Namco Bandai is less than 6 months away from releasing the next entry in their long-running and critically-acclaimed arcade combat flight simulator series Ace Combat. This upcoming entry will simple be called Ace Combat: Assault Horizon.

They’ve released a story trailer just in time for this year’s E3 and anyone who has been a fan of the franchise should be very excited about this upcoming game. It looks like new types of gameplay has been added to the tried-and-true fixed-wing aerial combat. Players can now get behind the controls of attack helicopters and even AC-130 gunships. The in-game graphics (used in the trailer itself) looks to have made some major improvements from the last title in the series. If I’m looking at the trailer correctly it looks like pretty much everything a player sees on the screen is destructible whether it’s an enemy vehicle or just a decorative fountain in some African warlord’s palace.

This series has always been good at delivering an extensive and exhaustive single-player campaign. Multiplayer has always been hit-or-miss. The last game in the series made some serious in-roads into multiplayer. Now that this next title will be released not just for the Xbox 360 and it’s Xbox LIVE on-line component, but for the PS3 and it’s counterpart in the PSN, there should be some expectations of a hefty on-line multiplayer component.

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon will have a release date of October 11, 2011 for North America and October 14, 2011 for Europe.