Many people remember watching Top Gun or Return of the Jedi, and thinking how awesome it would be to be strapped to the cockpit, dog-fighting it out with a handful of your trusted comrades, for the sake of your home nation. Such is the reason games like Ace Combat do well. But while Ace Combat is a nice game, it never gives you the feeling of large scale war. However, AirRivals does.

First off, let it be known, that AirRivals (formally known as Space Cowboys Online) is primarily a PvP MMORPG. It has all the normal RPG elements, leveling, star upgrading, quests, equipment upgrades, and even parties and guilds (known as ingame as Formations and Brigades respectively). Upon reaching level 10, the player will be forced to choose which Nation they want to side with, there is no real difference, aside from a possible location change. Now you won't be forced to pvp right away. Most areas offer two channels, a Safe and a Battle channel. Battle is, as you might guess the PvP channel, allowing you to fly into other enemy players, and allow you to fight it out, in what can get to be huge, full out wars. However, if you're lower leveled, and don't want to get caught up in any ongoing battles, then simply choose the Safe channel. However, remember that some higher up maps, only have Battle channels.

Players upon starting, will have the choice of piloting one of four different vehicles (known as ingame, Gears). Each one totally different from the others. There's the B Gear, that works as a bomber, and one of the best rounded gears. The I Gear, the Hit and Runner, known for incredible speed and attack. The A Gear, working as a tank, and known for it's Siege mode, which turns it into an Anti-Air battery. And finally the M Gear, which is the weakest of the three, but makes up for it's buffs, and the only gear able to heal.

The game itself is actually quite good looking, even for being fairly dated. It'll run well even on older computers, and will run pretty smooth the whole time. A personal favorite aspect of mine, is the actual loading screens, with have some absolute excellent artwork on display. Not to be outdone, even some of the special weapon effects can be quite dazzling as well, if not terrifying for a player, to see dozens of missiles flying in their direction.

The sound itself is also pretty good. Not amazing, and it doesn't have music that'll be stuck in your head for days, but it's tolerable. I'm not a high level player, but I can only imagine the sounds of hundreds of missiles flying through the air, and bullets upon bullets ripping through shields and armor.

Probably the most important aspect of any game to me, is gameplay, and AirRivals controls great. Gears handle very responsive, able to cut round, lock onto a target, then light it ablaze with guns and missiles a plenty. Even being on the opposite end of a gun, Gears handle great with barrel rolling, boosting, and quick turning.

However, there is a definite downside, and that is grinding. The game unfortunately is very grind heavy. Early levels have only one quest, per level. And if you've just reached that level, the quest won't give you another level. While there are Hunting missions, all it really is, is grinding the same monster over and over, and getting a cash bonus afterward. So no matter how much you enjoy the game, the grinding may ruin it for you.

All in all, even with the grinding, and the sometimes laggy start up and load times, the game can be an incredible ride, more so if you get to participate in some of the Mothership Raids. (Check youtube to see what I mean.)


Review by PLink, Freemmogamer.com - Posted April 05, 2009