by Anthony O'Connor
Worth: $15.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Intro:
… a good game. But that’s irksome because it has the potential to be a great one.
Can one annoying aspect of a video game kill the rest? For those not in the know, the Ace Combat franchise has been around since 1995, when it was called Air Combat on the very first PlayStation. Since then, we’ve had seven mainline entries, multiple spin-off games and various tie-ins in other mediums including books and soundtrack albums. During that impressive run, the Ace Combat games have been renowned for their rock solid gameplay and absolute bat shit lunatic stories. Set in an alternate reality Earth known as Strangereal, they tend to explore war from various angles replete with bizarrely named countries, wildly imaginative (if impractical) plane designs and stakes of increasing absurdity. The latest entry, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve attempts to dig even deeper into the narrative and, honestly, it might have been better if they hadn’t. Because while AC8 features some of its best gameplay to date, it also contains some of the series’ more obnoxious missteps.
Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve takes place once again on Strangereal, in 2029, set against the backdrop of the Sotoa-Usea War. The player takes on the role of a silent protagonist who is the backseat navigator to Jan “Rex” Cope, a Federation of Central Usea (FCU) naval aviator who has adopted the moniker “Wings of Theve.” However, when Rex carks it during a mission, you adopt the title and fly under his banner to improve the morale of the troops. Strangely, Rex, through means related to either mental health or supernatural shenanigans, maintains a presence in your bonce, delivering grim predictions, poetry or just nattering on from beyond the grave. So now it’s up to you to lead Joker Squadron, a ragtag group of utterly outnumbered misfits, on various sorties to turn the tide of war and achieve a better day. And talk.
So much talk.
Okay, first things first: Ace Combat 8 plays amazingly. It’s fast-paced, frenetic, smoothly animated and genuinely immersive. Nearly every second you spend in the air is a good time and the team should all be congratulated for their fine work on honing gameplay mechanics and combat feel. Unfortunately, there’s also a story that goes along with the titular combat, a cinematic emphasis if you will, and it’s bloody woeful. Overwrought, overlong, ploddingly paced and thuddingly stupid, these endless cut scenes seem to occur as soon as you’re not in the cockpit and add little to the experience other than annoyance. Still, they can be skipped, right, so just move through them … Fine, in theory, but even when you’re in the air, the dynamic chatter between characters has been dialled up not to eleven but fifty one! These NPCs that you fly with … Never. Shut. Up. There’s the character who’s a pacifist and won’t kill the enemy, there’s the bloke who’s obsessed with a band and keeps wanking on about it, and a professor character who thinks that school is always in session. Even more galling, the enemy gets in on the act too, chiming in like a sweaty edgelord on X and constantly killing the vibe as they try to murder you. Hopefully, the devs will see fit to add an option to turn down, or turn off, this endless inanity because it’s unutterably tedious and frequently redundant and repetitive.
Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, despite these issues, is a good game. But that’s irksome because it has the potential to be a great one. If they reduced mid-mission chatter by 70% (or more), this game would score two points higher than it currently does. Unfortunately, your humble scribe’s job is to review the game that’s there and, in this case, the glaring flaws can’t be ignored. There’s potential here for a great multiplayer mode as well, but that won’t go properly live until after the launch date.
Quite why the devs saddled this rock solid aerial combat game with so much irksome nonsense is a mystery. Sadly, until it’s amended or reduced, Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve flies a little too close to the sun. The nattering, chattering, endlessly yammering sun.
