When you drop into dogfight mode in Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, the camera pushes in close to your target and begins to shake. You lose control of your plane, but you can still kind of move your aiming reticle around the screen and try to shoot the enemy plane. If you keep the bad guy inside the larger circle, you can lock on with your missiles, which is a quicker way to take them out. This is very exciting the first time it happens, but soon you'll realize it's basically a minigame.

There. I've just summed up Ace Combat: Assault Horizon.

The dogfight mode is better than a quick-time event, but this system sacrifices control for splashy presentation. The sticker on the front of the game quotes a news outlet that calls Assault Horizon the Call of Duty of the skies, and that's apt. Both experiences are exceedingly linear, and both games sacrifice player agency for explosions and impressive set pieces.

The game can be impressive, and there are moments that will make you either gasp or pump your arm in the air, but the majority of the game is simply spent flying from point to point, and taking out enemies using that distracting dogfight mode. You'll pick a target, wait until you see the green circle, mash the right and left bumpers, play the minigame, and move onto the next target. There are special weapons to take out multiple enemies, counter-measures to dodge missiles, and you can slow down to loop over and around an enemy if they try to attack you from behind, but it quickly begins to feel like the game is simply training you in optimal gaming behaviors. If A happens, you should do B. When C happens, respond with D. It's very limiting.

The planes are fast, the graphics are beautiful, it's thrilling to watch your enemies break apart as your pour machine gun rounds and missiles into them, and the dogfight mode does allow for some neat scripted moments in the missions, but all these tricks the game uses to raise your heart rate come at the expensive of actual gameplay. This is a game that looks like a movie when you watch it, but it's frustrating to play.

There are surprises in the game such as flyable helicopters that give the odd impression of a reskinned first-person shooter, and I haven't had a chance to play online yet, but the core campaign is only fun in small doses. I'm a geek for games that allow me to fly things, but this feels like it's aimed squarely at fans of huge, improbable action films. That's neither good nor bad—I think Assault Horizon will find a dedicated audience—but I miss the days when flying the planes was enough. This is what it would look like if Michael Bay directed a remake of Top Gun.

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon is out now for the PS3 and Xbox 360. We played on the Xbox 360.