Ive been a long time fan of the Ace Combat series and was blown away when this came out on the PS2, the first thing that i found that was a welcome change is a decent storyline!basically the plot is that meteors have caused massive destruction, the worlds governments build a defence system call stonehenge to defend the world, trouble is one nation realises they can use it to shoot down planes so take over it and so begins the war, which is where u come in.
The story is told from the perspective of a child and goes through all the climatic periods of the war which really drives the story along and makes u want to keep going, this is top notch and i dont want to go into too much detail as it would spoil it.
Gameplay is faster and the graphics are sharp for both the planes you use and the surrounding areas in fact at a certain height its very photo realistic, go down near the ground though and it gets blurry and really less detailed, but the game doesnt suffer for it as you will be flying to fast to notice.
Dog-fighting can be a little intense at times setting the difficulty higher really pushes you to keep jinking to dodge all those missles fired at you,ground bombing was my favourite part of the game as i dont think it was a perfect system they placed in, but it had its moments.
I recomend this game to anyone wether you are a fan or a newcomer, just the amount of planes to play with and the added feature of unlocking weapons and special planes will keep you at it for a long time, this is as close to flying in a jet fighter as most people get