Ace Combat X Skies of Deception: Plane talking

War is bad, but fighter planes are cool. I’ve known this since I was a small child, badly gluing a plastic model of an F/A-18 Hornet together (it was the ’80s; gunpla really weren’t something I could just go out and buy back then). The Ace Combat series knows this too, which is why it consistently juxtaposes its thrilling sci-fi tinged aerial action with sobering tales of greed, loss, and cynically manufactured conflict. Skies of Deception, the series’ first sortie on Sony’s PSP, is no exception to this alluring contrast, and does an exceptional job of weaving its two disparate halves together via its enjoyable and impressively freeform multi-choice mission select system. I’m given an overview of the current situation and advised of the various ways I have to tackle it, and then left to prioritise targets myself. There is no right answer here; everyone needs me right now and no threat is more pressing than another. I can only make a decision and then deal with the consequences that…