This is one of the best looking titles in the series and it doesn't make any sacrifices in the game play area.
It's been a little while since I played the game so I don't quite recall the exact names of of countries and places in the game world. Essentially you play a fighter pilot of a nation that gets taken by surprise by a neighboring country and are forced to flee with the tattered remains of your country's armed force to a nearby island. From there the survivors rally to strike back against the enemy and slowly begin a march back to retake the nation's capital. With each successful mission your renown as a fighter pilot grows until you become a legend with your name mentioned with reverence, which is relayed through cut scenes between missions.
The gameplay is tight and responsive, however, after a while it starts to feel the same. Charge a cluster of targets, unleash some missiles to take them out, circle back around to mop up, then move on to the next cluster of targets. Developers did a decent job of spicing up the action and creating some choices for you by tasking you with objectives to tackle and prioritize in order to complete the missions. If you get bogged down on one objective and take too long it would result in failure of another, thereby injecting some replay value and experimentation in the order with which you take on the said objectives.
All in all this is a very solid title like the ones before it in the series. It may not do anything revolutionary except to take full advantage of the 360's power to present much improved graphics and battles on a scale not scene before, but when the gameplay is that solid to begin with I wouldn't hold that against this entry.