Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation

Metachronos overall score = 8.6 / 10

Positive
- Excellent flight model and smooth controls make flying simple and fun
- Exciting action surrounds you with huge explosions, radio chatter, and squadrons of enemy fighters
- Looks amazing, yet still maintains an even frame rate
- You can experience the excitement online with a number of great multiplayer modes

Negative
- First half of the campaign is a little bland
- Not as many aircraft or missions as prior installments
- Some minor slowdowns

In Fires of Liberation, the decorated Ace Combat series roars into the current generation. The scope has expanded to include fantastic online play, and the game has found the perfect balance between a speedy, steady frame rate and quality graphics. The overall experience is innately rewarding, and it ramps up the challenge throughout the course of the campaign and finishes on a thrilling high note that may very well inspire you to replay the final mission (and others, too) over and over again. Ace Combat 6 doesn't always sustain this momentum, and you may actually find the early missions a bit tedious. But if you stick with it, it pays off in grand fashion.



You and three others can also take part in stand-alone co-op missions, and as with most action games, it's even more fun to attack your goals with gusto when a friend is along for the ride. However, our favorite online mode is siege battle. In this mode, two teams take turns attacking and defending an entire region of targets, and the team that scores the most points is the winner. Dealing with both your real-life opponents and a bunch of antiair weaponry (those flak guns are nuisances indeed) at the same time is nerve-wracking and exciting, and there's really nothing quite like it. Aside from online play, Ace Combat 6 doesn't break any real new ground for the series. In fact, some cool past features, such as AC5's radioed yes/no questions, are nowhere to be found. Yet Ace Combat 6 makes up for it by providing the most immersive experience yet in an arcade flight combat game, thanks to smooth, gorgeous visuals and polished gameplay. And you'll want to play again and again: There are medals to earn, aircraft and special weapons to purchase with the points you receive during missions, and a good selection of Xbox Live achievement points to earn that are spread out evenly among the campaign and multiplayer modes. You can also save replays of your matches, and the cinematic camera views make them a pleasure to watch. Whether you're an Ace Combat veteran or a series newcomer, you won't be disappointed.

this series keeps getting better