Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception
Namco's latest aerial combat sim fails to take flight.
Here's the plot of Ace Combat X: a country called Aurelia is attacked by a country called Leasath, which has a massive army and advanced technology, including a super powerful flying fortress called Gleipnir, which is used to wipe out almost all of the Aurelian army, leaving a secret Aurelian airborne unit called Gryphus 1 to try to organise the unlikely feat of repelling the invading forces.
If you find those ridiculous names and that slender story, told in static cut-scenes by breathlessly bad voice actors, in any way appealing, maybe you'll like the polished but uninspiring aerial combat that forms the basis of the first PSP instalment of Namco's aerial combat sim series.
It's certainly a technically proficient title, doing pretty much what all the other Ace Combat games have done, except with the added challenge of having done it on a handheld platform. For those of you who have somehow missed the first umpteen (well, six or seven) games in the Ace Combat series, here's what they've done: they've supplied gamers with a steady succession of aerial dogfights that err towards the arcade end of the realisticness spectrum, and offered players a chance to buy new planes and exotic weapons between missions.