Ace Combat Infinity

[Falconkpd]

So, any Ace Combat fans in here? I'm kinda torn on what I think of Ace Combat Legacy...I mean, I have enough hope to make a fantrailer for it, but, still...Strangereal meats RL? I dunno.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5TWl1nQtYo&feature=youtu.be <- Just in case anyone is interested in the trailer I made for it.

[Old_Nash]

Please... Come in the original world setting -.-

[aerocombatpilot]

Please Namco, NO MORE:

1. Close range combat: I don't want to make metal bleed anymore!

2. Helicopters: I suck at flying them!

3. Gunships: My aim is pretty bad!

P.S. Please give me an "old school" ace combat game, I'm tired of playing ace combat 2,3,4,and 0.

[wm cheng]

YES! And give us a HOTAS (joystick & throttle) setup that works on the PS3 - please.

[Lightning]

This!!

[Loop]

YES! And give us a HOTAS (joystick & throttle) setup that works on the PS3 - please.

Yeah I really have a thing for HOTAS myself..

[Old_Nash]

YES! And give us a HOTAS (joystick & throttle) setup that works on the PS3 - please.

I need for left-hand XD

[Chronocidal]

Honestly.. the PS3 is already doing combined stuff with the PC for Final Fantasy XIV.. I want to see a PC port. Then I can just pull my old stick and throttle out from their dusty shelf, and put them to decent use.

If it's going to be free to play, you may as well open it up to the non-console people who actually like aircraft games. I might be wrong, but I'd tend to think you'll get much more people playing it that way, just because of the people who already have PC flight sim equipment, and just want something fun and arcadey to use it on.

Edited August 10, 2013 by Chronocidal

[Cabulb]

I actually enjoyed the Close Range Assault system a lot. Sure it was semi rail guided and less skill required but it made combat really intense and epic. I think Infinity could have optional CRA, meaning it's not required to defeat a boss or pass a scenario (we all remember the boss fights in AH right?). No gunships either, those are getting pretty boring now.

I'm really looking forward to a strangereal Ace Combat title.

[Chronocidal]

I dunno. Generally speaking, for flight sim people who like to be able to outmaneuver and actually gun down their targets manually, CRA was anything but "intense and epic," unless you mean in terms of failures. Basically, doing a pilot's job for them that way comes off more as insulting to the people who know how to do it the hard (normal) way. I personally just saw it as a cheesetastic attention grabber to cater to fans of all the blood and gore splatter games that people seem to love so much, in a genre where it never will belong in the first place.

If they'd kept it optional, it wouldn't have been a big deal, but they went out of their way to force players to use it, and I think it alienated a good portion of their normal fanbase, which, being flight sim/aircraft enthusiasts, doesn't get much smaller and niche-ier.

I hope they have the sense to go back to what made the previous games so much more fun, but this entire free-to-play thing worries me greatly. I can think of a couple ways it'll likely go.. either they'll try to attract an even larger audience than AH had, and further alienate what's left of the fanbase, or they'll go back to what the series used to be, and they won't make enough profit from the relatively small community to make a profit on the inevitable pay-per-plane scheme it'll have to run on.

I think it's possible to balance it, but I just don't know. I want to be cautiously optimistic, but my experience with assorted free-to-play games has me extremely skeptical, both about the game, and the community that will grow up around it.

[anime52k8]

Since when has ace combat been a flight sim?

Edited August 31, 2013 by anime52k8

[David Hingtgen]

It was at least a flying game before. Now, it's an FPS on rails. Panzer Dragoon and Star Fox had more freedom, it felt like.

[Fly4victory]

I might be wrong, but I'd tend to think you'll get much more people playing it that way, just because of the people who already have PC flight sim equipment, and just want something fun and arcadey to use it on.

You're not wrong.

The Thrustmaster Hotas X elevated the last game from bla to meah! The macross skins weren't enought since they were for Japan only.

But, If could use my Cougar or I'd even buy the new Warthog if I could fly the game and the controllers were supported.

[Ghost Train]

New trailer and a few screenshots are up:

http://www.gamespot.com/ace-combat-infinity/

I am a bit intrigued by this image. It looks like a skill tree of some sort. I have great love for the 4th generation fighters but they become inconvenient towards the end of most AC games because of better alternatives.... but if you could max out an F-16 skill wise so that you could use it at the tail end of the campaign (or whatever "end game" they have envisioned) that would be sweet!

[David Hingtgen]

QAAM on an F-16? Hmmmn.

[vlenhoff]

I bought every volume of this game, until they included that stupid "training wheels" aiming system. I'm never buying ace combat again, unless they fix it. Or they go back to the good, honest flying dynamics.

[Chronocidal]

Well, the few frames of the splatter cam view in the trailer have me wary, but at least it wasn't the main focus. Most of the combat looked like it was fairly standard legacy AC style.

Let's just hope the free-to-play mechanic doesn't kill it.

[Flaming Guantlet]

More info was released via Kotaku. I'm not suprised they took this route considering Namco Bandai's past F2P releases.

http://kotaku.com/ace-combat-infinitys-story-mode-is-free-as-for-multip-1398922028

[wm cheng]

Huh? "... No news on a Western release...." - we might not get this?

[Duke Togo]

More info was released via Kotaku. I'm not suprised they took this route considering Namco Bandai's past F2P releases.

http://kotaku.com/ace-combat-infinitys-story-mode-is-free-as-for-multip-1398922028

Campaign is totally free, and that's all I care about.

[Fatalist]

The "training wheels" mode you speak of was eliminated from the game, as well as helo's. Shows you just how popular it was in Assault Horizon. They went back to the way it used to be, according to an article I read, which I can't seem to dig up. This made me cheer, as I've yet to beat AH, and don't really plan on it.

[hal9000]

So I can't be the only person to have this right now. Who else is on line?

[Old_Nash]

So I can't be the only person to have this right now. Who else is on line?

I have too^^

[mikeszekely]

So I can't be the only person to have this right now. Who else is on line?

I was on. Was.

I did the first two campaign missions, then the game starts encouraging you to do online co-op. Now, I really loathe playing online with strangers, but I figure it's co-op, so it can't be too bad (I mean, I did play Warframe for awhile).

The game goes on to explain that, yes, it's co-op... but it's also vs. You're put on a team of 4, and you're attacking AI targets, but another team is also attack the same AI targets. The team with the highest score wins. So, I'm starting to get turned off, but I figure I'll try at least one match.

After sitting in a room for a few minutes waiting for the match to start, the host comes on and start saying he's gotta take care of something and it'll be awhile before the match actually starts. Everyone leaves the room. I try again. After searching for a few minutes, I get a message telling me the room is full. OK, it's not like I really wanted to do MP anyway...

So I go back to the campaign, and I see that Mission 3 is locked. It says I need to beat Mission 2 (done) and pay 200,000 credits to unlock it. I look over and I see that I have 81,400 credits. So it shouldn't take me too long to have enough credits to unlock the next campaign mission, right?

Wrong. See, every time you want to play a mission, be it singleplayer campaign or online co-op, you have to spend a fuel. Game starts you with 3 (actually, if you sign in before a certain date, they'll actually give you 10 to stockpile, but I digress), and you earn another one every 4 hours. I'd already used 2 of the 3, so I'm already thinking that I'm not going to get enough credits playing the campaign, but what the heck, I figure I'll replay Mission 2.

This time, I pay a little more attention to the rewards at the end of the mission. I got a B rank, and 200 credits, bringing my grand total to 81,600. So either I did really well on Mission 1 (not likely), or the game starts you with some credits. Either way, it looks like you will either play Mission 1 and 2 over and over for a long time, play the online co-op I don't think a lot of us wanted to, or pay real people money for the "Unlimited Campaign" pack.

Now, I'm an Ace Combat fan. I'm willing to pay money for a good single-player experience (although the first two missions were just sort of meh). So what does the $19.99 Unlimited Campaign buy you?

You can play Campaign missions without spending a fuel, and it'll unlock all the missions up to 8. That's it. Because apparently, so far, there aren't any missions past 8. I'd still consider it, except that your hanger is unaffected by the Campaign. See, you start with an F-4E and one special weapon. You can earn credits, plans, and I think XP to level up your planes and pilot, and to develop new planes and weapons. Except, you can only do that in online co-op. If you use your own plane in single player, you get jack. The only other option is to use a rental, which is a solitary pre-sent plane/weapon combo selected for that mission.

Ultimately, after playing for maybe a half an hour, I feel like AC Infinity is way more multiplayer focused, with the bare bones singleplayer campaign stuck behind either a paywall or online co-op play that's still basically vs. I left feeling frustrated, both with AC Infinity and the fact that the only other AC games on the PSN are Assault Horizon for the PS3 and Joint Assault for the PSP.

[Duke Togo]

So basically unless you are invested in playing it's multiplayer side, don't bother?

[mikeszekely]

So basically unless you are invested in playing it's multiplayer side, don't bother?

Pretty much.

[Chronocidal]

I... yeah. Guess I'll just keep hoping for an HD re-release of the old games. That's just so insanely disappointing to hear them ruin such a promising game with nonsense crap like that.

I might shell out for the campaign since I would have bought the game anyway if I could have, but I'll wait for reviews about the campaign to se if it's worth a look.

Really hope the entire thing backfires on them, and they wind up adding a ton of features on single player, but I won't count on it. Unfortunately, they'll probably make a ton on the microtransactions, and decide that people don't want singleplayer anything from now on. Can't wait til that fad passes and we get some quality games again.

[wm cheng]

Hey does this work with the AC5 HOTAS PS2 controllers (they're USB too)?

[Chronocidal]

I think, theoretically? I know I saw a discussion about that looking for any early reviews, but I only saw it confirmed that the one from AH works, maybe the one that came with AC6, if there was one. I think though, on the PS3, any usb flight stick might potentially work. Just might take some custom drivers or something.