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Incomplete, unfinished. Sad because this one had potential back in its day.
It's rough, to be sure, but for an alpha it's solid and the groundwork is definitely there. These guys wear their Ace Combat influence on their sleeve, which is great seeing as Project Aces gave up on that when the PS2 went out of fashion. Even in its alpha state, this is the best Ace Combat-style (which is to say, arcadey flight sim) game on Steam. No, H.A.W.X., I haven't forgotten about you. You either, Assault Horizon. Both of you, go to your rooms. You're being schooled by an indie, probably working with a total budget equal to what you spend on coffee.
When I bought the game in it's Alpha state. I had high expectations for it. Reading all of the developer's plans and ideas made me had faith in VT, ranging from new aircraft models to creative gameplay enhancements while mixing the best of arcade action and tactical gameplay we aircraft lovers like so much. The game, although far from polished, felt like it was loved by both its creator and its creative modding community. But after a buggy release, with a short, umpolished campaign and with the prices raising, everything went downhill. As I write this review, no word has been released by the creator or the studio in one year and two months. No updates, not even a message from the devs. The game in its current state is playable, but far from polished. It still need some MAJOR changes in order to worth its final price. And the fact that those amazing ideas and plans unveiled by the creator himself (in the ModB forums are several articles written about new aircraft, jamming systems, among other ideas) will likely never happen just make me depressed. I, who helped fund this game since its alpha state, feel cheated, because a bunch of people believed in a guy who seemed passionate about his work, who left a incomplete game and just vanished without a word. This game is the reason why I'll never support an indie game ever again.
The bones of a good game left to rot as abandonware. All the elements of a top notch indie arcade-flight sim are there... clean flight model, unique and attractive artstyle, lots of planes with huge unlock trees, sandbox tools... but the devs never made those pieces into a cohesive/functional game. It comes off as a "passion project" whose creator got bored and forgot about it 3/4 of the way through development. If you've already played AC7 and Project Wingman and you're really desperate for more of that type of gameplay it might still be worth your time, but you'll have to struggle through a whole lot of missing content, shoddy controller support, and obvious, sometimes game-breaking bugs to make your own fun.
This game is fantastic, it's simply a spiritual sequel of the classic Ace Combat games that I loved to play on PS2, this game reminds me of the good times and the many hours I spent playing Ace Combat : Distant Thunder, Ace Combat : Squadron Leader and Ace Combat : The Belkan War on my PS2 a few years ago. I highly recommend Vector Thrust to all the fans of this cult saga. Congratulations to TimeSymmetry, the talented developer of this great indie game !
I'd honestly like to recommend this game, but the current state makes it hard to accept its status as full retail and the overall price. While it has its redeemable elements, the issues outweigh the cost for the game at the current moment. Unless there's something like a considerable discount (50% and above) the price isn't right. First off, if you're here wanting an Ace Combat experience, the game is not what you're looking for. Boot up Ace Combat Infinity or hook up an emulator and dust off your PS2 disks instead. Vector Thrust has a lot of promise but at the moment there are many issues that need to be addressed before it happens. OVERVIEW Vector Thrust is an indie air combat simulator game with a cel-shaded art direction developed by the TimeSymmetry team, published under Iceberg Interactive. The game features arcade shooter elements such as large amounts of ammunition and fictional aircraft as well as setting, quick-action and skirmish modes, several challenge stages, standalone battle scenarios and a story-driven campaign. There are dozens of aircraft families to chose from, with several variants for each, with aircraft both famous and less-widely-known. The game features original musical score by José Pavli. PROS: ● Interesting proposal of a constructed world and timeline, in similar fashion to the known Ace Combat series. ● Active modding community with many additional aircraft, paint schemes, NPC voices, weapon, scenery, and extra content ● Good graphical detail on aircraft exteriors as well as weapons. ● Cel-shaded artstyle that gives a colorful, unique appearance to the game.* CONS: ○ Underwhelming amount of content for a full release, with many placeholder and seemingly rushed material, as well as incomplete or missing individual aircraft, challenge and aircraft family descriptions. ○ Disorganized content that yields misreferenced audio and dialogue, mismatching speech and text along occasional typos. ○ Slow campaign story pacing, with little emotional response to character interaction.* ○ Scenery seems simple and uninteresting at best, and downright barren at worst. ○ Removal-- and subsequent lack of restoration of HUD customization from older versions. ○ Steep AI difficulty curve from unresponsive to highly challenging during gameplay. ○ Friendly AI ground units during campaign seem to be mainly unresponsive to enemy presence. ○ Occasional crashes during gameplay. ○ Sound effects are toned down from how they actually sound in reality, along a distinct lack of sound in some occasions (sounds after a certain distance are inaudible, secondary aircraft explosions lack sound, etc). ○ Anti-air artillery and guns are exceedingly lethal (ranging from straight bullet death rays with zero spread to one-shell-kills) for a game that tries leaning to an arcade style, and missile guidance seems to be overly inaccurate.* ○ Voice acting can be described as "campy" in some lines, while it seems to be toned down in others.* *: In my personal view and/or opinion. OTHER NOTES Now, I will admit that I didn't buy this game expecting a perfect Ace Combat Infinity replacer on the PC, with all its features and complete, polished game mechanics, but Vector Thrust fails to accomplish a few things that I needed to have the patience to personally dig up info around (missing descriptions for aircraft like the XF10F, find proper replacement sounds for explosions and gunfire, add and reposition special weapons on aircraft that lacked secondary weapons while there were obvious hardpoints to support those, etc.) which wouldn't be needed to be done otherwise, which eventually got wiped as files were revalidated and updated into newer files, which, while I had hoped would have even more accurate info than what I had found out and filled in, sadly were the previous state of the files before I made any changes. I'll give the TS team credit, the game has come a long way from the start as far as I see, but despite the slow update frequency I would rather have it that way than leave early access in the current state-- which just feels forced. Many things like aforementioned typos and dialogue lines being cut short or misreferenced, or even missing, it all makes me feel like the game still needed more development and content before being branded as full retail version. This doesn't mean I gave up on the game, and all things considered, it is a decent game on itself with good potential, but for its current price Vector Thrust is not a reasonable deal at all, which is the main issue and a huge turn-off for anyone interested. I'm hoping that the devs don't take this review wrong as being only me lashing out disappointment, because in fact, those are just issues I'd rather see addressed sooner than later, since I hope to see this game attain a proper status as spiritual successor to Ace Combat. Right now however, it's not.
Game had promise, but was completely abandoned in an unfinished state by the devs. Just go check out Project Wingman instead if you want an indie game inspired by Ace Combat.
This is a game of frustration. Don't buy it. Number of planes doesn't make up for clumsy controls (for those who don't have flight-oriented joysticks -honestly, if you've bought this game - first thing - redefine control keys to avoid situations, where you need at the same time press W (or S), ctrl, space and 8, while controlling your aircraft with arrows), lack of good picture (you plane looks cool... and that's all what you'd be seeing. I understand that there is little else to see in flight sims... but some backgrounds/landscape could be good), clumsy target-switching (it may be my problem, but I'm yet to find a way to do thing like choosing nearest target or nearest to center of screen target - right now I can only switch forward through them, hoping that I'd find the one I want to hit soon). And remember - this game teaches us that in modern air combat you should never use missiles - they never hit (I've launched about 20 missiles at aircrafts flying in a straight line without using any counter-measures - scored 2 hits), except when fired at you (in short term - game developers severely lowered chances for missiles to hit for player-launched missiles, while AI almost never misses without counter-measure launch and/or frantic maneuvers on your side) Update: After almost a year - I've decided to try this game once more, noticing that there were some updates. And there are some positive changes. Yes, now you can hit with about one missile out of 2 that is fired at the enemy aircraft flying in straight line without using counter measures. Well, actually there is a switch between missile modes in game options - "old", "stat-based", "arcade". I dunno difference between two last, but both seem to hit more accurately (thus - 1 out of 2). But all other problems stay. Campaign is a pit of frustraction. Game may have got a little better, but still belongs to a dump.
Could have been nifty little "Air Combat" clone with a neat cell-shaded rendering engine. Instead, is broken and buggy, and abandoned by its developer. I don't have too many "buyer's remorse" titles in my Steam library, but this is one of the few. Avoid like the plague. There's nothing here worth the hassle or the time.
This game had so much potential, Its basically a modern ace combat... or would have been if the developer hadnt dropped creating new content and balancing out the system. You have to play through challenges to unlock aircraft, and the story mode only has 10 planes tops; while there are thousands in the challenge mode that cannot be used elsewhere. If development continues this could be a good game one day; but as I previously stated, dev has dropped further work and the buggy half finished mess this turned out as is only worth about 5 bucks.
As many of you who are reading this review must be doing, I read the top negative reviews before buying the game. And to be honest, right now, this game is abselutely not worth it. In fact, it is the very first game that I requested a refund. Here's a few reasons why, as well as some good points. Yes I did only play about 20 minutes, but yes, that was more than enough. Cons: -THE biggest issue: took me 3 hours to get this to actually work. The only fix that worked? Switching back to the last build (as proposed by the devs, using a beta option they created). Problem with this is that even this fix needs manual fixing. -No tutorial. Want to know the controls? Go read. -No access to options in-game, need to go back to main screen. Launched the campaign expecting the first mission to teach you how to play? Nope! And no, game doesn't even allow you to know in-game what controls to use. -Unintuitive keyboard controls. I though GTA had bad flight controls. Mouse for view, arrows for up-down pitch and roll left or right, WASD for thrust, brake, left-right turn. Don't have 3 hands? Too bad. This could have been improved by using the numpad instead of arrows. Also, chaff, flares, etc are bound by default to 6-7-8, while cameras are 1-2-3. I think that defenses are more important than a good angle of vision, but maybe that's just me. -Boring fights. I tried to play the first mission, and it pretty much resumes to: fly to target, fly to enemy, keep on rolling with enemy and wait for missile lock. Launch. Repeat. All you do is do loops again and again. That is not realistic, because any real pilot doing that would loose consciousness. -Equipment information seems wrong: the first rockets you get are described as "unguided", yet they still lock and follow targets... Pros: -Combat system is good, but the poor controls and poor AI just doing loops pretty much negates this. -Lots of play modes, including (but not limited to) campaign, multiplayer, skirmishes. -Graphics. Although even on max graphics the planes still look a little low-res (see the game screenshots above for examples), one thing that actually amazed me is that they added the visual effect of passing the speed of sound. That I haven't seen often. -Sounds. I tried the two planes that are available initially, and both had they own engine sounds, weapon sounds, etc. So, as you can see, and as many others have said, the bases are there and good, but the finishing touch was scrapped.
A decent flight game left 4 dead :( bought this game at 75% off looking at the screenshots and the number of planes it featured , i was expecting a decent campaign mode with all the classic aircraft and probably some extra stuff. What i found led me to understand well why the game has a average score... Lets start of with the good things - A decent well made game considering the price range falls at indie game levels , you can see from the graphics and depth they were trying to attempt a long journey but miscalculated the fuel load and crashlanded midway. - The story mode is decent but it reminded me a lot of ace combat on the psp, worth playing it fully to the end. - Aircraft are all made well , there are differences in their stats and the weapon load. A ton of different craft to fly include my favourites f-14 and mig 31. - You can find the expected extra modes aka short sceanarios and challenge modes , it has mp too but i could not find anyone playing it sadly. And now for the ugly bits.... - Going from the forum posts ... the game has been abandoned by the devs and publisher for a while now ... - Not sure why but the game probably wont launch for most people it crashed to desktop a lot at first had to mess with the settings to get it working check forums for fixes. - The story mode is half baked and ends with a strange note , Maybe they planned to do more but we wont know for sure. - Tons of bugs, glitches combined with lack checkpoints most people probably wont play the game fully, i experiened odd events where mission would fail for no reason, audio skipping and events failing to trigger, heck the game also crashed after end game credits. - Steam workshop feature exists but does not have anything good considering the game is dead. - Tons of achievements exist but most of them are probably bugged and trigger at odd times, there is one that says complete two campaigns but could not find the other haha. Again this is among those steam games that we all come across that had great potiential but got abandoned midway. I certainly think the game can do better with more paid/free story expansions the game has a ton of planes but the story uses only 9 of them and SKIPS MIG 31 AND F-14 :X . Easily worth purchasing at 75% off or more , sadly you can't be my wingman as the online is dead.... A good 6/10 game, would be more if the story was longer. Screenshots : http://steamcommunity.com/id/liquidsnakehpks/screenshots/?appid=242130
While it's mighty unpolished and a bit dissapointing, it's still a good game at heart. You can really tell it was made by an enthusiastic ace-combat fan who knew his stuff and actually gives a shit. Sure, he's only one man, and that's probably why it's so relatively strange right now, but If this goes on sale I'd buy it if I were you! 6/10 +Campaign is fun once you get the hang of it +Gittin gud is awesome +OH MY GOD SO MANY PLANES TO UNLOCK JESUS +Dev actually gives a fuck occasionally. -Starting Campaign is obviously a bit half-baked anyway -A lot of the planes can't be properly unlocked yet. Game's still pretty betaish. -Starting Campaign is hard to get and has serious difficulty issues; on 2 or 3 of the most 'intense' missions your plane magically gets 20 times the usual amount of health. Ruins the suspense. -On other missions you simply might not have enough ammo if you aren't stringingly efficient and have to go spelunking into the files.
Vector Thrust is a good solid game, especially for early access. The gameplay is a bit similar to Jane's Advanced Strike Fighters or Heroes in the Sky. You fly, kill X objects and complete the mission. But, Vector Thrust has several cool elements not found in similar games. It has (upcomming Co-Op and vs multiplayer, a mission editor (Already working) and a cool selection of modern fighter planes. The controls can be set entirely to your liking and so far I didn't encounter any real bugs or errors. Maybe some menu presentation problems, but nothing that actually takes the fun out of the game. A must have for any would be jet jockey.
ENG: Just amazing to see in this game that looks like an old familiar from the original "Air Combat" they look new video game, which has been revamped and made a number of new ideas to the old interface and gameplay. The game gives the opportunity to use and buy and sell aircraft without any restrictions, including the game's story time. Unlike many other similar games, you are forced to play the story for Specially particles airplane use, but this is not mandatory. When playing a game you can also open up more new aircraft to use, which you can buy for your self later in the store. Also the weapons you can buy the game for himself on an airplane, which could not be done earlier in a older game. The game also has the battle arena, where you can also set the number of planes and severity. Also, the number of own aircraft and the skills to adjust to keep you in the game. The game also supports modding. even if the game crashes a few times, so I can still recommend this game! One of the best if not the best to play flight combat simulations. Includes also a map editor. Referral! :3 FIN: Aivan mahtavaa nähdä tälläinen peli, joka näyttää vanhalta tutulta alkuperäiseltä "Air Combat" -näköiseltä videopeliltä, jota on ehostettu ja tehty lukuisia uusia ideoita vanhaan käyttöliittymään ja pelattavuuteen. Peli antaa mahdollisuuden käyttää ja ostaa sekä myydä lentokoneita ilman rajoituksia, myös pelin tarinan aikana. Toisin kuin useissa muissa vastaavissa peleissä, sinun on pakko pelata tarinaa saadaksesi tiettyn lentokoneen käyttöösi, mutta tässä ei ole pakko. Peliä pelatessä pystyt myös avaamaan lisää uusia lentokoneita käyttöön, jotka voi ostaa itselle myöhemmin kaupasta. Myös aseita voi ostaa pelissä itsellensä lentokoneeseen, jota ei ole voinut tehdä aijemmin vanhemmassa pelissä. Pelissä on myös taisteluareena, jossa voit myös asettaa lentokoneiden määrän ja vaikeuden. Myös omien lentokoneiden määrän ja taidot pysyt säätämään pelissä. Peli tukee myös modausta. vaikka kyseinen peli kaatuu muutaman kerran, niin silti voin suositella kyseistä peliä! Yksi parhaista ellei paras pelaamiani lentotaistelu simulaatio pelejä. Sisältää myös kartta editorin. Suositteluni! :3
Vector Thrust is an arcade dogfighting game similar to the likes of HAWX and Ace Combat but with cel-shaded graphics. Its fast paced combat combined with the hundreds of unlockable planes makes this game extremely fun but it has many flaws in its current Early Access stage. Please note, this review is structured differently due to the amount of stuff I have to talk about. GRAPHICS AND APPEARANCE: The graphics and appearance of this game are a bit hit and miss (mainly miss), thankfully it doesn't subtract from how good the game is too much and hopefully these things will be fixed soon. +The planes look absolutely awesome in the cel shaded style of the game as do enemy vehicles and turrets. +The sky and water in this game are pretty damn beautiful (see screenshot) http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=381418871 -The textures of the maps are absolutely terrible, they are very low resolution and are particularly bad to look at when flying close to the ground. Textures of airports (because they aren't actually 3D) are also bad and look like they're just 2D images pulled from Google Earth -Particle effects are also pretty bad, explosions created by destroyed aircraft are very small and disappear completely after two or three seconds, plane's don't have noticeable vapour trails. -Lens flare is also bad, it's pretty much just a grey ring on your screen which really does not look nice. -This game has no cockpit view which is absolutely ridiculous considering the type of game it is. -Flares aren't very bright and are difficult to see. -The game's UI is only visible when looking straight ahead. GAMEPLAY AND REPLAYABILITY: Gameplay is where this game really excels, the combat is near perfect and with so much to do it's difficult to get bored of this game without pouring a considerable amount of time into it. +Fast paced combat +Many different enemy types, ranging from drones to the Stratofortress (that's a B52 for those who don't know) +Each plane that you can fly in the game does something particularly well making different planes suited to different missions +While the campaign is short (and pretty dull) the main game mode is 'Challenges' where you take part in different challenges, ranging from shooting down balloons with your forward mounted gun or bombing enemy tents, to unlock the literally hundreds of planes that this game has. You start off with a few of the families, such as the F-104 and as you progress through each family of planes you unlock more families to do challenges for such as the F4, F6 and F16 families. +Vector Thrust has an incredibly powerful editor which allows you to create your own scenarios to play yourself or to share with others. -While the game has multiplayer it's difficult to find a match unless you have friends to play it with due to multiplayer being in the beta branch and the small number of players on the game. -Takeoffs and Landings aren't in the game (yet?). SOUND: As with Graphics and Appearance, Sound in this game is pretty hit and miss. +The roar of the engines on the planes is great +The sounds of your weapons firing are good -The voice acting is pretty awful (credit where credit's due it was just one guy using a voice changer for all of the characters in the game). -The noise for you locking on to a target is very similar to the missle alert which can be confusing at times. MENUS, CONTROLS AND OPTIONS: +I played with the default (slightly tweaked, we'll get to that) control scheme for an XBOX360 controller which worked great apart from the fact that it didn't have flares mapped to it which I had to do myself, apart from that I thought the controls were extremely good and the planes themselves were very responsive. +This game has a lot of options, it has everything you would expect graphically but it also lets you choose the colours of your UI, what measurement system you would like to use and more. +The menus are simple and easy to use. -The menus can't be navigated using a controller. THINGS WORTH A MENTION: +The development team are very active in the forums which is always nice to see. -This game contains quite a few typos/spelling mistakes which I found quite frustrating. Verdict: 9 for fans of similar games 7 for people new to this kind of game Despite it's flaws this is an arcade dogfighting game superior even to the HAWX series (HAWX 2 being one of my all time favourite games) BUT due to its numerous flaws this game might not be as enjoyable for people new to this type of this game (hence the two scores). Whether you're new to arcade flight simulators or you're a veteran of the HAWX or Ace Combat games I would strongly recommend this game. El K.
This game has a great potential, but to be honest here, I have no idea what the developer (has done) or (is doing). Before you get fascinated by the game visuals, trailer or all those positive reviews, you might want to re-think your decision of buying this game because you are gonna end up in a loop of expectations and gonna get disappointed after a couple of months like I did. 1. The game is no Alpha nor Beta stage, its content is missing out so many elements and infact a lot of its parts are rather frustrating to play (AIM-120 missiles that lock but won't follow targets etc/ invincible air units). 2. Meaningless aircraft family missions. Yeah, I understand that each plane has its own variants, but what's the point of unlocking all of them by doing challenges? If you are not gonna use them in the campaign or multiplayer? 3, Speaking of which, there is no multiplayer so far. Edit: Apparently there is, it just hasn't worked for me for some reason. 4. The developer. No seriously, The developer is working really slow, (just as how the developer released the game in an immature status). So many players post a lot of bugs, and they usually get no responses. And what do we get everyweek? Minor big fixes. 5. The developer again, seriously. So one time I suggested that we cancel the ability of planes of shooting ground targets using AIM-9 (Sidewinder), which makes no sense, I know this is not a simulator, but we are also not dumb and a lot of us are aware of this. Then I got replied by a "fanboy" later "Arcade - simulation, pick one. Interestingly, the same fanboy -explained- to another user who was asking about why his AIM-120 had no smoke trailers, that this is REALISTIC. That's when I gave up on the forums and development, I mean seriously, if you are this narrow minded to listen to your fans, go make your own game and play it with your friends, this is a respected community and platform made for users because, like it or not (this might sound harsh) we are paying. 6. The developer again, people who do mods, managed to do better stuff than the original developers themselves. Remember, re-consider your decision, I am un-installing the game, and I won't support the forums and I certainly DON'T recommend buying this. Edit: I am not impersonating the developer, nor saying he is a bad guy, I'm just saying that why start something big when you can't keep up? Again, this is my personal opinion.
This is a good game and there is lot to do to keep you interested. Especially if you are a fan of the old school Ace Combat or even Deadly Skies series. But it's still something that should belong in Early Access. There are quite a few significant bugs in the game and a good amount of content is unfinished. For example you will face bugs in the Campaign that stops you progressing along with runtime errors during cutscenes that force you to redo an entire mission, and several challenges are either bugged or incomplete. As others have said it's a decent buy when it's around 70% off but I cannot honestly recommend this game at full price due to the gamebreaking bugs and unfinished content.
This is somewhat a customised version and mod free flight sims arcade. It's still in Alpha so my opinion based on it, maybe in full released all the "Cons" I listed might get fixed and improve. Pros: -Classic manuever and engage like good ol' Ace combat. -No ACAH DFM/ASM just classic style of hunting prey with missile and gun. -Tons of creation or scenario can be made with the editor, You can re-create some of your favourite AC mission -Tons of Aircraft to be played, More aircraft hope to be added in future. -Variety enemy, even a giant fortress and large missile sub, maybe an "Arkbird alike or SOLG" in future dev? -Good AI, feel the tense when battling. -Difficulty is somewhat mixed match some easy to finish some tough Cons: -The graphic for terrain and surrounding need more improvement -The aircraft viewer look plain need some creativeness -Need aircraft viewer in ALL gamemode since it help on navigate the aircraft/weapons choosing -Still feel some latency on firing the weapons -Graphic need some improvement, I keep getting Frames drop during massive battle -Voice actor, please find more passionate not drunk -music and ambient average, some of the music good but most feel plain -some crash but rare occasion only since this still in Early stage Final words: Eventhough It still in early stage and there so much thing need to improve. I can see this game has bright future it even give me better experience than AC:AH (the only AC pc). This game mostly sandbox for now, if you hoping for story mission just for wait for the game to full release since I can't recommend it for now. But for those who want to get going test all aircraft available and create your own battle GO AHEAD Worth A While For You. Best Flight Arcade Sims on par with AC
Project Wingman is what Vector Thrust should have been. Don't buy this. broken for a lot of people. buy Ace Combat 7. Buy Project Wingman, buy anything else. not worth 25$. not worth 2.50$ not worth the 3gb or hard drive space it takes up.
DEV abandoned game! Game is full of bugs. Controllers won't work. Game crashed every now and then! From review, it used to be a great game. Now it is a total mess! Would be great without the last update, as everyone said, full of bugs!