Tag Archives: Skies Unknown

MoeGamer Awards 2019

The MoeGamer 2019 Awards: The Best Dicking Around Award

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The MoeGamer Awards are a series of “alternative” awards I’ve devised in collaboration with the community to celebrate the sorts of things that never get celebrated in end-of-year roundups! Find out more here — and feel free to leave a suggestion on that post if you have any good ideas!

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Structured fun is all very well and good. Everyone likes completing stages, scoring points, levelling up, that sort of thing. But sometimes all you want to do is do your own thing, making use of the tools a game provides without any real “goal” in mind.

This sort of activity is typically associated with “open world” games — and indeed that kind of game is very good for just dicking around, seeing how the different systems interact with one another and working out exactly how much chaos you are able to cause within the constraints of the game’s ostensible “rules”.

But it’s not just open world games that are good at this. Today’s award, suggested by riobravo79, celebrates a game in which it’s fun — and relaxing — to just dick around and see what happens. And not a bandit encampment in sight.

And the winner is…

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Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, Delving Into...

Delving Into Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown – #4

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All right. We’ve established that Ace Combat 7 absolutely has its own sense of style, that the VR mode is something rather special and that it strikes a great balance between arcade action and more realistic simulation. What about the actual missions, and the overall “game” experience?

Well, for those who have been hoping for a true next-gen Ace Combat experience, I am delighted to confirm that you will absolutely find this in Ace Combat 7 — both in terms of its narrative style, and in terms of how it plays.

Actual combat is where the game is at its most unrealistic — but also its most fun. Let’s take a closer look.

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Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, Delving Into...

Delving Into Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown – #3

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I finally beat Ace Combat 7’s single-player campaign the other night, and the whole experience is indeed a fine addition to the franchise.

Today I thought we’d talk a bit about the mechanics and controls of the game, including where it fits into the overall franchise from this perspective, and into the broader concept of “flight simulators” as a whole.

Suit up and get ready, pilot; it’s time to scramble.

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Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, Delving Into...

Delving into Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown – #2

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I’m flying over a small island. Glancing out of the side of the cockpit, I can see the small amount of “civilisation” on this otherwise untamed little piece of land; the rest is dominated by a large hill, covered with trees.

As I pass over the summit of the hill, my craft comes out from beneath the cloud cover. Sunlight suddenly streams in from behind me, bathing my instruments and multifunction displays in bright light, punctuated by the dark, intense shadows my cockpit struts cast.

As I pull the nose back, wondering how high I can make this bird fly, I think to myself, “this is beautiful; this is what I’ve always wanted to do.”

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Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown, Delving Into...

Delving Into Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown – #1

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I’ve been playing a lot of Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown since it released the other day. And I wanted to talk about it a bit!

I’ve elected to use the “Delving Into” format, because that also provides a suitable framework for me to explore (and revisit) the rest of the series along the way, too. For the unfamiliar, my “Delving Into” pieces are more immediate, personal reactions to games or series I want to explore over the long term, but which don’t really fit into the Cover Game structure.

Each article will focus on a particular aspect of the overall experience, or something that I’ve found otherwise noteworthy. Let’s kick off today with my impressions of the game’s overall sense of style, based on my playthrough of the single-player campaign up to mission 17 so far.

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