Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War
Quite plane.
Where would videogame publishers be without Brahmagupta? The revered Indian mathematician, astronomer and scholar probably didn't think this far ahead when he was preparing his seminal work, the Brahmasphutasiddhanta (try saying it without spitting all over your monitor), but as the first person in recorded history to incorporate the number zero into mathematics, and indeed to treat it as a number in its own right at all, he inadvertently solved a thorny problem which many videogame publishers seemed to hit a few years ago.
The problem, of course, was what to do when you've got a series of videogames that has really reached something of a logical conclusion, but which you'd rather like to continue making money from. Back in the seventies, George Lucas hit upon the genius idea of starting his series at episode four, just in case he ever needed to come back and desecrate his earlier works in order to raise cash to buy some more lumberjack shirts, but videogame publishers didn't have that foresight. Without Brahmagupta's helpful invention of Zero, they'd have been screwed.
Yes, dear reader, you're quite right - I've started yet another game review with a trip to Wikipedia rather than any kind of useful or helpful observation about the game itself. However, I plead extenuating circumstances. The game in question here is the sixth game in the Ace Combat series, you see - and despite the fact that I like Ace Combat very much, I find myself hard pressed to find very many ways in which this differs from Ace Combat 5, or Ace Combat 4 before it. It's not a promising, or very exciting, start.