In recent memory, Ace Combat has been the go-to franchise for fast-paced airplane action. While other companies may have made more realistic flight simulators, the Ace Combat series has achieved mainstream appeal. That's why it was such a surprise when Namco Bandai Games announced that the newest title in the series, Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation would be leaving its home on the PlayStation consoles to go to the Microsoft Xbox 360 instead. Ace Combat 6 may be appearing on another console, but that doesn't mean it's changed much from the previous iteration, Ace Combat 5. One might even say that Ace Combat 6 hasn't changed enough.

Ace Combat 6 has a pretty bare-bones story line. A peaceful nation, Gracemeria, has been invaded by Estovakia, a country that was devastated years ago when it was bombarded by meteorites. Somehow, the devastated Estovokians have managed to scrape together a massive military force, including several super-advanced jets and a massive floating air fortress, and decided to take Gracemeria for their very own.

Rather than focusing on the basic war, Ace Combat 6 chooses to concentrate on a set number of "on the ground" characters who are caught in the war, ranging from greedy soldiers to a mother who has been separated from her child during the conflict. The problem is that these stories are staggeringly uninteresting. They're told in brief, awkward and sometimes incoherent cut scenes mostly revolving around the strange catchphrase, "Go dance with the angels," which each character seems to spout at every opportunity. Your actual pilot is literally faceless and without personality, and few of the on-ground cut scenes have anything to do with your next objective. While everything in the story does come together just in time for the last mission, it does so in the most clichéd and predictable way possible, which isn't a satisfying payoff for all of your hard work.

The Ace Combat series has made a name for itself by being a flight simulator that almost anyone can pick up and instantly play, and Ace Combat 6 continues this tradition. Getting into battle is as easy as selecting a mission, picking a plane and then blowing the hell out of everything in your path. The controls are incredibly simple, with lots of on-screen indicators to help out novice players. For example, a bright warning pops up when it's the ideal moment to fire a missile, making it much easier for unskilled players to hit their opponents.

That isn't to say, however, that the controls for Ace Combat 6 are perfect. The flight controls are great, but the targeting mechanism leaves something to be desired. Selecting the proper target while speeding toward it at 500 kilometers an hour is difficult enough, but Ace Combat 6 forces you to manually toggle through every possible on-screen target by repeatedly pressing the Y button, and selecting the perfect target can be incredibly frustrating when there are a large number of enemies onscreen.

The biggest change to Ace Combat 6 is the introduction of a "living battlefield." In theory, it's supposed to be a giant ongoing battle that occurs on top of your own actions, and the objectives you opt to complete can influence the overall path of battle. In practice, though, it's not quite that interesting. At the start of every mission, you're given a series of objectives to complete, and if you complete enough of them, the mission ends. That's all.

The "living battlefield" only influences things in a few ways, and it certainly doesn't feel realistic. You may have extra allies fighting on your side if you complete an objective quickly enough, or, at most, you may be granted more time to blow enemies out of the water. Otherwise, completing objectives fills up your "assist bar," which can be used to summon a powerful all-out attack on every enemy onscreen. It's certainly a useful and interesting addition, but the advantages are hardly enough to turn the tide of a battle, aside from giving you a bit more control over the order in which you shoot enemies.

One of Ace Combat 6's problems is perhaps that it controls a bit too well. Except for a few battles against enemy aces, nothing you encounter really feels like a threat compared to your super-charged, heavily armed death plane. Most of your time is spent utterly demolishing helpless ground foes or unskilled enemy pilots, and while it's initially fun to be an untouchable super ace, it quickly begins to feel like you're beating up children. The real challenge isn't the foes, but killing all of them fast enough to complete the current objective in time. The greatest fun is not in actually performing the deed yourself but in figuring out the perfect way to eliminate enemies. However, when Ace Combat 6 shines, it really shines, and having an all-out aerial dogfight against an enemy ace pilot or taking down a giant enemy air carrier is incredibly exciting. For the most part, though, your special weapons still mean that you outclass these guys by a fair margin, but at least you don't feel bad for them when you finally score the win.

Another serious problem is the game's incredibly short single-player campaign length. The regular campaign can be completed in less than six hours, perhaps slightly more if you factor in retrying after deaths, and it's hardly compelling. As mentioned above, the plot is boring and clichéd, and the actual action is mostly uninteresting, although there are a few moments of excellence. There are a few optional one-player modes, such as replaying old missions and even downloadable content, but they're not going to increase the overall game time much. Even the higher difficulty modes do little to make the actual title more interesting. They don't significantly change the missions and do little to ease the feeling of overwhelming superiority to your enemies.

The good news is that Ace Combat 6 takes the series online for the first time. While the enemy AI can't really provide a challenge to ace pilots, playing on Xbox Live is almost certain to change this. There are a number of different game modes available, from co-op to deathmatches to base defense. Online play is certainly going to make up the bulk of most gamers' playing time with Ace Combat 6 because it's just more fun facing off against — or working with — other gamers.

The game's controls are so smooth and easy to pick up that it really does come down to skill for who will win, as there are few weapons that promise a victory, and even the best weapons in the game can be easily outmaneuvered by a skilled foe. The default number of multiplayer game types on the disc is fairly low, but it would be nice if more missions were available. Since Ace Combat 6 heavily supports downloadable content, more are certainly going to added in time, as well as additional planes and color schemes for eager gamers.

In-game, Ace Combat 6 looks great. The planes are all modeled in fantastic detail, from the heat exhaust spilling from the engines to the clouds of acrid smoke spewing from a rapidly firing Gatling gun, it's not difficult to feel the realism of these planes, even the ones that are blatantly fictional. The levels also look great; it's darn impressive to watch your plane speed slightly above the ground and buzz past a farmhouse, kicking up dust the entire way. The only complaint is that most areas are a bit too sparse in objects and landmarks, which causes the jet planes to feel surprisingly slow, since you're flying over countless identical areas. In the more packed stages, like those in a city, or particularly those with unique weather effects, you really get an excellent sense of speed, but those levels are the exception and not the rule.

The worst part of Ace Combat 6 is the incredibly awkward between-mission cut scenes involving human characters. The human models are shockingly terrible, considering the quality of the rest of the game; they're awkward, plastic-looking and terribly soulless, resembling something that would look more at home in a Silent Hill title than a dramatic war story. Even the lip-synching doesn't match up often. This doesn't really influence gameplay, but it makes it more uncomfortable to watch the already-awkward story unfold.

Not unlike the graphics, Ace Combat 6' sound work is a mix of good and bad. The musical score is absolutely excellent and lends a real sense of drama and tension to your missions. Unfortunately, it's often drowned out by the lackluster voice-acting involved with combat chatter. The voice work in Ace Combat 6 ranges from uninspired to actively bad, and it never really gets any better. Actors seem to show either no emotion or the entirely wrong emotion for a scene, or they just sound so faked and forced that you can't possibly care.

The Estovakian army soldiers can't seem to remember whether they have accents or not, which really takes away from any immersion achieved by the combat chatter. The between-mission cut scenes are similarly awkward, especially the wandering mother character who shows up in a majority of them. There is simply no emotion in anything she says; it sounds like she's reading a grocery list, and most of the other people involved are little better. While you can skip the awkward cut scenes after watching them once, there is nothing to be done about the combat voices except mute them, which is a bad idea when you need to keep your focus on the action, not the subtitles.

Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation is a title that's running on autopilot. It looks better than the previous Ace Combat offerings, but little else has changed. If you're desperate for a new flying game, or are an Xbox owner who is trying this franchise for the first time, Ace Combat 6 probably won't disappoint you, but it won't hold your attention for very long, either. The online gameplay is interesting but will do little to appeal to those who don't already have a craving for jetfighter action. Unless you're absolutely dying to hop into a jet and blast some helpless foes, it might be better to wait for Ace Combat 6 to drop in price.

Score: 7.5/10