Recent reviews by Scr00t

Just by the name alone, if you ask any of the long time fans, they'll tell you what they think at the drop of a hat.
Having played through the campaign fully, I can see just why this game was made. The article I read prior to playing the game comparing it to a certain hyper-popular first-person shooter cemented my opinion in stone already. One part of me wants to like this game, but the other part screams at it in disgust.

Ace Combat Assault horizon is a frank departure from the series established bizzaro earth in which it takes place in the more familiar setting of our world. It seeks to establish a cast of loveable characters from the outset with plenty of dialogue inbetween missions.
While the game certainly stands on its own as a certifyable Ace combat game, it definitely has the feel most fans of the series have come to expect, but has a flawed core that sours the experience.

From the core, it tends to lean to hard on its own gimmicks to draw in new players, and it shows in the gameplay, the addition of Dog-fight Mode is a sort of,"On Rails" mode to help new players take on enemies.

its an easier to control help-to-kill method, and concurrently show off the much touted,"Aircraft Gore" as defeated planes spiral and tumble helplessly with much unnecessary amounts of oil, flames, and debris splattering on the screen, and an unskippable dramatic camera to show you your kill in gruesome detail as it suspends you from play. Counter DFM, is a feature called,"ASM" which is initiated in the same way as DFM is. ASM allows you to turn on your persuer and take THEM in DFM.

As a whole, the usual Ace combat control scheme is bogged down by this new control addition and a step back from the tight controls many have come to expect from the series. the timing required to pull off the ASM is far more strict and leaves you more vulnerable than outmanuvering your opponent and mashes itself in your way, and many of the mission components require you to use this DFM to complete some objectives properly.

Many of the games enemies seem to have been made with this mode in mind as they all zoom and boost impossibly out of your reach if you decide to engage them in any other form of combat other than DFM, I saw this mostly on the "required" targets and seemed to me as a way to railroad the player into using it at expense of artificially lengthening the game time.
Moving on.

From its mission structure to its characters, it tries real hard to make Ace combat fit within the confines of the modern game while still leaving a bit of salt from the previous games to flavor it.
In the end, AC:AH Feels short, shallow, and unmemorable, nevermind the technical issues that mar it.

the choice to cast the title in the current modern world left the game with a bland pastel of identity to draw upon let alone the suspension of disbelief to hold, the characters have no origin, we know nothing of why the characters have the motivations they do, they cast off the primary reason for conflict and instead leave a revenge plot with no plausability for its existence.

The story for me wrapped up in 8 hours, accounting for deaths and failures due to awkward DFM controls along the way.

To draw some comparisons between this and one of the previous titles, some of the titles had branching mission structures, and depending on how you play, or what you do, the story unfolds in a different way, giving some area of control and feeling of detail.
The mission structure of AC:AH is linear, the missions are short and there isn't any replayability in them as most missions are roughly 5 or so minutes long.(they can drag on because the game wants you to rely on DFM) The details of each mission are traditional for the Ace Combat library, in fact, as far as to say, they don't use any of the more interesting mission structures that the previous titles have. It goes to highlight the limited scope the modern world presents from a reality standpoint.

From what I gather from this game, it was made with multiplayer in mind, (Singleplayer is just one long tutorial) and I'm sure it does it acceptably, but doesn't warrant me trying as coming away from the singleplayer, left me a lot more sour than sweet.
As a fan of the series, I'm dissapointed that Project Aces had to push out a title that was more than likely a cash grab to monopolize on the current trend of modern military shooters, not of their own volition, but by their parent company.

The good I gather from the game is, that I hope any form of success has made Bandai-Namco think strongly about porting previous Ace combat titles, and developing future numbered games to the PC as a viable platform.

This review isn't supposed to be to complex or properly formatted or well worded. but it does get across a number of gripes I have with the game, and goes to highlight what happens when game companies try to,"Follow the leader" instead of doing their own thing or doing something new.

TL;DR: As a fan of the series, steer clear (but I'm sure I don't need to tell you that), but if you're someone who wants an arcade-y flight game to kill some time online. look no further.