Sky Crawlers being released in North America!

M

Mobius1aic

Quo vadis?
Veteran
For you Ace Combat fans with Wiis, the AC team developed game Sky Crawlers is being released in NA courtesy of XSeed Games (surprised Namco Bandai isn't doing it themselves). Basically it's AC with propeller driven world war 2 style era and a bit beyond aircraft with gun dogfighting action. Funny how it looks exactly like Ace Combat 4, 5, and 0 on the PS2, with some minor improvements in the clouds. I wonder if it uses a ported AC engine or a built from the ground up Wii engine? Either way, nice to see the masters of arcade style flight action making what's probably the first competent game of that type on the Wii platform. It's been out in Japan for a while as the game is based on the anime movie of the same name, of which the movie is based on a series of novels (yes, written ones, not manga, though there is a recent manga adaptation). Interesting of note that the game is supposed to be played with the nunchuku in the right hand and the wiimote in the left, which is kinda funky.

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Note the self shadowing.
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Note the similar symbology as in the AC games for on screen targets and the radar.
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Note the very beautiful clouds, which seem to be the only noticeable improvement compared to the PS2 AC games (or so it seems)

I must also express my satisfaction in the creativity of taking WW2 era aircraft designs and making them different. It's very interesting to look at airplanes that look similar to their real counterparts, but have things like contra-rotating propellers. I just love the 'ol F4U Corsairs, Hawker Firebrands, Supermarine Spitfires, and all that stuff.

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Couldn't help but say that the fuselage of this bird looks just like a Heinkel He 219!
 
Some screens look great while others don't. The 3rd one looks the worst.

I think the screen look a little empty to be honest. Rebel Strike did like 100 enemies on screen. Of course, I've never played Sky Crawler and these screens may not accurately represent what the real game looks like.

I think the key question now is: How's the gameplay? It better be intense.
 
I've noticed the quality issue in some screens, it's actually worse than AC5 and AC0 in some ways, and that's on the PS2. Hence why I'm wondering if it's just an engine port, because the Wii could push way more than what the PS2 can. I can't help but notice the trees in the third screenshot, because in Ace Combat 5, Namco really pushed the PS2 with a crap load of rendered trees, as opposed to so few, as well as the improved aircraft shading model that was basically a partial cell-shading technique, as well as an extra ground texture to give it some depth and shadows on the ground produced by clouds. AC5 was one of the PS2's best graphical achievements IMO. This looks like AC4 with a couple improvements, and the draw distance actually looks like it could be lower. AC4/5/0 had frontal draw distances of about 9-10 miles, assuming the Wii was double the general graphical real world power of the PS2, I'd be expecting about a 14 mile draw distance assuming the game was rendered in a radius around the player (which I don't think it is), doubling the overall general area in the view cone, the draw distance comes to about 14 miles (pi*R*squared)*2, then you obtain the overall square root, and divide the number by pi if my math is correct. It's a very hazy answer/idea, but yes I don't think the AC team was really pushing as far as they could. Of course then you have memory management and z-buffering issues for such amounts of detail, but since AC4/5/0 were running on 32 MB of system memory, I don't see why it couldn't be done when there 64 MB + 24 MB on the Wii, at least with 30 FPS instead of 60 FPS. But whatever, I'm starting to get in over my head, and I'm sure you guys are like, "nope, doesn't work that way" lol, and it still looks better than any other flying game on the Wii so far.

My main excitement comes from the fact I've been wanting to play this game since it was announced for release in Japan. I didn't think it would get a western release. Even if it doesn't look the absolute best, and maybe a bit worse than it's PS2 brethren, as long as it's fun, I guess that's all that really matters. As much as I like actual flight simulators, I still love to play Ace Combat. Sometimes you just don't feel like energy dogfighting, you just want to blow shit up:p
 
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Mobius1aic said:
I've noticed the quality issue in some screens, it's actually worse than AC5 and AC0 in some ways, and that's on the PS2. Hence why I'm wondering if it's just an engine port, because the Wii could push way more than what the PS2 can.
Click to expand...
In some areas, but not all. PS2's insane framebuffer bandwidth means it still exceeds Wii in particles and such. Wii has the advantage in geometry and 'shaders' (and memory and stuff of course!).
 
Shifty Geezer said:
In some areas, but not all. PS2's insane framebuffer bandwidth means it still exceeds Wii in particles and such. Wii has the advantage in geometry and 'shaders' (and memory and stuff of course!).
Click to expand...

I'm very surprised Sky Crawlers wasn't released on the PS2. It would've made a fun game for system comparison had both versions been made to max both systems out! I'm awaiting AC7 which I hope makes it's return to the Playstation hardware.
 
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