Lock-On Failed
Heatseeker tries to blend arcade gameplay with realistic planes and unfortunately ends up doing a nosedive.
Published: June 4, 2007
I didn't choose, instead opting to muscle through the games almost 20 missions with the grim determination of a man who apparently enjoys pain. Again, because the mission variety isn't exactly... well, varied, what you've played within the first hour or so (not surprisingly right on the threshold of when the Impact Cam starts to lose what little charm it has) is pretty much cut and pasted out through the rest of the game, with you chasing down missiles and blowing up wave after wave of fairly brain dead pilots all while hearing the name "Downtown" so many times the mere mention of heading into the city for drinks after work drives you into a murderous rage. The only real break comes when one of those dim-witted slop jockeys actually manages to get a lock on you, at which point the game basically takes over and reduces your evasion skills to a well-timed button press in the vein of Shenmue, God of War or Resident Evil 4. This essentially strips out any huge fear of getting all blown up because you couldn't barrel roll or dump chaff out yourself.
Things aren't really helped by the fact that the game is, well, fugly. Maybe it is the fact that Ace Combat belches actual satellite photos all over their landscape, but when the blurry, over-stretched textures on the ground look almost as bad from the air as they do up close, then you know visuals weren't really the focus here. Having actual aircraft modeled in the game is nice, but aside from the RenderWare Engine's volumetric clouds, there's not a whole lot here that looks even mildly pretty. The framerate is a little nice, I suppose, but honestly with the PS2 going on seven years of being around, there's little reason for the game to look almost as bad as Sky Odyssey at times (and I swear, I'm only making a visual comparison here. Any others would be doing Sky Odyssey, quite possibly the best flight game ever made, a huge disservice).
I already mentioned the sometimes painful and absolute dig-an-icepick-into-your-ears bad repetition of the voice acting in the game, but the rest of it actually holds up rather well. One of the prime reasons for the Burnout reference beyond the fact that the game runs on the same core engine (though you'd never guess it) and the whole Impact Cam thing is that the sound effects are pretty in line. When a plane kicks into full throttle and the afterburners flare up, the rush of wind and growling engines are very pleasant indeed, and even the time warping sound effects and explosions are nice. There's a nice little "thunk" as more ammo is loaded and when the guns wind up and let loose with a little burp, it sounds great.
Heatseeker tries -- honestly tries -- to duplicate the feeling of tearing ass through the skies and laying waste to endless waves of enemies like the arcade games of old, but the second it started trying to mix in a half-assed storyline and relied on near-constant, poorly acted voice work to carry things, a lot of that went to crap. It's possible that this game will end up reviewed better on the Wii, which is both short on flight games and is decidedly devoid of Ace Combat presence, but that shouldn't excuse the fact that the game is an ugly, vapid experience that has plenty of energy, but can't quite figure out where to properly channel it.
