This includes interchangeable special weapons, which change your combat strategy, and parts that alter your acceleration and handling. You can also unlock skins to make your plane look its best during a match.See our other, including.
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How to Change SkinsWith the exception of the three pre-order bonus skins, you can't actually unlock and use any alternate aircraft skins until finishing all 20 base campaign missions.After you've beat the campaign once, skins become available to change out like any other component or weapon as you start a sortie. How to Unlock SkinsJust beating the campaign will not unlock all of the skins in Ace Combat 7. One skin can be accessed by getting MVP in a multiplayer match, but most skins have a specific requirement that must be met in the campaign missions before unlocking.To unlock a mission's bonus skin, you have to find and shoot down an Ace pilot. When you've shot all of the Aces down across the game, the X-02 Wyvern skin also unlocks. Ace Pilot LocationsHere's how to find each Ace pilot broken down by mission: Charge Assault Ace. Huang Xuan Tai ('Pyro')Pyro flies a MIG-21 that appears at the northwest end of the radar map during the fourth wave of enemies if you take out the third wave using anti-air missiles such as the 4AAM, 6AAM, or 8AAM. Charge The Enemy Ace. Joe Barker ('Jester')After taking down the ground-based radar vehicles and the tower before the UAVs appear, look for Joe's MIG-29 with the drones that then spawn.
Two Pronged Strategy Ace. Rosie Lucas ('Bayonet')To get this F-16C to appear, you have to destroy the full first wave of the mission in less than 90 seconds prior to the missile alert. Rescue Ace. Florent Nollet ('Ronin')If you stay in low altitude (under 200 meters) and fly to the space elevator, Florent's F15-J will appear in the northeast corner of the radar map. 444 Ace. Sebastian Koch ('Fang')This F-15C appears on the map after taking down the first three bombers of the mission, and 75% of damage must be dealt when weapons are disabled.
Long Day Ace. Sophie Andre ('Kitten')Head through the tunnel at the western base base to force Sophie's F-14D to spawn on the map. First Contact Ace. Thibault Besson ('Faucon')During the early stage of the mission, take out all the non-marked enemies and this Typhoon will spawn on the north end of the map.
Pipeline Destruction Ace. Samuel Everest ('Gazelle')If you take out all the ground-based oil buildings before the timer runs down, this F-15E will appear at the north end of the map with some drones. Faceless Soldier Ace. Hans Weber ('Spider')This FA-18F appears on the east side of the map after taking out the non-marked enemies and the radio tower. Transfer Orders Ace. Ken Warren ('Louveteau')Ken's Gripen E appears on the east side of the map after taking out the SAM sites. Fleet Destruction Aces.
Matthieu Bertin ('Ibis'). Chris Azure ('Chasseur')Yep, there are two Aces to find in this mission. Matthieu flies an SU-33 that appears on the east side of the map if you fly through the opening between the north platforms.Chris flies a Rafale-M that appears on the west side of the map if you blow up all the aircraft on the north platform before they can take to the air. Stonehenge Defensive Ace. Arnaud Durand ('Walrus').
Nathan Roche ('Foudre'). Kees Baker ('Buffle')Another mission with multiple Aces. Arnaud flies an SU-34 that appears at the northeast end of the map if you successfully prevent Stonehenge from taking any damage.Nathan flies a MIR2000-5 that appears on the south side of the map if you fly underneath the mounted Stonehenge gun.Kees appears on the west side of the map in an A-10C after destroying the three Thunderbolt enemies.
Bunker Buster Ace. Owen Corwin ('Comet')Owen's MIG-31 appears on the west side if you take out all the mission's missile silos. Cape Rainy Assault Ace. Jules Martin ('Gadfly')Jules appears in an SU-47 in the northern end of the map after flying through the canyon - but you have to do it quickly! Battle For Farbanti Aces. Russell Faulkner ('Serpent'). Vincent Masson ('Bogen')If you beat the first mission objective by more than 5,000 points, Russell's SU-37 appears in the southeastern edge of the map.Vincent's F-2A appears just to the south of the Aegis Shore battery after you destroy it, but you have a limited time to chase him down.
Last Hope Ace. Emeric Pons ('Axeman')Emeric's SU-35S appears on the south end of the city after racking up 15,000 points. Homeward Ace. Olivier Perrin ('Mantis')If you cruise alongside the Mass driver rail, Olivier's F-35C appears on the east side of the map. Lost Kingdom Ace. Benjamin Neumann ('Lynx')If you take out all the enemy targets before flying to the castle, Bejamin's YF-23 spawns by Shilage. Lighthouse Aces.
Paul LeBrun ('Calamity'). Cyril Noiret ('Tempest')The last two Aces both appear if you rack up 20,000 points during the first segment of the Lighthouse mission.Paul's SU-57 appears to the southeast of the space elevator, while Cyril's F-22 spawns to the southwest instead.Have you found any other skins that we missed? Let us know where you discovered it, and be sure to leave a comment with your favorite Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown skin below! Featured ContributorTy splits his time between writing horror fiction and writing about video games. After 25 years of gaming, Ty can firmly say that gaming peaked with Planescape Torment, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a soft spot for games like Baldur's Gate, Fallout: New Vegas, Bioshock Infinite, and Horizon: Zero Dawn. He has previously written for GamerU and MetalUnderground. He also writes for PortalMonkey covering gaming laptops and peripherals&period.
Accessible dogfighting and baffling cutscenes, in that order.Expect to pay £50/$60Developer Bandai NamcoPublisher In-houseReviewed on Core i5 6500, GTX 1070, 16GB RAMMultiplayer Up to 8 playersLinkAerial combat games can be split down the middle, more or less, according to which half of the '90s they hark back to. Is it an ode to Afterburner, all effortless loops and rolls? Or is it the kind of rigorous flight sim which flew so high in the decade’s latter half, turning a correctly retracted landing gear into a real achievement and almost invariably taking its name from a plane (see Falcon 4.0, B-17 Flying Fortress et al)?You don’t need me to tell you that Ace Combat 7 is the former. You can see by the screenshots, by the very name, that this is about getting you up in the air and feeling like Maverick ASAP, laws of physics be damned. The latest in a 23-year-old series devoted to just that, no less. And on those particular terms, it’s a roaring success.As with its predecessors, there are two different flight models available here, one professing to offer a simplified handling experience while the other offers a deeper simulation.
In truth, neither one is particularly taxing and the most discernible difference between them seems to be the necessity to use yaw controls in simulation mode. It’s Need For Speed handling in the air then, essentially, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that. After an hour or so of chucking a fighter jet about with cartoonish abandon though, you do feel a desire to test your flight skills further than either model truly allows.No, instead that challenge must be gleaned from Ace Combat 7’s missions, which start off punishingly pedestrian but kick into gear three or four levels in and reveal an absolutely unhinged campaign. What begins as 15 minutes of shooting at radar towers and the odd enemy fighter quickly descends into boss fights against impossible constructions, battles with drone swarms, and navigational set-pieces straight from a Universal Studios ride.The demands of Ace Combat 7’s campaign are matched perfectly with its accessible approach to flight simulation, throwing improbable machines and scenarios at you simply because it can. Any veterans of the Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X. Games (I never did know what that acronym stood for) know how important that marriage of thematic and mechanical approach is: The pseudo-serious Clancy setting prevented those eponymous Hawx from ever getting too ridiculous, and tedium ensued as a result.
There's no similar danger here.Ace Combat 7 keeps the early nineties arcade flight sim alive, prettier and weirder than everMake it back to base after one of these delirious encounters and you’ll earn some currency to spend on new weapons, plane upgrades, and entirely new aircraft via a huge and elaborate tech tree. The improvements to manoeuvrability are subtle when you upgrade a plane, but weapon additions can make you much more effective in certain missions—plus each new jet speaks to the five-year-old in all of us who finds them impossibly, unspeakably cool. Ace Combat knows this very well, you suspect, as it lingers on shots of them in selection screens before your sortie.But is there enough variety?
It seems ungrateful to even ask when you've just concluded a mission that requires you to navigate collapsing skyscrapers, but—no, there isn't, really. Despite all the bluster, it’s hard to shake the fatigue that comes with your hundredth dogfight or ground attack.
The settings change, and sometimes the environment itself poses a hazard, but in the simplest terms the gameplay loop doesn’t evolve beyond aim, lock, fire. That’s as much a genre problem as anything Ace Combat 7 does wrong in particular, and if you’re reading this review you’ve likely already made your peace with arcade flight sims’ eccentricities. Still, that frustration exists.The negative side of this review has bigger fish to fry, though. Like ten minutes of utterly unengaging opening cutscene, in which we learn about a few fictional nations who’ve been at war for ages and about a big bomb that exploded. And loads of additional cutscenes between missions, which, hand on heart I really did try to follow, but something just happens to my neural pathways after I’ve passed my threshold for narrative nonsense and the words just don’t register anymore. Previous Ace Combats made it their ‘thing’ to bark absurd dialogue at you until it became endearing, and rest assured series fans, that “Just how penal is this penal colony?” line is back and referenced with a knowing smile this time. Despite that, this game appears to want to be taken seriously for large chunks, and it doesn’t have the characterisation—scratch that, enough of a semblance of sense—to merit that.Let’s not dwell on what’s ultimately a subjective aspect of the game, though.
Let’s instead sing Ace Combat 7’s praises for looking great without taxing your PC overly (there’s even a downsampling option, egads!) and for keeping the early '90s arcade flight sim alive, prettier and weirder than ever.