Recent reviews by 𝕬𝖘𝖒𝖔𝖉𝖊𝖆

I originally found Airline Manager 4 while browsing Steam’s Flight and Free-to-Play categories. As someone who enjoys management sims and aviation, I figured that worked lol.

At its core, Airline Manager 4 is a straightforward management sim that lets you operate a fictional airline, establishing hubs in real-world airports. The game offers both an Easy Mode and a more realistic Simulation Mode—though I opted for Easy to focus more on fun. Unfortunately, there’s no way to run multiple profiles, meaning you have to commit to a single playstyle per account.

Progression is a linear but engaging loop. The game doesn’t demand constant attention—logging in for a few minutes at a time is enough to maintain operations, manage resources, and launch flights to keep income flowing. Flights are modeled after real-world durations, unless you opt for a temporary 4x speed boost. As long as you stay on top of fuel, CO₂ levels, and aircraft maintenance, things run smoothly. Despite its short-session gameplay, I somehow racked up over 30 hours.

The in-game economy is well-balanced overall. While there are opportunities to spend real money for financial boosts, they aren’t required to succeed. One particularly engaging mechanic is the stock market system, which lets players buy and sell stocks in each other’s companies—potentially boosting their own stock price through smart investments. Fuel and CO₂ prices refresh every 30 minutes, giving another layer of strategy to resource management.

The UI is minimalistic and clearly designed for mobile, but that kind of works in the game’s favor. PC players might notice its mobile-centric menus, but the streamlined interface keeps the focus on core mechanics. Some premium UI options exist, but they don’t heavily impact gameplay.

Airline Manager 4 has been pretty cool. I’ve spent around $8 on it and feel satisfied without feeling pressured to spend more. For aviation and management sim enthusiasts, it’s a solid pick—accessible and strategic enough to stay engaging.

If you would like a Negative Review that I find completely fair for comparison, read
kc130flyer's.

So, I'm not sure what reviewing this game really accomplishes, given that it's been long de-listed from public visibility on Steam. Reviewing Assault Horizon at this point feels like screaming into the ether, I guess. But for those of you who already own the game and are curious about others' opinions on it—here we are.

My journey with Ace Combat is a bit strange. The first one I ever played was Ace Combat 2 when I was a kid, but in reality, I barely touched it aside from a few hit-and-miss attempts here and there. Then Ace Combat 4 came out when I was eleven, and that game rocked my absolute ♥♥♥♥. I'm sure that's no surprise to any of you, but what's interesting is that the AC games fell back off my radar. The PS2 had such a thick library of classics, and the other two games in the "holy trinity" slipped by me. Even Ace Combat 6 came and went while I had a 360, but my eyes were more set on the PS3 and Metal Gear Solid 4, so I passed again. By the time I finally returned to Ace Combat, this was the game.

When Assault Horizon first launched on PS3, I was already deep in the post-Modern Warfare gaming landscape. So, despite this game being absolutely decked out in Call of Duty camouflage, the fact that it was a plane combat game was a breath of fresh air. Back then, the often-criticized elements pretty much flew right by me—I was just happy to get back into a series I'd put on the back burner. Mostly. I do remember being pretty annoyed at the forced DFM in the—

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Final boss sequence against Akula over Washington, D.C.
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—but overall, I remember enjoying my experience. I even liked the story and characters enough to remember them fondly! After that, Ace Combat Infinity came and I missed the boat yet again. In the intervening years, I caught up on everything I missed, became a bigger fan of the series and its lore, and when Shattered Skies finally dropped in 2019 on PS4, I made sure to grab it. I was blown away—so much so that I pretty much forgot a lot about Assault Horizon aside from its general tone and the biggest story beats.

Now, after all this time, I've decided to revisit a good chunk of the series. Lucky for me, I managed to snag Assault Horizon on Steam back when it was still available—and very cheap. Now that I have a PC capable of running both this and Shattered Skies, I played them side by side and beat them roughly around the same time. Ooooooooh boy.

Well, Assault Horizon is NOT terrible. It’s still a fun game. If you can set aside your preference for Strangereal for a moment and accept that this is the most G.I. Joe-style entry in the series, then you can enjoy the story for what it is. Colonel Bishop, your main character, is pretty milquetoast, though, and I probably would've preferred a silent MC to project onto, as the series usually allows. The bomber missions with Spooky/Razor are actually really fun, and as plane missions, they absolutely belong in an AC game. They add a nice bit of variety to the gameplay in a positive way.

While I like Shooter 1 as a character, the various helicopter missions, on the other hand, are overly long and dull. The on-rails sections are a snooze, and the free-control helicopter missions are janky at best and frustrating at worst. There aren’t many of them, but one of Assault Horizon’s biggest problems is its pitifully small mission count. There are only 16 missions in total. Ace Combat 4 and Zero both had 18, while AC5 had almost thirty! You could argue, “Well, AC6 only had 15 missions,” sure—but ALL of those were in planes. In ACAH, you spend two missions as a door gunner and two piloting a helicopter, meaning only 12 missions are actually in planes—and only 10 of those follow the traditional Ace Combat fighter-plane formula.

I understand that BAMCO/Project Aces wanted to switch up the formula to appeal to a broader audience, but dividing the content this much should have been an obvious way to alienate longtime fans. Dropping Strangereal was risky—but realistically, it could have worked. The real problem isn’t the setting; it’s the gameplay sins that are unforgivable.

SPEAKING OF WHICH—I’ve largely ignored DFM/ASM aside from a quick mention earlier. Is it terrible? Really? No, actually. It’s fine. Or, it would be if it weren’t mandatory in certain sections. See, DFM is great for casuals who just want to feel like Maverick—but it should have been an easy-mode option. Instead, the AI difficulty and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ physics-breaking quotient were ramped up to force you into using it far more than you’d want, even as a series vet.

Worse still, anyone labeled TGT_LEAD CANNOT be taken down without it in certain scenarios—just to ensure we get a cinematic, in-engine spectacle. This becomes a huge problem when the system locks your enemy into a period of invincibility because you’ve already dealt too much damage for the sequence to properly initiate. And that’s where the aggravation kicks in—because the enemy will pull ridiculous stunts to force the sequence to trip, which can actually get you killed instead. Whether it’s ramming you into the ground, going invulnerable and getting the drop on you, or some other nonsense, it wrecks the natural combat flow that makes Ace Combat great.

What’s supposed to be peak gameplay moments end up feeling like poorly constructed QTE segments. Comparing the battle with Akula to the heights of taking on Pixy or Mister X? Frankly, it’s pretty unsatisfying.

In the end, is there something here for the hardcore Ace Combat fan curious about the series’ flavor in the thick of the Iraq War era? Maybe. I certainly had fun revisiting it, but nowhere near as much fun as I had with Ace Combat 7. And with the prices for secondhand keys now outrageous, I honestly can’t recommend dropping $50+ on this game when the seventh entry is right there... and, for that matter, so is Project Wingman!

My only real regret? Missing out on the multiplayer—I heard it was killer.

It's really like I'm living long AND prospering! but actually I'm wasting away in VR drinking Straw-ber-Ritas. C'est la vie.

I will keep this as brief as I can to actually be helpful. Do not buy Read Dead Online.

More following from here, if you care.
If you are interested in the genuine vanilla online; do not. It is un-moderated and prone to cheaters. If you are interested in RedM based RP, it will work through trial and error. Make sure you already have a Rockstar account, because Rockstar will require secondary DRM. Make sure you have a CFX.re account, because the mod team THAT ROCKSTAR RECENTLY BOUGHT will require a third level of DRM through the RedM launcher. Once you have your accounts in order and you've got them in properly, it will still probably take restarting RedM a few times the first time to get it working right for some reason. I would recommend downloading the Source SDKs from Steam as well because a fair number of servers will use them. Then, I'm assuming you have a DISCORD account but have it on hand because a number of these servers will use it as a fourth level of DRM AND whitelisting simultaneously (some just whitelist with it).

If you have gotten past all these barriers, you can now RP! But you haven't actually learned the finesse of the game because there's no 50+ hour single player campaign to get the feel for the controls on, you will waste the time of real people in the RP servers because even though you're narratively rich and capable, your grasp of the controls are feeble. Without those 50+ hours of other content to futz around on you can feel kind of dead in the water even with hundreds of hours on Red Dead Redemption 1.

Thank you so much to the very lovely people of Rainbow Road for actually helping me! If you get this far and are gay as hell, check it out.

All-in-all, do not buy Red Dead Online. Not even on sale. Buy Read Dead Redemption 2 when its on sale, at the very least.

Ostensibly an art game built in Source. Pretty amusing with some British arsehole giving you ♥♥♥♥ for pretty much anything you do outside the defined narrative. Gets old fairly quickly however, and once you've explored every option you can think of, the game pretty much ends. There's no real goal, except for achievements I guess, so if you don't like this sort of thing, I wouldn't recommend it. It's worth if it's cheap and you like Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Has a bit of everything from Sonic's long history in gaming. Classic Sonic plays just like you would want (unlike that fairly abysmal Sonic the Hedgehog 4), and modern Sonic is fixed enough to 'not terrible'. If you liked Sonic at any point in his long, and varied, history, you should probably give this a try.

A nice update of Fable: The Lost Chapters. Works great in big picture mode with a controller, though the menu is kind of borked if you want to stick to mouse + keyboard. The first Fable game was an extremely overhyped game that could never live up to the promises Peter Molyneux made for it, but after reflection is was a solid little RPG with tons of heart and cheese. The new graphics kind of make the character models frightening, but the environments look wonderful. PROTIP: Get the color correction mod from Workshop, as the default colors are a bit too bright and clean as opposed to the originals versions fantastic palette.

Do you want to KILL YOUR MUSIC? In all seriousness, a highly addictive twin stick shooter with beautiful, seizure inducing graphics and tons of replayability. All levels are based on music tracks saved on your drive, so it's essentially never-ending. Get the Shadow Ops DLC to get funny ships from the Workshop, if you want.

My game of the year 2012.

0% replayability, no interactivity, decent graphics.