Is Air/Ace Combat the best fighter jet simulator series on the Playstation?



The first game in the Air/Ace Combat series was a special bonus from my summer job. It came in one of those weird extra large CD boxes and when my brother and I cracked open the box and slapped that disc in our PS1, the absolutely sick soundtrack and fun, exciting gameplay had us hooked. The vaguely Australian guy telling us what to do and the lady constantly repeating "Alert! Body damage" lulled us to sleep as we carefully controlled our fighter jets like a million other white dudes who had seen Top Gun in their lifetime wanted to do. I mean, the copilot does sound a bit like Goose, right? At any rate, the missions are pretty simple and the story is pretty loose, but the game is fun to play.

The graphics during the 3-D battles are, of course, completely terrible since it is an early PS1 game. The plane models probably used what, 30 polygons each or something? The flying animation leaves quite a lot to be desired as you can almost see the different frames in the third-person view (choose first-person view, obviously) and pop-in is a real problem in the terrain. To be honest, though, you can kind of look past the graphics as you play because the gameplay is so engaging even though there's not a ton of variety in combat style.

Sure nostalgia plays a part in this review but I think it is still a solid game.

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