Vertical Strike Endless Challenge

Vertical Strike: A Flight-Based Action Endless Challenge Review

A decent time killer. Fun gameplay but doesn't have a lot of content

Afterburners, check. Rolls, loops, stalls, hammerheads, check. Prepare to dogfight.
This modern air-to-air and air-to-ground flying game feels right.

Good:
-- Controller friendly. Xbox/PS controller does fine.
-- Jump into a dogfight quickly.
-- Non-stop gauntlet of enemies coming in waves.
-- NPC wingman.
-- Small space required, plays well on average hardware.

Fair:
-- Single player only at this point, i think.
-- More arcade than flight sim, but physics are decent.
-- Auto flare and other automatic anti-missile options, or can do manual settings.
-- Low price
-- Controls: There are 3 or 4 controller options to choose from, but not sure about flight stick and throttle/pedals config.

Worth it to have a quick easy game to get into a hairy furball dogfight survival gauntlet once in a while

Watch your six

No enough aircraft, need more!

F-22 Raptor

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This is a great game if you enjoy the dog-fighting style of a flight simulation but with endless waves of enemies from anti-air to anti-ship combat. The details in this game is amazing with the armaments available you can use anything to suit your flight combat needs! I would love to see additional aircraft available at some point. This game is also available on other platforms.

Full controller support = it's impossible to remap the controller, and the default mappings all fly your plane straight into the ground.

There's no flight stick support at all.

I suppose you might like it if you like flying planes with your keyboard.

It's impossible to configure the keyboard/flight sim sticks to this, meaning it's unplayable. Don't waste your $$$ or gig space on this one.

There's really just nothing here, it feels like the sample content you'd get when you purchase an asset pack on the Unreal/Unity marketplace. I'm all for smaller, short form games, but you've got to put a bit of thought into it, and make it a bit more interesting.

It's not challenging, at all. First minute of air-to-air, I shot down six jets with one missile lock. Six. Air-to-sea, it's a turkey shoot. The ships aren't remotely a threat. The jets themselves look good, but everything else looks really low-effort and low-res.

I was honestly expecting to unlock new maps, new vehicles, new weapons etc after playing a few runs but you just get thrown back out to the main menu when you die with no applause or recognition. Even a simple scoring and progression system would give this a tiny bit of longevity.

You could do a trench run style mode, focused entirely on controlling your fighter through tight spaces. You could do a mode where you only have the MG, and have to shoot down X amount of enemy fighters in close-up dogfights. Hell, you can equip anti-tank missiles and drop bombs (even though there are no tanks) -- how about some base assaults, or convoy raids?

It's not a good sign for me when I can come up with better ideas in three minutes.

Ace Combat: Survival Mode Edition

I am writing this review mainly to point out that I have fixed the crashing issue some people had (and me).

You see this is a Unity-based game and devs can compile it in such a way that it primarily uses a certain DirectX - this game primarily uses dx11 and in theory, it should be programmed with a "fallback" feature that if the game cannot find/use dx11 on your system it should fall back on dx9. Sadly the programmers did not include such a line of code in the game so to fix this just go into "launch options" in the game's properties and add a line

"-force-d3d9"

and voila! No more crashing at the start.

Game-wise, you get what you pay for, it's very much like Ace Combat, but only 2 planes to pick (though a lot of rocket/missile types to equip), 2 modes of play: infinite survival against enemy planes and, infinite survival against ground troops. Every now and then you fight a "boss" enemy and that's it. The gameplay is rock-solid and you can customize your experience by turning on features like auto lock on, or auto flares release as well. The only thing I didn't like was music but that is more of a subjective thing since music is more Ace Combat 3 than later "epic movie" music the series was known for.

Overall a great time waster if you like true Ace Combat style of gameplay(without a story) and you hate Ace Combat Assault Horizon and the fact that they abandoned Vector Thrust.

★★☆☆☆

Its an interesting take on the old classic arcadw flight sim. It had my attention for a while but what fun was had became lost in tedium and frustration.

When in a a close quarters dogfight, you will most likely get hit by some kind of enemy fire. Yet, these moments are the worst times you would want to take your eye off the action. This is why the game giving you no indication of being hit is a huge problem. I finished Air-to-Air on level 17 with a dogfight thinking I had come out of it without a scratch. Little did I know, I was at 82% damage. One more missile could and did take me out in the next wave. Had I known I was actually taking some of this damage, I would have flown accordingly.

Another strange issue is that the game, while giving you options for preferred lock on, does not allow you to lock on to the target you are directly aiming at. Thus, you must cycle through your targets, pressing the next target button until you arrive at the correct one. By then, you've flown past your target or have eaten some anti-air artillery fire. This is extremely evident when trying to attack ships in the order you want. Coming at a line from the side of their formation, you will spend upwards of 10 seconds just selecting the ship you are currently looking at as the auto-targeting system continues to suggest the rear most target is in need of some love.

Tl;dr An accessable version of the classic formula but none of the forethought to make the game any easier to control. Lack of damage feedback and lock-on tedium have attributed to 90% of my deaths and its not worth fighting against.

Wew, where to start with this one....well, Vertical Strike Endless Challenge is pretty much what it sounds like. It tries pretty hard to be an Ace Combat clone and you should definitely know this game is more like a demo, definitely NOT A FULL GAME. It only has two modes, Endless Air-to-Air waves and Endless Air-to-Ship waves (Which also has enemy jets.). Both of which consist of an unlimited amount of waves with enemies coming at you non-stop until the end of the wave where you get about 5 seconds to clear your mind before the next wave is within combat range, there's also these mini-boss-esque enemies that crop up once in a while, they're just more difficult fighter jets for the most part or stronger destroyers.

This game is FUN in short burts, don't get me wrong, there's just no content. It has an excellent arcadey/sim flight model, very close to Ace Combat which is great because the PC is sorely lacking a decent inbetween jet fighter/sim game. I love flight games but I'm not looking to setup a $10K flight deck to enjoy them which a lot of these PC flight sims basically expect out of you. This game feels like it was a demo made to show off their flight model, with only two jets and only a couple enemy variations and only two maps and gamemodes. There are quite a few weapons to choose from though most of them will probably go unused, the drop bombs are most effective vs destroyers, there are cluster drop bombs but they don't do as much damage and are essentially useless compared to the main drop bomb, the cluster bombs would be more suited for light armor/infantry vehicles if they existed in this game like they do in some of the Ace Combat missions from Shattered Skies and such. There are a multitide of air-to-air (ATA) and air-to-ground (ATG) missles but they mostly feel the same with the exception of the Long Range ATA Highspeed Missle, as the name suggests, it's good at killing things at range in the air and is quick about it, but it's not as powerful and has less ammo than the regular ATA missles.

The flight model is a lot of fun though the sense of speed and depth is a bit lacking, often times I'd get carried away using the "Disable Alpha" feature which essentially lets you stall turn with your air brakes (Best feature this game brings to the table imo.) and didn't realize I was so close to the ground or going so fast. It only happened a few times though. Also, enemy jets like to kamikazi, they'll make it their mission to slam into you randomly, especially if you're flying straight at them, if you're in their sights they'll probably turn right at you and try to slam you, many times I had to make emergency manuevers to narrowly dodge them. I also wish the game had a full cockpit view instead of just what's essentially an FPS camera since there's only two jets in the game, also has a third person camera but seeing the jet is distracting when trying to actually play, looks great though.

Overall, if you're looking for a decent Ace Combat clone to kill some time and aren't worried about a story this is your game, just know it's severely lacking in content but I honestly don't mind the price tag, I just wish devs were a bit more up front about the lack of content not that they were maliciously trying to hide the fact there's hardly any content, they just make the game sound more exciting than it actually is and don't mention the fact there's only two maps and two jets. Especially since this Japanese studio has other jet fighter games that are not on Steam and are NOT in English with much more content. They seem like a good dev, game was already configured to use my Xbox 360 and Xbox One S gamepads and was already using a scheme that was extremely familiar to me so A+++++ on that. Only complaints with the controls is that it uses DInput and so it lists the controls as numbers instead of their actual names/icons and you can't bind the dpad to any controls even though it works in the menu. I wanted to add the camera change button to the up dpad key but couldn't.


I'd recommend waiting for a sale since this game lacks in content big time but don't deny yourself this short but sweet experience if you're an Ace Combat or just a jet fighter fan in general.

I can not play with the Xbox controller I can only rotate and accelerate please make it possible to modify the controls well. The game itself is very well that if but since the end of a game in planes-boats do not go the controls

Well... Kinda hard to talk much about it as its... Well... Small.

Some already said and I say agien but not as Ace Combat gameplay Vet. Flight model and overall controls are good and solid, quiet intresting is this "Override" mode I call. What it does is basicly allow to make very hard tight moves. Usefull if you want to suddenly do 180 and I mean its sudden.

Enemys are not that hard if you know what you doing and have expirance in Jet combat games. You can die only if you fuck around or if you used "Override" mode too close to the ground. Do mind enemys have problem to shake you off if you sit very close to them.

Game offers only two modes:
-Dogfight, which is your standart air to air combat.

-Ant-Ship, which is basicly dogfight but over sea and with most targets being ships. Enemy jets are present in ther.

In each mode you have "Wingman" which is basicly a friendly AI that flyies around and do damage to enemy's. I think its only ther as if you would be the only target you would be just overrunned by enemy numbers in higher waves.

Graphics... Nothing fancy but looks good.

And thats all I think... Not much to say. I bought it on sale and game is good if you want to fly and shoot around in F22 knock or in F35 knock off. (No ther is no major diffrence between them apart from... Ammo count for some weapons?)

Do I recomend it? Welll.... Only on sale as this game is basicly a TECH DEMO. Testing the market (In this case, a western PC market). If you have spare coins and you bored out of your mind, go for it as you wont find that many games on PC that has jet fight in it... Unless you save those coins for Ace Combat 7 which "may" arrive to PC.

pretty cool wave based flight shooter. play for an hour and you should get 70% achievements easily. It is pretty easy to just pick up and drop, so it can be good for parents and kids. I would only desire that it had more macross crazy elements like 12 lock on missle spread, transformation and use an orbital manuvering lock on just to jump up the action, land on ships and crush them, hover along the ground. but for what you paid it is pretty good for it alone.

The game is similar to the classic Ace Combat setting, and it does a very good job. The game however lacks content.

The game offers only 2 aircraft, visualy representing the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, and the Mitsubishi X-2 Shinshin (not scaled correctlythough, the X-2 looks a bit bigger than reallity). And you have two modes where you fight Sukhoi Su-33 (unplayable) and ships (also modelled after Russian navy ships). In infinte waves.

The arsenal on the other hand is a wide range, again imitating real life weapons, such as the AMRAAM and the Sidewinder. and again, functioning in a way very similar to classical Ace Combat formula.

The game is very nice, but as mentioned, lacks content it would make a 10/10 if more aircraft, multiplayer (vs or coop), different maps and scenes, a story or a campaign...etc. is added. But for now its pretty empty. I would really play till death do us apart with a Mig-21 and an endless multiplayer.

It's difficult to say how to rate this game, it does pretty much as it says and it is cheap but given the choice again I wouldn't have bought it. On seeing the recommendations for it as a clone of the Ace Combat gameplay I decided to give it a go and while that is accurate, there's just nothing else to the game aside from dog fighting above a featureless terrain which quickly gets quite dull leaving the game to feel like an early alpha release to show the gameplay.

Not bad at all! Basically, this is an arcade game where you battle wave after wave of enemy forces until you either get killed, or you get tired, lol. I like to think of game as being Ace Combat lite. In many ways, the gameplay feels like Ace Combat. You carry way more weapons and any fighter jet can possible carry, but that only means that you get the satisfaction of wiping out entire nations (it seems).

It is the sort of game you can jump right into. There are two modes you can choose from: Anti-Air and Anti-Ship. Anti-Air has you battling wave after wave of enemy fighters while anti-ship has you taking out enemy destroyers. AA gives you a greater challenge while AS is more relaxed, allowing you a bit more stress-free gameplay as it is hard to lose.

Another thing you might notice is that the game has lots of achievements, mostly for just playing the game. You might like that if achievement hunting is your thing. At full price, this game costs about $5, but I've seen it even lower than that during sales. It is absolutely worth it. In fact, I would have paid $15 for this as I just love Ace Combat-style games. You won't regret getting this game.

Note: I played with an Xbox controller. I don't know what keyboard gameplay is like.

**If you love the Ace Combat series and need your fix on PC-- grab this game. It is excellent for 5 bucks.**

Cut and dry arcade-style air combat. There is a great assortment of weapons which make hunting all the achievements fairly entertaining since you are forced to change up your playstyle. However, it's easy to 100% this game if you set out to do it.

I would love to see future updates with more misson and aircraft variety, but I would not consider this a con due to the price and the amount of entertainment you get out of the game in its current state.

So, I played one round and decided I had to write a review immediately.

This is a really excellent dogfighting game. If what you want is to just fly a combat jet and dogfight, this is the game you should buy. There's no story, no extra frills, no nonsense. It is perfect in its simplicity.

Gameplay is pretty straightforward - waves of increasing numbers of enemies. You get reloaded in-air after every few waves (if you survive). There's no fuel limit and an endless sky, so you can just keep flying forever.

A gamepad or joystick is really necessary to play this correctly. The flight controls feel very responsive with my Logitech F310 (nothing fancy or expensive), and I suspect if you've invested in a really nice set of flight controllers this game will work very well.

The controls are fully customizable, so you can set up your flight axes and buttons to whatever you're most comfortable with, and there are sensitivity adjusters for the axes and for the buttons (which is an uncommon and appreciated level of control).

Some features that would be really nice additions:
- More interesting ground terrain (canyons or mountains or cities to fly around/over would be cool)
- More aircraft options (there are only two right now)
- PvP dogfighting (though I assume that would be complicated)

This is definitely worth adding to your library, especially for $5.

Fly beyond the limit, and take the Air-Dominance back

10/10. This game is very, very, fun. It's small, but fun. As the description says, there are two gamemodes: Anti-Ship and Anti-Air. The former pits you against ships and eventually enemy aircraft. The latter is just Aircraft. What makes this game particularly fun is the ability to disable the Angle of Attack Limiter, which allows you to perform maneuvers that should be impossible for a fixed wing plane to do. The game does fall short in a few areas, mainly the fact that it has only two flyable aircraft and only one type of enemy plane. It has a very arcadey feel to it, by which I mean it seems like something you might find in an arcade. It's cheap too, so if you like games such as Ace Combat I'd suggest you get this. For those that prefer a list of pros and cons, I'll provide one:

Pros:
+Cheap Price
+Wide arsenal of ordenance
+Nice Graphics
+Lots of Achievements
+Toggleable AoA. Toggling it off allows you to do absolutely insane maneuvers.
+Suprising amount of replayability.

Cons:
-Lack of Aircraft. There are only two. One is the FSX-something or other, the other is an F-22. As for enemies there's only the SU-33. Unfortunately you can't fly it.
-Lack of gamemodes. Your options are "Anti-ship" and "Anti-Air". Both are endless, so there's no real goal other than surviving.
-Barren maps. There's no real scenery to speak of on the maps other than the terrain. Honestly, that's not an issue for me.

Do you like Ace Combat? Do you like Raiders Sphere? Don't have a decent PC to run any of the two? Then you might want to give this one a try. (Be wary, the gamepad controls are by default in Japanese; Circle to confirm and Cross to exit)

From the image I got following Project ICKX's YouTube Channel for more than a year, Vertical Strike was originally intended to be a mod for Raiders Sphere, just like many Japanese-exclusive direct-to-discs Raiders Sphere mods in the Japanese PC market. Kinda explains the similarity in UI and gameplay, huh? This one's the first to be officially sold abroad though.

It plays almost like Raiders Sphere, with HAWX/Vector Strike's "AoA Limiter Off Mode" added in and Ace Combat's "weight" in flying mechanics. Weapon loadout are customizable just like Raiders Sphere, though they may not offer much if you're accustomed to arcade flight games.

The game's still barebones, though. Only an Su-33 type for air targets, a Japanese Destroyer and a Russian Modern Battleship/Cruiser for the sea targets. Selectable planes only include an F-22A with canards and an ATD-X/F-3 Shinshin. They'll probably only give you 15~20 minutes of fun until the endless wave of enemies bore you out.

If you're a flight game afficionado like me and willing to pay to help boost the Japanese indies confidence in Steam (or for more better flight arcade games), give this one a try. Just be wary that it won't get deep, and the price has set that in stone.