Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War
The best arcade flight game ever made? You betcha.
Published: November 16, 2004
I'm not exactly sure what kind of voodoo Namco had performed on the dev team working on the Ace Combat series, but it's powerful good juju. With each successive game, the team continues to hone their presentation, visuals, sound and interface design into quite literally the best flight offering ever seen in games.
There's also the added bonus of a meaty storyline that's probably the best the series has ever seen (and certainly the best U.S. gamers have witnessed thus far with the stripped-down version of Ace Combat 3 we received). While the source material of two warring nations in a fictional near-future universe much like our own is familiar territory, the addition of actual planes you can witness here in reality is certainly new.
Namco collaborated with leading aerospace firms Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems and Dassault Aviation, and worked closely with Japanese and U.S. governments to make sure they nailed the proper implementation of all this officially licensed goodness. Those partnerships coupled with the series' real satellite imagery makes for hands-down the prettiest flight game ever seen on the PS2, and it's no small stretch to say the game actually manages to best Ace Combat 04 in every way -- and that's no small feat.
The core gameplay is literally almost identical to previous games, but Namco's fifth iteration of the series got a few overhauls. They're nothing major per se, but each of these smaller elements adds up to a far more engrossing experience, and one that easily eclipses any other flight game out there.
For starters, there's the wingman control, where you can simply and quickly order some very basic orders like attack (used to attack whatever's in your crosshairs), cover (to pull everyone back into formation or nix a bogey on your tail) and disperse (to have them break formation and attack at will) to your fellow flyboys, as well as allowing them to unload any special weapons their plane might have like long-range or anti-ship missiles.
Radio chatter also got a huge boost (Namco boasts that almost 14 hours of dialogue were recorded for the game), but it's not just filler. You can actually respond directly to your wingmen, to HQ and even ground forces from time to time. It's a simple trick that removes the feeling that you're just witnessing a couple of canned lines being uttered and actually have the ability to influence what people say and do while in-mission. Once you replay a couple of the harder missions a few dozen times, you'll realize that the conversations are indeed canned, but the illusion holds up on those missions you can breeze through.
Unfortunately, those easy missions aren't exactly plentiful. AC5 is awfully fond of throwing marathon-long sortees at you with no breaks in-between in some cases, and there's nothing more aggravating than playing for a good 20-25 minutes, only to get a mission update that requires another 10-15 minutes out of you, only to get shot down mere minutes before you're ready to head home. It's one of the biggest flaws in the game, and it's one of the only nagging bits I had with Ace Combat 04. Adding a set of checkpoints along the way would have eliminated a lot of those "f this" moments where you just drop the controller and walk away.
With the increased storyline, Namco also chose (wisely, I might add) to ploy their knack for delivering some of the most impressive CG seen on any system to help fuel the storyline. Most of it is still told with voice-overs, but a few conversations between characters, some moments captured through a video camera and a smattering of actual action shots pep things up. Most of of the pre-rendered sequences are low on flash, but they allow for a greater amount of character detail.
There's also the added bonus of a meaty storyline that's probably the best the series has ever seen (and certainly the best U.S. gamers have witnessed thus far with the stripped-down version of Ace Combat 3 we received). While the source material of two warring nations in a fictional near-future universe much like our own is familiar territory, the addition of actual planes you can witness here in reality is certainly new.
Namco collaborated with leading aerospace firms Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems and Dassault Aviation, and worked closely with Japanese and U.S. governments to make sure they nailed the proper implementation of all this officially licensed goodness. Those partnerships coupled with the series' real satellite imagery makes for hands-down the prettiest flight game ever seen on the PS2, and it's no small stretch to say the game actually manages to best Ace Combat 04 in every way -- and that's no small feat.
The core gameplay is literally almost identical to previous games, but Namco's fifth iteration of the series got a few overhauls. They're nothing major per se, but each of these smaller elements adds up to a far more engrossing experience, and one that easily eclipses any other flight game out there.
For starters, there's the wingman control, where you can simply and quickly order some very basic orders like attack (used to attack whatever's in your crosshairs), cover (to pull everyone back into formation or nix a bogey on your tail) and disperse (to have them break formation and attack at will) to your fellow flyboys, as well as allowing them to unload any special weapons their plane might have like long-range or anti-ship missiles.
Radio chatter also got a huge boost (Namco boasts that almost 14 hours of dialogue were recorded for the game), but it's not just filler. You can actually respond directly to your wingmen, to HQ and even ground forces from time to time. It's a simple trick that removes the feeling that you're just witnessing a couple of canned lines being uttered and actually have the ability to influence what people say and do while in-mission. Once you replay a couple of the harder missions a few dozen times, you'll realize that the conversations are indeed canned, but the illusion holds up on those missions you can breeze through.
Unfortunately, those easy missions aren't exactly plentiful. AC5 is awfully fond of throwing marathon-long sortees at you with no breaks in-between in some cases, and there's nothing more aggravating than playing for a good 20-25 minutes, only to get a mission update that requires another 10-15 minutes out of you, only to get shot down mere minutes before you're ready to head home. It's one of the biggest flaws in the game, and it's one of the only nagging bits I had with Ace Combat 04. Adding a set of checkpoints along the way would have eliminated a lot of those "f this" moments where you just drop the controller and walk away.
With the increased storyline, Namco also chose (wisely, I might add) to ploy their knack for delivering some of the most impressive CG seen on any system to help fuel the storyline. Most of it is still told with voice-overs, but a few conversations between characters, some moments captured through a video camera and a smattering of actual action shots pep things up. Most of of the pre-rendered sequences are low on flash, but they allow for a greater amount of character detail.
