Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies (Sony PlayStation 2, 2001)

The game has an overall great story, and a very interesting plot. It has some twists and surprises in the story that make it more fun to play. The game as a whole i all action and shooting and blasting airplanes to bits, so that's a plus. You can buy many airplanes and weapons, this all to choose from before each mission, which makes the game even more fun and entertaining. Its not a easy game to complete, there are many secret planes you have to unlock, and this will take a while. Also, unlocking all features will have you playing through all difficulty levels, increasing total gameplay time.

Ace Combat 04 is a game that really stands out for the time it was created. The visuals in this game are outstanding for both the maps and the jets. However the world looks vary blotchy when up close but nothing to really complain abought. All 18 jets feature fully detailed cockpits and structure elements making this game one of the best looking on PS2 in 2001. Once in the air, you pick you favorite vew mode. you can have full jet vew, cockpit vew for a more realistic feel, or HUD only vew for the truly arcade feel. Combat in this game takes a step away from realism and gives you a hefty amount of missiles and bombs. This allows for the action packed arial combat that will have you locking on and evading left and right. The game also gives you a mix of land, sea, and (of course) air targets to unload on. The story mode was vary unique for this type of game. A narrated picture book style with soud effects, gives you the story from the other side of the battle. Told from the point of vew of a young boy who is fallowing the famous yellow 13 and his squadron of ace fighters who will so fight you, the all time ace of the skies. This game is alot of fun and really worth the current price. I give Ace Combat 04 a 9 OUT OF 10

Finally got tired of playing just the few older games that i have so i decided to by a jet fighting game. I have always enjoyed these kind of games on different game systems throughout the years and i have to say that this one was a lot of fun. various levels, missions, aircrafts, and weapons keep you pushing on to earn more money and buy new things. overall descent graphics and controls. I would recomend this game to anyone who enjoys jet fighting games.

The game is a really good game. The realism is pretty good and the graphics are really good as well for the year it was made. The storymode is well drawn out and very illustrative but it does take awhile to go through it if you watch the story unfold.

The gameplay is pretty good and consistent. Sometimes some of the missions are a little too easy and then some of them are hard as crap. At the start it's easy to move through the storyline but as you go it gets more and more difficult, a good thing for a story-mode game. Some games just stay the same difficulty through-out the levels but this gets more difficult as you go. The only drawback I get is the lack of airplane choices you have for awhile. It's like you have to buy them which takes awhile to do.

Great game and I recommend it to anybody that loves airplane fighter games.

I discovered Ace Combat 2 for Playstation and although blind, as were many others, to its eventual high-ranking and high popularity within the genre, I became an instant fan. With the release of the PS2 and its much better capabilities as it relates to graphics and speed, I could only hope and pray that a more advanced Ace Combat game would be released to take advantage of the paradigm-shift in new hardware as present in the PS2...Enter Ace Combat 04: Shattered Skies.

This release accomplished the extremely difficult in that it beat all expectations amongst those that were already set very high. The graphics and performance were in fact significantly better and the storyline, music, choice and accuracy of aircraft/weapons, and scenery-realism were all consistent and awe-inspiring as one would've expected with the support of the much better and more robust PS2. In addition, a multitude of nuances were present such as very accurate orchestration of all of the aircrafts control surfaces with controller inputs were present and the multitude of realisms such as missile contrails, etc. were all there.

The Ace Combat fan is renowned for their very high expectations of subsequent releases of this Series and Ace Combat 04 absolutely hits it out of the park in so many ways that one has no choice but to play it themselves to truly understand.