Author Topic: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam  (Read 4822 times)

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Online deathspeed

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ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
$4.99; thinking about picking this up.
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Offline Hobbie

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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
Don't. If you have a PS3, Infinity is not only infinitely better, it's literally infinitely cheaper, at the low low price of free.

Assault Horizon is not a good game. It replaced dogfights for quick time events. Quick time events!

EDIT: If you don't have a PS3, go and grab a game called Vector Thrust. It's the closest you can get to Ace Combat on PC.
« Last Edit: July 24, 2014, 09:32:01 pm by Hobbie »
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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
Thanks for the feedback!  After I posted, I saw that it is free to play thru the weekend, so I am downloading now to try it out.

No PS3 here, just a PC and I've never played any of the ace combat games.  I'm not a fan of cel-shaded graphics, but Vector Thrust does look interesting if I can score an invite.
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Offline Mongoose

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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
If you happen to have an old PS2 kicking around, the Ace Combat titles for that were supposedly great.

 

Offline CT27

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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
AH didn't get great reviews on another forum I visit.  From what I've seen of it (I haven't got to play it AC:AH yet but I've read a lot about it and watched a full playthrough on YT) the story seems passable but not great.  The levels with the helicopters looked kind of cool actually.  However, I don't get why they added that weird new dogfight mode in; they probably should have just kept normal AC gameplay.

 

Offline ssmit132

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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
Assault Horizon is not a good game. It replaced dogfights for quick time events. Quick time events!
I've not seen Assault Horizon gameplay, but are these quick time events essentially "press a button to get behind the enemy"? Assault Horizon Legacy (the 3DS game - a remake of Ace Combat 2 despite the name) has something similar, and I liked that game immensely.

Granted it's the first, and so far only, game in the series I've played, so I can't compare it to other Ace Combat titles obviously, and I'll admit that the AHL's flight model in general is kind of wonky. I would probably find it more glaring if it was a PC or console title.

Thanks for the feedback!  After I posted, I saw that it is free to play thru the weekend, so I am downloading now to try it out.
Probably the best idea. If you don't like it then you haven't lost out on anything!

If you happen to have an old PS2 kicking around, the Ace Combat titles for that were supposedly great.
I've had them recommended too, so I'm going to grab all of those now I have a PS2.

 

Offline The E

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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
AH is not good. They tried to do something new with it, move into the COD space as it were, but kinda failed. The dogfight mode isn't so much a QTE as it is a rail shooter section; that it is required to do for certain enemies is supremely annoying. The Helicopter sections are also not really good, and the game does a really good job at annoying you from the start with them. I recommend avoiding this game and playing Vector Thrust (or the old PS2 Ace Combats via emulator).
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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
No PS3 here, just a PC and I've never played any of the ace combat games.  I'm not a fan of cel-shaded graphics, but Vector Thrust does look interesting if I can score an invite.

Well, if your PC is half-decent you can just emulate the old PS2 games using PCSX2. According to this wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console_emulator console emulators are legal in the US, and afaik, most of the EU as long as you don't pirate the games themselves. You can even make them look like 20 times better than they originally did by using proper anti-aliasing and cranking up the internal resolution to 1080p or higher.
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Offline The E

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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
No PS3 here, just a PC and I've never played any of the ace combat games.  I'm not a fan of cel-shaded graphics, but Vector Thrust does look interesting if I can score an invite.

Well, if your PC is half-decent you can just emulate the old PS2 games using PCSX2. According to this wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console_emulator console emulators are legal in the US, and afaik, most of the EU as long as you don't pirate the games themselves. You can even make them look like 20 times better than they originally did by using proper anti-aliasing and cranking up the internal resolution to 1080p or higher.

Which won't actually work with PCSX2 in this particular case. The hardware 3D plugins for PCSX2 don't handle the AC games' render code correctly, so in order to get it to look as intended, you have to use the software renderer, which of course does not support changing the internal resolution.
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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
My bad then, I've never really had an interest in Ace Combat but I do use PCSX2 for a lot of other games and it works really well. Still, if you can get it to look no worse than the PS2 original it's worth it, though I'm not sure if software mode lets you do that.
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Offline The E

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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
That, at least, is a given. It's just going to be a bit hard on your CPU; The FX6300 I use at home manages to stay at 60FPS most of the time, but does drop down into the 50s for some scenes.
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Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
AH is not good. They tried to do something new with it, move into the COD space as it were, but kinda failed. The dogfight mode isn't so much a QTE as it is a rail shooter section; that it is required to do for certain enemies is supremely annoying. The Helicopter sections are also not really good, and the game does a really good job at annoying you from the start with them. I recommend avoiding this game and playing Vector Thrust (or the old PS2 Ace Combats via emulator).

I have to completely disagree on the helicopter bits.

Also, Assault Horizon doesn't make you want to stab the writing staff to death.
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Offline The E

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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
The problem is that the writing eschews the insanity of Ace Combat for "realism". It just ends up pedestrian.

And yeah, the Apache sections aren't that bad, but I for one cannot forgive the ****ing door gunner sections.
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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
Assault Horizon? Great graphics, but a complete (and not necessarily good) departure from the mechanics of the series. I played it many times when it came out in 2011, but quickly ended up in my list of forgotten games.

Those C-130 Gunship missions were nearly unplayable at high difficulty levels.  :mad:
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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
Assault Horizon? Great graphics, but a complete (and not necessarily good) departure from the mechanics of the series. I played it many times when it came out in 2011, but quickly ended up in my list of forgotten games.

Those C-130 Gunship missions were nearly unplayable at high difficulty levels.  :mad:

Honestly, the graphics aren't even that good, at least compared to other PC games released in 2011-2012. The particles are crap and the damage modelling is very simplistic, something you'd expect from a 2005 game, not a modern one. it's a glorified rail shooter with some decent self aware-ish writing.
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Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
And yeah, the Apache sections aren't that bad, but I for one cannot forgive the ****ing door gunner sections.

Ironically, I rather enjoy the door gunner sections more than the Apache ones.
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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
I've played for about an hour and a half, and have really enjoyed it so far!  I had some issues at first even starting the game (menus going crazy like I had a stuck arrow key), until I plugged in my Xbox 360 controller and the game started responding appropriately. 

The game recognizes my Sidewinder FF2 in the menus, but I gave up (for now) on trying to get it to work, but for a more casual, arcadey (yet intense) gaming experience like this I'm OK with using the 360 controller.  It's more "crimson skies" in jets than "falcon 4.0" and I'm OK with that.

I don't have any prior experience with the AC series to build any kind of expectations, so the gameplay doesn't disappoint me.  I actually sorta like the dogfight mode, but maybe that is because I am using the gamepad rather than the joystick.   

I'm not digging the first apache mission though. If I can't get past it I definitely won't be spending the money to keep the game.
« Last Edit: July 26, 2014, 05:28:46 pm by deathspeed »
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Offline Lorric

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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
Don't. If you have a PS3, Infinity is not only infinitely better, it's literally infinitely cheaper, at the low low price of free.
Thank you for the reminder about this. The game came up on Hard Light before I think, but it slipped my mind to grab it. I have now downloaded it and will try it out sometime. :)

 

Offline InsaneBaron

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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
Ace Combat 4, 5, Zero, and Six were the "Golden Age" of the series, combining very dramatic (somtimes a little overdone, but I'm okay with that :P ) plots with intuitive controls that required a fair amount of skill without being inaccessible, and at the same time really giving you a sensation of flying.

The problems with Assault Horizon are twofold. First, in the gameplay area, it replaces the relatively simple gameplay mechanics with (as mentioned above) a weird mix of Quick-time events and rail-shooter sequences. The results are visually impressive, but they take the skill out of the dogfights. All you have to do is time the button sequences right, and the CPU does the work for you. Not very satisfying. (Complex mechanics =/= complex strategy and simple rules =/= simple strategy. Try Go if you don't believe me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28game%29 )

Second, it's complete reboot of the old continuity, and the plot discards the dramatic, philosophical writing and deep characters for what's basically Battlefield 3 with planes... and very shallow characters indeed.

Finally, I actually kinda like the Apache sections (there are actually less QTEs), but the door-gunner sections and the AC-130 mission combined the strategy of a whack-a-mole game with stupidly high difficulty (at least with the AC-130)
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Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: ACE COMBAT ASSAULT HORIZON on sale on Steam
the dramatic, philosophical writing

You have been playing some very, very different series.
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