Time Ace

July 13, 2007

Lately, Konami has tended to stick to franchises and licenses. It’s served them well, bringing in millions even if quality is sub-par. It’s interesting, then, to see the company release a game like Time Ace. Though vaguely reminiscent of the arcade classic Time Pilot, there was no real effort to cash in on anything. Sadly, this game might drive Konami to not take risks in the future. The games has players taking on the role of —get this— Dr. Clock, a brilliant scientist in the early 1900s that not only builds a time machine, but is also conveniently an ace pilot. When he miraculously finds out somehow that his suspicious assistant Scythe has taken his machine and is using it to collect weapons and take over the world, he quickly builds a second time machine into a biplane and takes off into the future to track him down. This might be one of those times where they should have bought a pre-existing story and used that instead. Storyline aside, Time Ace is an unpolished shooter that makes some attempts at fun. The levels, despite the illusion of free-roaming battlefields, are very much on rails. The AI is not nearly adequate, and the game only becomes challenging when shots start to do a lot more damage. Beating levels unlock new planes, but there’s never a reason to use anything but the latest model, so it hardly matters. Time Ace adds on a multiplayer mode that would be worth it if they had managed to enable Download Play, but that’s about it. There’s nothing here to make it worth playing again… no Challenge Mode or anything. It is entertaining for about 30 minutes or so, but that’s not enough to make it worth picking up, or even renting.

Score: 1/5

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