Extreme, fast-paced flying, shooting action!

User Rating: 8.8 | M.A.C.H. Modified Air Combat Heroes PSP
M.A.C.H. provides some extreme racing and combat! Whether you're flying through tracks, or shooting your opponents down with missiles, there's always beautiful scenery and sound to accompany the action! Although the game is fast and pretty, it lacks variety in some ways. The tracks are reused too many times. By the time you're done with a few tournaments, you've memorized the tracks. The plane customization is also lacking. It's fun to customize the colors, decals, engines, wings, and the like, but it's limited to 2 upgrades per part on each plane. M.A.C.H. is a relatively easy game to play. The controls are almost as easy as playing Super Mario 64. Tracks are pretty easy to maneuver through and dogfights, being limited to 3 or 4 weapons, (guns/lasers, missiles, and cluster rockets), are very easy to get out on top. Missiles have lock-on and homing, making it almost too easy to take down enemy ships.

The game is pretty short too. There's only so many tournaments and challenges. It's definitely not made for multiplayer. You could have a dogfight with 7 friends, but the chances of having 7 friends who won PSPs available on the same day is rare, let alone 7 people who all own a copy of the game. If the off chance that you have 7 friendly PSP owners nearby, but they don't all own the game, you can play, but are limited to a single track and a single plane.

The game is great fun, and provides lots of action, but is lacking in variety. It's too short and repetitive. Still, I enjoyed playing it, even though I was able to complete every tournament and challenge in about 3 days. I'd still try out a sequel, hoping it will be a bit longer and have more tracks, planes, upgrades, and weapons.

I would recommend M.A.C.H. for gamers new to the flying genre, but if you enjoy playing Microsoft Flight Simulator on your computer too much, don't quit for this.