ok I've spent a bit more time with this and I'm very disappointed.
Pros
in engine cutscenes are damn near photorealistic and cinematography is top notch. Even the auto replay system is amazing, the angles it chooses literally can make the most boneheaded flying look like it came out of top gun. This is a better flight simulator than MS Flight Simulator, lots of details in terrain and cloud as you fly around and through them, you can buzz the water etc. Splashes when you shoot at the water are quite satisfying. Overall very fun to fly in. Visual effects are top notch. You can basically tell where everyone is from the smoke trails, explosions etc.
Cons
AI - non existent, seriously. The planes just sit there, no attempt to come after you. Half the time you get groups of bombers and fighters miles away from each other. On the rare case that the fighter escort is actually with the bombers, they do nothing. You just fly lesiurely along and use missiles like bullets and they dont even break escort or come after you. The Ace Combat series is supposed to be known for its shooting gallery bajillion missile style, but this is really bad even compared to the PS1 versions I played. Wingman commands? this is inexcusable. Just two. Attack and Cover. And I could swear they both do nothing
You can fire missiles (or just about anything) at other planes forward flight paths and they won't even bother evading.
Combat - non existant. Game should be called Ace Flying. Even when it says "missile alert" I have NEVER been shot down or even seen a missile on my ass. Half the time your wingmen go "Garuda 1 you have an enemy locked onto you break break!" um nothing happens. I delibrately cut throttle and just sat at cruising altitude and 5 mins later, not one missile or anything. No countermeasures (none are in the game either). Wingman? "great job and evasive manuevers Garuda 1".
Mission structure and "the living battlefield" - Its really obvious you are basically moving from one shooting gallery to the next with cutscenes in-between loads. You go from one "battle" where you shoot down 50-5000 planes while most of them are asleep at the wheel to "OMG half of us are down, we're getting nuked" and then um repeat. There is no continuous mission structure, when stuff happens in other air/space combat games it actually happens in the same mission. The "living battlefield" is dead. Essentially its a bunch of scripted chatter that happens the same way every time and has no relation to whats happening in gameplay? why because what's being talked is not happening in gameplay. It's not happening at all. There is the potential of a Chromehounds repeat here as the multiplayer options they're promising are still pretty cool and may redeem this title.
Terrain - yes terrain looks cool when it's not city related but in the demo you get mostly the city and the quality is uneven. The buildings are basically single poly Flight Sim 1 style, you can't blow them up. There's no physics and when you crash into one you get a convenient cut and smoke particle. Anything that isn't a skyscraper is basically a blurry texture. Not even mip maps. One catchall blurry texture, blurry from afar, blurry when close. Very FS1 style.
Physics and damage - flight physics are decent/basic. You can cobra and that's about as complicated as it gets. There's basically no other physics related to damage or anything else i.e. ground vehicles, sea vessels getting blown up etc.
Story - it happens on its own and frequently doesnt even involve you
Realism - um well there's a "Hard mode", well it's called normal anyway. It's supposed to be more realistic but that means you get 50 missiles instead of 100 and you still have infinite gun ammo. NO COCKPIT VIEW.
Ok in all fairness, this is probably a hastily hacked together demo for E3.It follows the Forza 2 example of how NOT to do a demo.. I'd pay maybe $20 for this in its current form, but probably I hope someone just makes a movie out of all the cutscenes in the game. However contrary to my opinion the general response seems mostly postitive and revolving around "OMFG THE GRAPHICS". This is probably going to be a good game for those who just want to show off their system and aren't too demanding about their games. In other words it should have been for PC. However 386 flight sims I played back in the day like THX and Chuck Yeager destroy this