to give them all a fair shake (through demos and reviews) instead of throwing money at multiple full price games. Although I buy a lot of games I try not to buy half a dozen $60 games in one freaking month.

#101

Cashed in some time off for a four day weekend just to play this bad boy. I’m preloaded and waiting impatiently for the end of the work day.

#102

For what it’s worth, I think the game is very good, but I completely forgot about it as soon as I completed the campaign. The game is exactly the same as it was 15 years ago, with much better clouds as the most notable improvement.

I guess It doesn’t help that real-life fighter aircraft have barely changed in the last decade and a half.

Haven’t tried the VR stuff, though.

EDIT: Something I don’t get about the story. I know the space elevator is just a cool backdrop for the action, but I don’t get why people care so much about it in the story. I think they say it’s a source of energy, but how does a space elevator actually produce energy? Solar panels in space. You’d think a space elevator during wartime would be more like a white elephant kind of thing.

#103

The space elevator is in large part symbolic of why the Euresans (sp?) attacked. They felt the other super power was building it on their continent in order to assert dominance.

The other part is that the elevator is the sole access to space at the time of the story.

That is what I gathered from the story at any rate.

#104

So this is starting to get review bombed on steam, 19% positive at time of writing (this post might not age well) because there doesn’t seem to be support for HOTAS controls. Seems like a weird oversight.

Epic Games Store - 88% split goes to devs
#105

I can’t believe there are even enough passionate HOTAS users out there to review bomb anything. Maybe all HOTAS users are passionate. But that’s still, what, 42 people?

#106

#107

Uh, do HOTAS players know how dumb* the Ace Combat series is?

-Tom

* This is intended as an observation and not a criticism.

#108

Wait til they find out there’s no HOTAS support for the Gummi Ship in Kingdom Hearts 3!

#109

To be fair, the listed genres are “Action, Simulation”, and the planes all use real names and nice looking cockpits! I think it’s reasonable to expect being able to use a joystick, especially as it supports one on console (albeit the official one).

#110

So… if you have a HOTAS, everything should be mappable via the HOTAS software, right? Unless they don’t provide a throttle axis.