Controls
Ace Combat has never been a flight simulator, but it could be a pretty demanding game, requiring a masterful control over your chosen aircraft. I’m used to playing the game with analog sticks on a PS2 or PSP, so the accelerometer controls were a big change. They’re also the only option for controlling the game, so they’re something you have to get used to.
You can calibrate the accelerometer and invert the Y-axis, but other than that the only two choices you have for controls are Novice or Normal. Novice is a hand-holding mode that auto-stabilizes and auto-orients your plane (if you’re flying upside down), and it also manages your speed whenever you’re not screaming through the air on full burn. Normal controls are a lot less forgiving, but ultimately allow you more control over your plane. I’d liken Novice and Normal control modes to Automatic and Manual transmission on cars, but you can’t drive while upside down in a car, regardless of the transmission. Manual mode lets you do this and most anything else you want to do with your plane — right up until you overshoot a turn and crash into a mountainside.
There are two flaws to Ace Combat’s control scheme — no sensitivity options and a bad “rolling” setup — and both of these things could be fixed in a patch if Namco catches on. The sensitivity issue is a big one because it’s just too easy for you to overshoot your target, and because you’ll spend a lot of Ace Combat chasing tail (you know what I mean), a lower default sensitivity would make things much easier for players who are new to the series.
The other issue is probably a little harder to describe in words, but we’ll start with this: there are two types of movement to master in Ace Combat XI — pitching and rolling. You control the pitch of your plane by tilting the iPhone forward or back, but you also roll your iPhone by tilting it left or right — and therein lies the problem. I’m no big graphing guy, but this control scheme essentially has you tilting the phone along the X and Y axis, whereas you should probably be tilting along the Y and Z axis instead (where rolling would be akin to turning a steering wheel in a racing game). What happens with the current controls is that you’re often times playing a lot like the fake gamers on TV ads do. You’re tilting and turning the iPhone at very unnatural angles, and it can actually become very hard to control the game and see the screen at the same time. I don’t mean for this review to be a major comparison to another game, but I can’t help but mention HAWX’ control system, which does rotate along the Y and Z axis, and handles much better for it.

Campaign
There are five missions in Ace Combat (with more to come as downloads), but no tutorial. Five missions means that there’s really no time for any significant narrative, which was always a campy, but fun part of the series. You won’t ever get the chance to know anything about Leasath or who the heck the Southern Cross is (you), but you will hear your allies and your enemies utter these names over the radio as you play through the game. At least the radio chatter is still there (I love the radio chatter).
I’m no great gamer pilot myself, but I shot through the campaign in under an hour — and I’d say half of that time was spent retrying the last mission over and over again because the difficulty spiked so suddenly. Each of your missions has a timer on it, and you’ll be facing ships, tanks, or planes in a number of very open and flat levels. The stages look good, but they don’t lend anything to the gameplay, which came as quite a surprise to me. There were no missions in canyons where AA would shoot you down if you flew too high, no giant flying fortresses to attack, and no gigantic laser beams to dodge. In short, the epic and over-the-top combat I’ve come to expect from the Ace Combat series was nowhere to be found. The iPhone version puts you into the sky, flies you through four missions where nobody really fights back, and then starts to challenge you in the final two minutes of the game.

Dogfighting
One of the disappointing aspects of Ace Combat is how little variety it really offers. You can choose from three different planes to choose from, and you can unlock more by playing through the main campaign or via paid DLC.  It’s a real shame, too, since the feeling of flying around, using your machine gun, and firing heat-seeking missiles is a lot of fun. They even included the missile cam feature that was so entertaining on consoles — just hold down on the missile button after you launch one, and you’ll switch to the missile’s POV as it bears down on your enemies and turns them into unwilling firecrackers. The thing is, if they could include the cool but otherwise useless missile cam, why couldn’t they add other weapons? There are no long range missiles, no alternate machine guns, or plane upgrades — just missiles and a machine gun.
Your enemies don’t usually do much fighting on Normal difficulty, but they sure as hell like to dodge. You’ll regularly face about 3-4 enemies at once, but your biggest enemy (in the non-philosophical sense) is you. With the enemies posing almost no threat, Ace Combat’s campaign feels much more like a race, where you simply have to make a certain lap time or fail altogether. If you don’t carefully manage your speed and your turns, you’ll find yourself going in endless loop-de-loops trying to hold your target long enough for a lock-on. That’s last bit isn’t an iPhone problem, though — that’s always been an issue of mine in Ace Combat, and it’s probably because I’m a crappy pilot 🙂

Conclusion
Ultimately, what Ace Combat reminds me of is a newbie App Store game. It reminds me a lot of titles like Metal Gear Solid Touch, which debuted at $7.99 and really dumbed down the Metal Gear Solid experience, almost as though Konami wasn’t sure of whether the iPhone could compare to PSP and DS titles. Namco’s $7.99 Ace Combat XI strikes a very similar chord with me. It does feature a decent set of flying controls (which could be great, if they added different roll and sensitivity options), but too much of the other core Ace Combat foundations have been sacrificed in this iPhone iteration. I sorely miss the lengthy, campy campaign, the different weapons, the different variety of engagements, and for the $8 asking price, I don’t think it would have been too much to ask for just one flying fortress to fight.