Ace Combat 6 is Namcos first foray into the next gen consoles for the long running air combat series, but does it reach new heights or should you pull the ejector seat on this game?

The game is set in a fictional country called Emmeria, where a city has been attacked by a neighbouring country. As an ace pilot your job is to protect your country and destroy the evil doers. Sounds pretty usual stuff but it does pave the way for some amazing dogfighting. 

Like most flight games, the controls are quite simple, with the right stick used for pitch, the LB and RB buttons for yaw and the triggers for speed. The HUD does take some getting used to as you can lose it in the background and also there is a lot going on but once you have played through the tutorials, they are not as distracting as you think. You are able to monitor your current weapons, from cannon and normal missiles to special weapons that you can load onto your plane at the beginning of each level, the bottom left holds the radar which becomes indispensable, especially in some of the later, more frantic battles. You also have weapon command on the HUD, this will highlight each enemy, the one you have targeted will flash and when in range will beep to alert you that you can fire missiles or shoot your cannon.

The radio chatter and sound effects are life like and make you feel that you are in the middle of a huge scale battle, with lock-on’s, explosions and wingmen asking for help, your senses are overloaded.

The level of detail is simply amazing, this is the sort of look you get from a high end PC, the planes, explosions and the land below are photo realistic, when you get low to the ground, whilst the level of detail drops, it still looks impressive, and given the speed you are flying at, detail doesn’t really matter.

Each map is huge, and most fights are based over land and sea which varies the look of the game. Worth a mention are the smoke effects, these are so well done on this game, you can just stare at them for ages, when you fire a missile, smoke will stream from the back, allowing you to follow it until impact, even better is during a large battle, you will have white clouds of missile smoke all over the place, black clouds of downed planes, and even white weather clouds which enable some brief cover.

As well as the single player campaign, Ace combat 6 also offers online co-op missions, which are great fun with a few friends. Much like most multiplayer games these days you can die and respawn, however the more you die, the more penalized you are for time. The only draw back is that there are only two co-op missions to be found, which a great shame is. There are a few other modes online such as Deathmatch, but these fairly self explanatory.

As with any flight game, the action is very fast paced, it will take a steady hand and and quick adjustments to get a lock on a fast moving target, and at times you will be dancing around the air for ages trying to do this. Thankfully you also have a wingman that you can order to help you out with a specific target should you have any trouble.

Ace Combat 6 offers the most realistic flight experience on the Xbox 360 and coupled with some great sound and effects, this game really does show off what the console can do. If you are a fan of sims then you will love this game, of that there is no doubt.