Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War

"Not that this game needs more praise..."

I'll stop short of giving a full review for Ace Combat 5 because it's praises are well documented in the dozen or so other reviews that came before mine. In short, it's the best PS2 flight combat game available to date, but it can be frustrating in several places due to some poor foresight in mission design.

GAMEPLAY: 8/10
The controls and overall gameplay are well-honed (as they should be for a fifth installment of a franchise). These get a solid 10 out of 10. HOWEVER, level and mission design are a big part of the overall gameplay experience, and some of this aspect of the game looks like it isn't so well thought out. The major problem is the lack of checkpoints in some very long missions. This by itself would be frustrating, but it's exaggerated by the fact that the most difficult segment of most missions comes at the end, after 20 minutes of very easy flying. This means that if you screw up at the end (sometimes even after the mission accomplished message!) you have to flying the whole freaking mission ALL OVER AGAIN. This includes: watching the cutscenes (you can skip them, but STILL), taking off/landing/refueling, and most inexcusably, flying out to the mission action area. In most missions, just getting to the thick of the fight takes at least a minute or two of real time. This time is well used to provide inter-character conversation for story and character development, but we really only need to experience it once. There's also the ubiquitous annoyance that plagues all good dogfighting games: escort missions. Almost every mission in Ace Combat is an escort mission or is timed. Dogfighting a good opponent (or several lesser ones) is a chess match, and we should be able to take as much time as we want or need to finish off (or toy with) our enemies.

GRAPHICS: 7/10
The graphics are about as good as you could expect on a PS-2 The aircraft are well and realistically modeled, though they lose some detail in the full-black Razgriz paint scheme. Terrain is also well modeled, though the city models look a little blocky. I don't know if it was just me and my TV, but the whole game has a very pastel feel with muted, even dreary colors. Maybe I only felt this way because I had just played Heroes of the Pacific on Xbox. Or maybe they were just going for the "Inside of an AWACS Control Room" look and feel. There are a number of CG scenes that advance the story, and these are all very well done.

SOUND: 6/10
Is that what a machine gun really sounds like from the inside of a cockpit? Even if it is, I'd think I'd rather have something that sounds more menacing than an electric toothbrush. General game sound effects are fairly well done. There's lots of in-game chatter, although it's frequently annoying when your mates are asking lame questions that you have to answer on the directional pad (taking your thumb off the control stick of course). "Hey Blaze, are you having a hard time flying through this twisty sewer pipe at 1200 mph with bogeys on your tail?" <- YES NO -> I also have a general objection to the Hands Across the Water U.N. Love not War song that gets played, hummed, sung, or whistled through the radio in several missions. That hardly gets the blood pumping for a supersonic dogfight. I think I'd rather listen to some Otep on my iPod, thank you very much.

STORY: 9/10
It's obvious that a lot of good writing went into the story, both in this game and in the prequels. In most of the genre, the story is pre-written for how a historical conflict went. In Ace Combat, the story is set in a fictional world in the future, so there's a lot of room for creativity. They keep the story accessible and intriguing by creating obvious parallels between the ficitonal nations, and actual ones: Osea is America, Yuktobania is Russia, and the evil Belka is fascist Germany. The story of the war and the fighter squadron is Tom Clancy quality, and goes above and beyond what we normally see in an action game. That being said, it's still not quite as deep as Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, or many others, so it doesn't get a 10.

CONCEPT: 8/10
Ace Combat is a well established franchise, and it offers good old-fashioned jet-plane dogfighting. It's nothing revolutionary, but it sure is fun! What Ace Combat does offer that's exceptional is the ability to unlock, buy, and upgrade planes and color schemes. Not that this is something exceptional in itself, but the number of planes is exceptional, as is the ability to take any plane into any mission (except for a select few). I like dogfighting, so the reviewer tilt gives it an 8.

VALUE: 10/10
The single player mission will take some time to complete, even on normal difficulty due to the number and length of missions (20-30 hours). Unlocking all the planes and getting all the medals and color schemes could take four to five times as long. All in all, a great value, especially since the game's old enough to be offered at a reduced price in most stores.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 02/27/06