TGS 2009: 'Ace Combat Xi' Impressions and Gameplay Video
posted by arn on September 26th, 2009 2:30 AM EDT in Upcoming Games, iPhone games, iPod touch gamesNamco Bandai has a demo version of their upcoming game Ace Combat Xi on the floor of the Tokyo Game Show. Several reports are coming in from those who have had hands on time with the title. The Ace Combat francise has been around since 1995 with versions of the game appearing on the Playstation, Playstation 2, Xbox 360, and PSP.
Akihabara News reports the game was "fantastically smooth and easy to play". While the game was demoed on an iPhone 3GS, Namco says they are working on delivering a good experience on the 3G as well.
IGN's Mark Bozon, a huge fan of the Ace Combat series, felt the game succeeded in encapsulating the franchise:
iPhone Ace Combat plays pretty much how you'd expect it to, but for a series that's as huge on control and precision as Ace Combat it's awesome to see that Project Aces managed to squeeze all the controls from the main game into the tiny platform.
Despite the small size of the elements on the screen, Bozon reports the buttons were 100% accurate. Tilt controls were solid but no options for sensitivity were found on this build. The demo mission offered to TGS attendees was a basic dog-fighting round. In the end, the game was described as looking "very, very, good".
Finally, +D Mobile was able to get some photos of the control setup:
And even managed to get video of the game in action:
There's still no indication when the game will be released.
That looks exactly like FAST.
"That looks exactly like FAST."
yep, just a little bit worse!
This is the game that F.A.S.T ripped off, I think it's going to be much better than F.A.S.T
Yeah, F.A.S.T. is basically Ace Combat without the plot, the mission variety or the production values. Something the Ace Combat games focused on was that you're part of a war, and not just a solo ace. There is CONSTANT radio chatter, and you can hear exactly how the battle is going around you, the cheers as you swoop in to save a line of tanks from enemy fire, the panic as an enemy ambush is sprung, etc etc.
Oh, and one cool thing about the Ace Combat series is that it tends to go into the world of superscience. Giant aerial fortresses, mile-high doomsday weapons that need to be flown INSIDE to destroy, submersible aircraft carriers and such. So, yeah, semi-realistic flying action with real aircraft but occasional boss battles with huuuuge pieces of hardware.
The camera should be much more dynamic in my opinion… I mean that the camera follows the plane with a bit of a delay so that you see the plane moving around a bit.
I really need to get myself a 3gs soon.
Unfortunately it doesn't look any better than F.A.S.T., but the video doesn't really show us much more than a little flying around. I'd like to see a video that purposefully showed us a lot of the game's aspects.
Doesn't look better than fast???
It looks tons better than fast (and fast does look good for an iPhone game).
Just look at the screenshots to see the terrain detail, the 3D buildings, those lovely looking mountains, and the plane/ship models. I enjoyed F.A.S.T, but only for the online. This game looks quite a lot better, IMO, because you will actually have something to do rather than shoot down waves of enemy planes. There will be strafing/bombing/dogfighting/intercepting etc missions with realistic mission objectives. And I am currently faceplaming at all those people who said that this copies F.A.S.T. WTF??? If there is any copying going on, then it is F.A.S.T copying Ace Combat. And it doesn't copy Ace Combat, just because it is the same genre game, does that mean that it is a copy? Real Soccer 2010 isn't a copy of FIFA, because it's simply a game in a particular genre. However if someone were to copy Enviro Bear 2010, then that could be considered a copy, as Enviro Bear is so unique.
Yeah, the terrain looks much better than F.A.S.T.'s terrain in this video.
I only HOPE it ha missions and ground objectives and a story and such, as LBG mentions in his post above.
Btw, all the screenshots that TA made available had stamped across them that they were not final images, so we can't go by that, or anything, really, yet.
this just made my day. Ace Combat? on the iphone!
*faints*
Well thanks for the video that we can't watch on our iPhones.
This is just a demo running on iphone 3gs.I hope the final product isn't graphically down so that it can run on all iphone/touch versions!!! And am eagerly waiting for this game.nice to see they got the controls spot on.