Ace Combat 04: Just Good Plane Fun.

Despite having one of the stupidest ad campaigns on TV (the one where the guy steals the feed from his grandmother's oxygen tank to put in his flight mask.) I still wanted to give Ace Combat 04 a look. I tried searching on Ebay for it, but didn't want to pay more than $30 total for it, and therefore, I didn't get a copy. I've been a fan of air combat games (Not simulations...I can't fly for 3 hours before I see action.) for a long time, and there hadn't been a good one for a long time.

So, I went and rented it from my local Blockbuster, and decided to give a whirl. I was not disappointed. This game provides a solid, quality experience if you're looking for a nice hit o' air combat.

The story starts out pretty confusingly, being told from the eyes of a kid in San Salvacion, a town on the "mainland" being occupied by the "Erusians" (I'm not sure if they're supposed to be a take on the Eurasians or the Russians.) waiting for the "Allies" to retake the town.

The story is told through a long series of still animated shots. While the story is interesting at some points, seeing what the people in the enemy camp think of your performance, it's lame in the sense that the kid is completely unrelated to anything. (If he is, you don't find out until the end of the game, and I haven't finished the final mission yet, and it would be lame anyway, something like, "Oh, the mystery pilot was my dad all along".) So, if you just want to rush into the action but think you might be missing something, you're not. Skip the the dialogue.

The real story is this. The Erusians are just about to attack your last line of defense. Take them out of the sky and hopefully you'll have a shot at clawing out a viable defensive position. You are known as the callsign "Mobius 1" (It should actually be "Moebius 1". The "Moebius Strip" was discovered by two mathematicians, Moebius and Listing, and became the mathematic symbol for infinity due to its properties.)

As Mobius 1, you fly the lead role in most of the missions, and as you destroy things you get points and money, which you can use to buy better aircraft and weaponry. Same as all the other Ace Combat games.

The controls are simple. Triangle will change targets. X fires your guns, O fires the missiles. R1 will increase your throttle and kick in your burners, L1 will brake. Square will change the radar magnifcation on your map, and Select will switch between hardpoints. As far as I know you have no countermeasures for missiles, but you sure do carry an awful big payload.

Standard missions will generally have you trying to take out some sort of military installation with a whole lot of ground targets. Fighters will fly cover to try and stop you, and you'll see a lot of different planes get thrown in the mix, the Eurofighter 2000, Mig-29, and the A-10 are just some of the planes you'll be running into.

The graphics in the game are pretty darn stunning. The replays in the game look about as good as the ones in Gran Turismo 3, but this is a air craft combat game.

As far as realism goes...well, there are good and bad points. First off, you're using a handheld controller to try and replicate a flight stick. Not really going to work correctly. So you have to make some adjustments to the controls to make it easy to fly. I end up going upside down and pulling off rediculous maneuvers just trying to do my mission, and there's never really any difficulty involved.

The planes are modeled nicely, but you won't ever see one damaged. Hit one with one missile, and yo're not going to see it trailing smoke, but you will see contrails from the wings. Also, if you fly upside down, you can still fire gravity bombs...despite the fact that they'd just hit your plane and blow you up.

One of the things I did think was cool was that the Yellow Squadron (the Erusian top gun squad) will use their SU-27s and pull off the "Cobra" maneuver. (It's a manuever where the plane vectors it's thrust, and basically stops on a dime, and will stand straight up for a second.) It's a really cool bit, and it'll stun you for a second, until you realize that the move may dodge one missile, but a half second later, you're wide open for 2 more. The squad became kill fodder once they started implementing it.

Sound is nothing impressive. The music for the last stage is suitably epic as you get surrounded by 15 aces in one of the biggest furballs in the game. Sounds and voices are nothing impressive, but they don't detract from the game either.

If you like air combat, you'll like Ace Combat 04. If you like air combat simulations, you won't like Ace Combat 04. But, with 18 fun missions, and lots of quick-paced action, Ace Combat 04 should satisfy most action gamers out there. Check out Ebay, and you can' probably get it for under $30 now.