As an artifact of the early 2000s, Ace Combat 04 is fascinating. As a game, Shattered Skies sees the Ace Combat formula mature into the melodramatic arcade flier that would define its genre. Essentially an arcade game built around high scores, you're given a bottomless supply of missiles and bullets to race through a variety of environments stuffed with different baddies, chasing points and dopamine rushes from those "HIT" and "DESTROYED" notes flashing on your screen. Occasionally you're given an enemy ace to duel with, forcing you to work a little harder for those points. This is all very basic stuff, but there's an obvious hook in taking an arcade game and giving it an afterburner.
There's also an interesting conversation around history here. Shattered Skies is a clear relic from that first decade after the Cold War, tapping into loose Russian and Western analogs, explicit visual references to the Gulf War, and a specter of decisive, doomsday super weapons looming in the background. I don't think it says anything particularly profound about this period of time, but the context is there and it's not subtle.
I also think it's interesting to think about this series' narrative and Shattered Skies' place within it. We're still some ways away from the science fiction soap opera of more modern Ace Combat games, as well as their more explicit ideological battles about mythmaking, warfare and people's place in both. Instead, we're given a fairly grounded story about citizens of an occupied nation wrestling with a difficult relationship with their occupiers, seen here as pretty sympathetic at at least a surface level. Through this story, Shattered Skies offers us a basic thesis statement that "war is bad," something seeming to conflict with its other, more implicit thesis statement that "fighter jets are cool." It's basically Mobile Suit Gundam with less robots and more Lockheed Martin. I'm mostly comfortable with this contradiction, but I won't say it doesn't give me the occasional reason to pause.
Finally, Ace Combat 04 squeezes in an obligatory trench run mission. Look, I love Star Wars and think the trench run from the first movie is great. It's also maybe better experienced through a movie, because crawling a fighter jet through a narrow chasm with literally nothing else happening isn't exactly the thrilling climax I think the developers hoped for. A mission earlier in the game, when a different super weapon forces you to race through a canyon, fares way better at this, if only because Ace Combat is better experienced when there's room to fly.
There's also an interesting conversation around history here. Shattered Skies is a clear relic from that first decade after the Cold War, tapping into loose Russian and Western analogs, explicit visual references to the Gulf War, and a specter of decisive, doomsday super weapons looming in the background. I don't think it says anything particularly profound about this period of time, but the context is there and it's not subtle.
I also think it's interesting to think about this series' narrative and Shattered Skies' place within it. We're still some ways away from the science fiction soap opera of more modern Ace Combat games, as well as their more explicit ideological battles about mythmaking, warfare and people's place in both. Instead, we're given a fairly grounded story about citizens of an occupied nation wrestling with a difficult relationship with their occupiers, seen here as pretty sympathetic at at least a surface level. Through this story, Shattered Skies offers us a basic thesis statement that "war is bad," something seeming to conflict with its other, more implicit thesis statement that "fighter jets are cool." It's basically Mobile Suit Gundam with less robots and more Lockheed Martin. I'm mostly comfortable with this contradiction, but I won't say it doesn't give me the occasional reason to pause.
Finally, Ace Combat 04 squeezes in an obligatory trench run mission. Look, I love Star Wars and think the trench run from the first movie is great. It's also maybe better experienced through a movie, because crawling a fighter jet through a narrow chasm with literally nothing else happening isn't exactly the thrilling climax I think the developers hoped for. A mission earlier in the game, when a different super weapon forces you to race through a canyon, fares way better at this, if only because Ace Combat is better experienced when there's room to fly.