Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation

Far from simply letting you take part in one operation to the exclusion of all others, the game operates some intelligent, well-considered AI on the battlefield level - so your forces will continue to fight and advance, or fight and lose badly, even without your assistance. Radio chatter isn't just background noise here; often a comment about a battalion being cut to ribbons is your key cue to haul up the battlefield map, find out where your units are in trouble, and go and take out the howitzers that's making mincemeat of them.

Moreover, allied units aren't just there to be saved from you like heavily armoured damsels in distress. To a certain degree, you can also command them to assist you; instructing units to engage enemies in specific areas, or to give you defensive covering fire. With enemy units thick on the ground (and indeed the air), that's something you'll definitely need as the difficulty level ratchets up. It's not exactly RTS style fine-tuned control, but it's a nice level of input to give the player, without distracting from the core task of blowing stuff up.

This may sound like a small difference, but it's exactly the shot in the arm that Ace Combat has needed. Call us spoiled, but we've simply come to superb, well-polished flight and combat systems in this series - it's the staid, linear and repetitive nature of the missions which has bored us to tears over the last few iterations. Making the battlefield into a dynamic theatre of war where you have to weigh up decisions rather than just shooting wave after wave of enemies genuinely breathes new life into the experience.

It helps, of course, that Ace Combat 6 looks absolutely, gloriously beautiful. It's not the kind of game that screenshots do justice to; it's very easy to pick apart the graphics when you examine them closely, pointing out that the ground is often a flat texture, or that the buildings aren't very detailed. In motion, though, it's the sense of scale that strikes you - and the relentless focus on the graphical elements that really matter.

Cities, for example, may not be incredibly detailed, but they're realistic enough that it doesn't matter; flying high above, they look the part, and flying low down, they move past so quickly that it doesn't matter. Key landmarks are modelled with excellent detail, as are the planes and military vehicles in the game; but more importantly, the sky itself is alive with detail and realism.

That ranges from the contrails of planes and missiles (especially useful with missiles, as you can see where they were fired from), which billow and blow realistically, through to incredible heat haze effects from jet engines and superb explosions. On the way, they take in fluffy clouds that actually look real when you fly through them, stunning sunsets and gorgeous water effects. The combined effect of these details, and the huge number of planes, missiles and vehicles the game throws around, is fantastic.

Playing With The Boys

This, of course, is also Ace Combat's first outing on the Xbox 360 - and it's not just fantastic graphics that have been facilitated by the series' leap to next-gen platforms. Online modes, too, are fully supported - and as well as the obligatory deathmatch style mode, there's also a solid co-op mode in evidence, which pits up to four of you against waves of enemy fighters in a variety of missions.

Yes, that's right; finally, you really can go and find someone to be your wingman, any time. Rolled up towels at the ready, boys.

The deathmatch style games, although somewhat frantic, may well have some longevity in them. A free for all mode, supporting up to 16 players, is something of an exercise in chaos, but the 4v4 Team Battle and the 4v4 Siege Battle (which sets you alternately as an attacker and a defender of a fortress location) are interesting twists which could well see some cool strategies emerging from dedicated players.

One down-side - which is a bit of a perpetual moan about Ace Combat, really - is that the series is still stuck with some bloody awful storytelling. The real-time cutscenes between levels are actually stunningly good quality, in graphical terms, and the music for this outing is pretty good - but most of the script is outright cringeworthy.

As an attempt to show various different perspectives, both civilian and military, on the conflict, it's a nice effort, but one which falls down very hard under the weight of its own pretension. If anything, the cutscenes actually take you out of the game badly; the graphics and radio chatter in the missions build up a superb atmosphere, and the laughable storytelling in the cutscenes drags it all down.

As you progress through the game, it all definitely becomes somewhat more fantastical as well. The bulk of your arsenal - both of planes and weapons - stays somewhat true to reality, and indeed many of the planes are actually licensed vehicles. The enemy units, however, are rather more wild, and of course there are giant enemy planes which serve as atmospheric aircraft carriers and other such crazy military fantasies to be encountered as you advance. We actually find this trait of Ace Combat quite endearing; fans of realism may well differ.

Ace Combat 6 still can't quite mark itself out as an essential game; it's certainly true that the series is moving forward again, and we're delighted to see it, but this is evolution rather than revolution. Those who weren't enamoured with it in the first place will find nothing to change their minds in Ace Combat 6, and that's fine in its own way; a series update that delights the fans is no bad thing.