I liked them, they kind of prepared you for the increasingly ridiculous boss fights as the game went on.

I haven't played any Ace Combat games since the PSX days, but the ones I played back in middle school, I loved.

Sturmovik turned me into a flying war game elitist-snob, so I don't know how much mileage I'd get out of these new ones, but the series is still dear to my heart.

after you let loose a couple macross missile storms you'll forget all about fuel mixtures and flaps.

AC4 was my favorite, I just played through it again about a month ago actually

You know what I'd really love? A serious flight sim that doesn't take itself too serious. Have the sophisticated controls and plane physics of IL-2, but then BOOM your plane's throwing Macross missile storms at a quarter-mile wide flying carrier-fortress. And also Satriani's playing.

To be honest, my favorite thing to do in that damn game is hop in one of the Nazi super-jets and just go blasto all over two dozen Russian bombers. I'm still lowbrow at heart, it's just that the whole "arcade control" thing you see on every other flight sim feels wrong. I'd rather suffer through a two-hour long patrol over the Pacific where I totally miss the action because I couldn't spot any Jap planes, then deal with a game that holds my hand and doesn't jam my flaps and send me into a deathspiral every time I forget to set them for a powered dive.

(yeah yeah, I know at least one person wants to point out that there's a ton of civvie flight sims that have really sophisticated controls, too. Cram it, non-combat nerd! Unless your 747 simulator lets me kamikaze famous landmarks, I'm not interested)

aaaand cue the FBI in 3...2...1...

As far as I remember the cutscenes have absolutely nothing to do with you.

wait, it's hazy, but I think you're their dead husbands best friend/wingman? then you take over banging her after winning? so the first and last cutscene are related to you.

The cutscenes that follow this one reveal that she doesn't.

Maybe we should all pitch in some money and send Anita Sarkeesian on vacation to Syria?

It's funny, isn't it? A lot of western games will have voice actors record pages of dialog, but section it off to specific triggers by the player, like selecting questions from a list or doing a particular action in their vicinity.

A lot of Japanese ones tend to record twice the dialog and make you listen to every line no matter what you do. I think it's seen as a kind of penance for wasting your time playing video games.