Ace Combat Zero: The Belkin War

Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War

When 'more of the same' just means 'more awesome', can that really be a bad thing?
Author: Sam Bishop
Published: May 17, 2006
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Though the games are nigh-impossible to tell apart from just screenshots, AC0 does feel it's had a slight visual overhaul. The ground textures are even more remarkable, and from the air the game is absolutely photo-realistic. The framerate is rock solid, the sense of speed wonderful and the interface is familiar, but that's not really a bad thing. Briefing screens just look cooler when you're viewing a map made out of little dots on a 3D plane.


The audio is also strikingly familiar. Most of the sound effects will be instantly recalled, from menu chimes to weapons fire, and the conversations you'll have in the air seem recycled -- so much so that you'll probably recognize a bunch of radio chatter from previous games (I'm looking at you, ships in distress). The music doesn't seem to be lifted from previous games, but it's the sort of high-tension, long note, driving stuff from previous games. One notable exception is the awesome Flamenco-style track from the intro movie.

There is new stuff, though, and more than any game prior, AC0 loves adding little background touches like people on the ground cheering as someone talks to you. The pilot chatter can get a little repetitious at times, and still other conversations are sometimes lost in the heat of battle, but overall it's a nicely immersive aural experience.

Ace Combat Zero is, well, Ace Combat. It's as much of the previous games as it is anything new, but with each version Namco piles on new missions, tweaks and refines things and continues to deliver a strong narrative throughout. Some may feel the series is slipping into Tony Hawk syndrome where not enough big changes are made, but then like the Tony Hawk series, the gameplay itself has been tweaked and refined so much that doing something drastic would likely screw up the whole balance.

What wouldn't mess things up (as long as the core gameplay actually survives the transition) is online play, and until we get that, the series is going to continue to feel like it's making tiny steps while offering more of the same. That's not a bad thing, but the series is indeed of a little shot in the arm.
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The Verdict
8.0

The Ace Combat games nail the rush of pulling g's and kicking on afterburners, that much will never change. But then, little else has changed too, and without an online component, it feels a bit too much like an expansion.

10.0Graphics:

The very definition of a game that looks like it shouldn't be running on the PS2. AC0 is gorgeous, and shows exactly how talented Namco's art team really is.

9.0Sound:

A bit of repetition brings the overall audio score down, but the mix of music and radio chatter and streaming rockets is never BAD, just... familiar.

10.0Control:

The line between sim and arcade flight experience is straddled perfectly here. Planes are agile, control wonderfully, and do so without much thought. This is how you map the fairly complex controls of a plane to a controller.

8.0Gameplay:

This is Ace Combat, and that's about a definitive as you can get. It's Ace Combat 04, it's Ace Combat 5, but with little tiny tweaks that don't really add much more to the formula. Tweaks are nice, but they're not a new experience.