Jon Brown gives his thoughts on the games he played this past week at the Namco Bandai UK 
Summer Shindig. Those include Inversion, Dark Souls and the first title covered, Ace combat Assault Horizon.
Ace Combat- Assault Horizon
After the demo we were given, by UK MD Lee Kirton, opened my eyes a little bit to a genre of gaming I never thought particularly accessible to the average outsider, I was excited to have a go myself. The tutorial style level plays out as part of the opening cut-scene/prologue to the game, which sees downtown Miami under attack from potential terrorists. The story, from what we were told, is modern in its WMD and political focus, but looks to still have a strong story and character focus. I got to grips with the controls very quickly, as I was plunged right into a dogfight with an entire squadron of enemies. Miami is being peppered with missiles and machine gun fire, and it’s up to you to try and avert the enemy from causing any more damage.
The game isn’t on rails, as some complaints of previous AC games have spoken of, and does have a great degree of freedom. There are invisible barriers that, when crossed, will end the mission, but you have to fly pretty far away from the action for the message to appear. You initiate dogfight mode with the first few enemies, and soon I was taught the manoeuvre for breaking in mid-air, flipping my craft and appearing behind a pursuing enemy, at which point a quick and accurate missile was all that was needed to obliterate another enemy unit. The shrapnel and oil splatters were incredibly effective, and I tried to fly through as many destroyed aircraft fuselages as possible to see for myself whether it was a consistent feature, or something that was more saved for set pieces.
One minor issue to mention though: as fantastic as Miami looks when you are up in the air, the closer you get to the ground, the more you realise you are flying over more of a photograph in some areas. I know the point of the game is not to try and land outside a Starbucks and order a mid-dogfight Frappuchino, but I think the game is so expansive that, when close up, you can see how they were able to add so much breadth to the landscape. It’s almost too broad, and not deep enough. However, another notification appeared informing me that I could now fire multiple missiles at one target, or a group of targets, and I was well on my way to blasting the rest of the squadron out of the sky. And then— well, I shan’t spoil that for you. You’ll have to wait until the game is released!
