As your squadron teammates will often remind you, especially in the early stages that also serve as a tutorial, that you are not a one-person army. That said, players are dropped into the role of ambitious rookie Trigger of Mage Squadron, an Osean fighter matched against the surging air-land-see Erusean forces. Ace Combat 7 screenshot (photo credit: Bandai Namco) Using these cut-scenes, players immerse themselves into an emerging pseudonymous Eurasian battlefront, comprised of real aircraft but fictitious personas and organizations. The single-player mode felt almost leisurely by comparison, with extensive cutscenes leading into missions, and between the missions. The match areas can be over calm and flat terrain - or at night, in a windy storm, in treacherous terrain that can take you out as easily as a missile barrage, all of which play a role in the risks the player faces from the environment and how match strategy versus other players will unfold.

Sometimes, in a team deathmatch, it works well enough to play the bait. 4 team fighting, I was able to be evasive enough to keep one or two fighters chasing me down without a kill, while my teammates worked on the other opponents. Avoiding a missile at some distance is easy because there’s usually enough warning of a missile zeroing on an aircraft. The closer I was the better my odds of scoring a hit, whether with guns or missiles. when going on the offensive, especially against skilled opponents. It’s easy enough to evade enemies, by dropping chaff, pulling a wild maneuver to avoid the missile, or even dipping into the cloud cover. While I did not rank high offensively with aircraft missiles and guns, which is the best way to earn points, I was able to avoid getting killed by human opponents. In the multiplayer encounters, it’s simply not as easy to score kills versus unpredictable human players as it is against the computer opponents. PlayStation 4: Ace Combat 7, just over a month ahead of launch, was shown off with a free-for-all deathmatch and team deathmatch multiplayer in F16C fighters, along with three missions that led up to a boss encounter. Behind the stations, a spread of snacks and drinks was laid out to keep media folks recharged while going through the Ace Combat 7 modes and stations.

Off in its own set-aside space was a couple PlayStation VR (PSVR) demo stations for the exclusive version of Ace Combat 7. In the demo area, past the check-in area, rows of PlayStation 4 systems, controllers, monitors, and headphones, all facing out toward that aforementioned view. High-flying demo room (photo credit: E4G) The room with a view struck me as a good choice for a location given the type of game being demoed. While the Blue Angels weren’t part of this day, a 45-foot floor Hilton hotel suite overlooking a scenic skyline was the venue. San Francisco, frequently visited by the Blue Angels flight team and home to soaring hotel suites with a view, was the location for the Ace Combat 7 demo. Will Ace Combat 7 make as deep an impression for current-gen gamers as a 16-bit arcade game did for me years ago? We’ll give our impressions following a demo day event for the seventh iteration of Bandai Namco’s franchise air fighter. Now, Sega’s Afterburner is an old-school arcade game from the heyday of arcade gaming in the late 80s, and combat aircraft gaming has come a long way since then. When I think of air combat games, I still hear the Afterburner game soundtrack in my head.

Ace combat 7 screenshot editor