Ace Combat: Assault Horizon - Death by Name Association?
- Aaron "Ribbon-Blue" Mendoza
- Apr 16
- 7 min read
Being alive for a while gives the privilege of perspective if you pay attention close enough
Let us go off of the beaten path for a bit. Similar to how back in 2011 there was an atypical flight game named Assault Horizon that reached beyond a certain set of expectations. Attempting to redefine a long-standing genre of flight arcade game expectations, out perform 16 years of a self established tradition and capture a new market of players. The result was a game with a reasonable amount of faults that likely would have been remembered as a title that tried something new and failed on its own merits. But the reality is that Ace Combat: Assault Horizon (2011) became an albatross around the neck of one of the most well known flight game series in history for almost a decade.
As an admittedly hardcore, but grounded Ace Combat fan myself, I had well over a decade to reflect on Assault Horizon. I know my perspective of this game is rather unusual, but I cannot help but wonder if its legacy would have been different if it was a standalone title rather than being tied to the Ace Combat brand name. Similar to how Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces was developed by Project Aces, the development team behind Ace Combat, but was for a separate intellectual property. Granted, Sky Crawlers is well established on its own, but you understand the example. Similarly, I have seen other games both in and out of the flight genre have similar occurrences over the years.
Re: Assault Horizon
Assault Horizon was a pure action arcade title staking its existence on a few different factors. Few of its flight game contemporaries could match its ambition at the time.
A bespoke game mechanic inspired by first person shooters, a real world setting with a NATO taskforce and a Russian Air Force detachment working together in north Africa written by well established author Jim DeFelice and a decent variety of manufacturer licensed player controlled aircraft. It was quite the departure from the fixed wing fighter focused games that embraced the fictional Strangereal World setting its developer created from scratch.
As a game, Assault Horizon felt like an all too familiar style of story set in the real world. It felt like it could have been in one of many Call of Duty: Modern Warfare inspired first person shooters of the era. Its single player campaign took players around the world albeit with some odd story progress related aircraft restrictions. Players could experience things like sneaking in strategic bombers, slinging anti-tank missiles in attack helicopters, engaging infantry with a M134 mini gun from the door of a transport helicopter and being the weapon operator of an AC-130 gunship. While that sounds cool in theory and at times certain parts of these new gameplay types did work, but it all felt as though it could have been fleshed out more while feeling rather foreign.
I will say the voice acting was rather good compared to the Ace Combat games that came before it. The soundtrack of the game was solid and quite long with 38 tracks on three discs. Sound design was also rather impressive.
It emphasized Hollywood blockbuster movie style action with visceral combat that highlighted aircraft being ripped to shreds (advertised as "making metal bleed") over long-range engagements against distant enemies. Its signature Close Range Assault system tried to make air combat feel like more of a close quarters first person shooter style experience with occasional cinematic set pieces that pulled players through the environment. It certainly looked great visually. There were a few good moments with it, but it was intrusive to gameplay. It was a downright requirement to be used to complete certain levels or even finish the game. This same system was also included in multiplayer gameplay which further pushed it upon its audience. While visually appealing and objectively fun at times, it simply did not land in the way the developers wanted it to. This first person shooter inspired gameplay would also include damage recovered or "healed" over time when players were not attacked.
Assault Horizon was designed with an international audience in mind. It would be released on multiple gaming platforms, a first for a game in the Ace Combat series. Something I believe the series should have started with Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation (2007) on the Xbox 360, but what can you do? I genuinely believe that the perceived commercial success at the time was because of Assault Horizon's wide reach.
This was accompanied by a serious promotional campaign with fan community outreach in a way that was not attempted before. This game also had a strong train of media behind it, including a slightly altered real world Earth history to prepare for potential future works, two novels written in this new setting in support of the game and to expand upon this new setting and a Master File magazine for a new fictional aircraft designed by Shoji Kawamori of Macross fame.
Assault Horizon was a massive effort on behalf of development team Project Aces and publisher Bandai-Namco.
Legacy of a Failed Rebrand
Without a doubt it was Assault Horizon being positioned as the rebrand or "rebirth" of the venerable Ace Combat series being the primary reason it was judged more harshly than it would have been as a standalone or spin off title from the main series.
Not that I am saying the backlash was undeserved. There were so many striking differences to what Assault Horizon presented compared to what the name "Ace Combat" was known for, the release of Ace Combat: Assault Horizon is still remembered as a black mark on the brand name. To many people this was not just "a bad" Ace Combat game, this was not even considered an Ace Combat game by the long-time supporters of the series despite the very official branding and media push. It was an outright rejection. That is quite a fiasco.
During an interview with Asobistore in November 2022, there were a few points where Ace Combat Series Brand Director Kazutoki Kono talks about how Assault Horizon was a tipping point for the series. It was a somewhat experimental game that changed its core formula to appeal to a world wide audience punctuated by considerable domestic and international backlash from the players it appealed to. It forced the development team to reflect after a decade and a half of relatively consistent success.
Professionally, it took quite a bit of convincing on behalf of the development team to secure support from Bandai-Namco to proceed with development of another full fledged title. The release of a secondary game, Ace Combat Infinity (2014), and its relative success seems to have been a key part in reassuring that hte brand name of Ace Combat was still commercially viable. In the Asobistore interview Kono even refers to the release of Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown (2019) as the result of a V-shaped recovery for the Ace Combat series caused by Assault Horizon specifically. An eight year recovery is no joke.
According to The Ace Combat Wiki, Assault Horizon sold over 1,070,000 units within seven months of release. The previous game, Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation, sold a bit over 700,00 copies in 55 months of its release. It can be said that commercially Assault Horizon was a success. At the time of its release traditional game media outlets had a fair share of criticism for certain parts of the game, but overall Assault Horizon scored well in professional media outlet game reviews. In retrospect, this was definitely a case of short-term gain with long-term damage to the series that probably heavily outweighed the initial gains anyway.
Two Examples of Similar Stories
Being alive for a while gives the privilege of perspective if you pay attention close enough. As I have looked at Ace Combat: Assault Horizon through a lens that separates a product from a name brand, I see familiar stories in other games.
For flight games, the return of the storied Comanche series with Comanche (2020) by Nukklear Digital Games published by THQ Nordic is one of the more recent examples on my mind. In August 2019 it was introduced as a four vs four online multiplayer only game. After a few months of direct user feedback about how this new direction was not representative of the series as a whole, by the time its early access began in March 2020 it had a single player campaign actively in development. By April 2021, Ashborne Games, a new developer, carried the project to full game release with an entirely new set of single player content with multiplayer seemingly left on the wayside.
Jane's Advanced Strike Fighters (2012) was a rather infamous one around the time of the Assault Horizon era. As a game it was a flight arcade title with a rather unique roster of aircraft including Chinese produced aircraft. Each of them able to carry multiple weapon selections at once over a distance of 65,000km² of continuous terrain. Each level was open world with the single player campaign open to four player co-op. The story of the game was quite bad with a rather forgettable flight model, but much like Assault Horizon it was primarily judged by it being tied to the once gold standard flight simulation brand "Jane's". As a standalone flight arcade game I had a decent time with Advanced Strike Fighters, but a title worthy of Jane's name it was not. And it will be remembered for that more than it would be for its actual gameplay.
In the grand scheme of flight games and simulators, Ace Combat: Assault Horizon is likely to remain a shining example of how to not manage a series at its peak, but also an example of how a brand name and expectations that come with it can and will override any genuine efforts of developers in the opinions of how players perceive a game.
About the Writer
Co-founder of Skyward Flight Media. After founding Electrosphere.info, the first English Ace Combat database, he has been involved in creating flight game-related websites, communities, and events since 2005. He explores past and present flight games and simulators with his extensive collection of game consoles and computers. Read Staff Profile.
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