Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War

"Aces High"

I was a newcomer to the Ace Combat series when I picked up Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, but not necessarily to the world of combat flight sims. Way back in the long ago and far away days of black & white graphics on my Mac SE I played an awful lot of Falcon, a depressingly realistic simulation of the F-16 Falcon fighter plane. Depressing, because it made it quite clear how hard these things were to pilot. That didn't stop me from playing the hell out of other flight sims of the day, like Orbital (Space Shuttle sim), X-Wing and Tie Fighter, and Wing Commander (although I realize "sim" is stretching the point somewhat with the last few in that list). It also didn't stop me from wanting to be an Air Force pilot. What did stop me was finding out that bad eyesight was going to prevent me from ever flying one of those Falcons for real. In the years since then I drifted away from the flight sim genre, mostly because the hardware requirements for anything resembling a realistic flight sim were astronomical and my budget for peripherals could get me a cheap non-Force Feedback joystick on a good day. Fast forward to a few months ago and me browsing the bargain bins of one of my local Gamestops. For some reason the stars aligned that day, the old fighter pilot bug bit, and I walked out of there with Ace Combat 5.

I realize that applying the "simulation" term to the Ace Combat games is like calling a Need for Speed title a NASCAR simulator, but it seems to be the term for nearly any game where a flight stick might be involved. Ace Combat takes its general cues from the Wing Commander/X-Wing/Freespace style games, where realistic physics isn't a major consideration. It actually goes a good way further down the arcade path, with no splitting of damage among vehicle systems, and totally unrealistic ammunition levels. Even the worst equipped plane in the game is loaded up with more than 50 heat seeking missiles on top of 10 units of special weapon, and all planes have unlimited machine gun ammunition. Flight controls are a piece of cake, and only the most fumble-fingered gamer will be unable to keep their plane in the air after going through the tutorial. The variety of different planes to choose from, and the statistics that differentiate them further the comparison with the Need for Speed games. Various planes, while impressively modeled to look exactly like their real-life counterparts, bear statistics and roles that don't necessarily have any bearing on their actual uses in real-world military forces.

All that said, if realism isn't important to you (or you'd rather stay well away from realism) this is a great action game. The controls are smooth and responsive, with a long and useful tutorial to help you get the basics down. If you play flight sims at all you shouldn't need it, but if it's been awhile (or never) the tutorial will get you feeling much more comfortable when you start the campaign. Evading missiles is simply a matter of a hard turn until the missile lock is lost. While that may sound too easy it's just as easy for the AI dogfighters to evade yours, so after the first handful of missions, just firing missiles whenever you get a missile lock is going to leave you relying on guns very quickly.

There are two main modes of play. Campaign mode, which is the meat of the storyline, and Arcade mode, which is a short series of "Kill X enemies before time runs out" missions which apparently continue the story of Ace Combat 04 (though there's only a sliver of story to it). The arcade mode is genuinely more difficult, especially in the latter stages and is the thing you'd want if you're not interested in dealing with a plot at the moment and just want to shoot down some bad guys. I don't know offhand if this game was ever actually in an arcade somewhere, but if it was this would be a decent presentation for it.

Campaign mode is he meat of the game, however. It provides the bulk of the content (30 missions in total) and is the mechanism by which the 50 different planes you can fly are unlocked. The missions scale up gradually and consistently in difficulty, and I never felt thrust into a situation I wasn't capable of handling from a combat perspective. There are two missions where you are required perform a Return of the Jedi-style tunnel flight which were very frustrating and I wish they had been taken out, but all in all they didn't detract significantly from my enjoyment of the game. The plot of the campaign, while not winning any awards for its writing is still pretty good. Lots of plot is carried out during missions through radio messages as your allies and enemies react to you tearing up the battlefield as a one-man engine of annihilation. There are few surprises in the plot, and the cliches are rampant, but they're carried off well. Much like watching good reruns, you know what the plot's going to be, but it's still fun to watch. Between mission cutscenes are extremely well done, voice acting is on the whole superb, and the dialogue only rarely gets bogged down in that stentorian turn of phrase that Japanese-to-English translations are often saddled with. Even when they do appear, it's nothing cheesier than you'd find nightly on Adult Swim. Japanese voiceovers are included, but mouth movements in cutscenes are timed for English, so it may be a little disorienting if you normally use Japanese voices when the option is presented.

As to replay value, there's a lot of it. Many new planes are unlocked only after earning enough "experience" flying in a particular type of aircraft. Once you've filled up the bar by blowing up enemies with a particular plane during the campaign, the next plane in that model's particular tree becomes available to buy with points you earn at the end of each campaign mission. It requires a lot of play time to unlock everything, but there are also two extra difficulty modes unlocked when you finish the Campaign the first time through, so if you enjoy the game enough to want to unlock everything, there will be enough challenge for you to make it seem not as monotonous as it might otherwise seem.

All in all it is a great game for the $17 I paid, and I certainly recommend that anyone with a PS2 and an appreciation for action games and anime check it out as well. It's very likely to be a pleasant surprise.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/17/09

Game Release: Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War (US, 10/25/04)