Game: Ace Combat: Joint Assault
Platform: PSP
Publisher: Namco Bandai
Developer: Namco Bandai
ESRB: T
Genre: Combat Flight
Players: 1-4 co-op, 2-8 multiplayer
What's Hot: Fully co-op missions, fun multiplayer
What's Not: …once you get the best planes. Very mediocre solo campaign mode, occasionally frustrating controls
Review by: Taylor Cocke
Last I checked, flying a high-powered jet fighter is supposed to be all about precision. When I get my hands on the controls of one of those planes, it’s fair to expect some precision handling, precision flying formations, and precision air strikes. Unfortunately, it’s tough to deliver all of that on the control scheme available on the PSP.
That is Joint Assault’s main fault. The solid semi-realistic dogfighter is horribly marred by the limitations of the PSP. Without a second analog stick to move the camera around, it’s tough to keep tabs on the battlefield, and the smaller portable screen only serves to worsen the tunnel vision effect.
Don’t get me wrong, the vision problems don’t completely hamper the ability to play the game. The HUD does its job without making it overly complicated, and once you switch to the expert controls – which are what you’d expect from a flight game, with left and right controlling the roll of the plane rather than just turning it automatically – it starts to feel more like flying a high-performance fighter instead of a 747 with missiles duct taped on.
Like an average Ace Combat game, the campaign is woefully short, clocking in at about two hours. This could be forgiven if the missions were more varied and original, but around the sixth time I took down a huge flying fortress above a real-world location (Tokyo, San Francisco, and London appear, among others), it started to get a bit old. Heart-pumping missions, like maneuvering a huge passenger jet through a tiny canyon, are few and far between, and even then they’re definitely not enough to redeem the mediocrity of the rest of the campaign.
There is a saving grace, however. The entirely co-op campaign allows for at least some replayability. Most of the time, you fly in the same squadron working towards the same end, but whenever a Joint Assault mission is available, squad mates split into two teams taking on two different missions, with the outcomes of each affecting one another. With several of these dual missions peppering the campaign, it takes at least a couple of play-throughs for everyone to experience the whole game.
And, of course, you’ll have to play through the game multiple times to be able to afford the best planes and take them into the multiplayer skies. Getting blown to bits by someone who’s grinded out enough money to buy all of the best planes (trust me, some of the more expensive planes are blatantly superior) is an enormously frustrating experience. If you’re willing to do the same, however, it’s a solid portable multiplayer dogfighting experience.
It may take some finagling to find it, but there is a solid flight game beneath the problems. It’s just a bummer that you have to dig into several menus, find some buddies, and replay the campaign repeatedly to get to it.
Questions or comments? We'd love to
hear from you
.
