Paul

Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War has the look of a glossy, finished game. There are really no bugs, short of a few minor targeting issues in the last mission, and all of the numerous CGI cut scenes look fantastic. Every single mission is thought out, and paced reasonably so you won’t be bored one minute and overwhelmed the next. Like all of the previous Ace Combat games, this is most definitely not a realistic  flight sim what so ever; you can take your plane into incredible, death defying aerial maneuvers that could never be accomplish in a game more focused on realism such as the Microsoft Flight Simulator series. In this case, a lack of realism really is good for the game: I can’t imagine how boring flying would be if you had to fly for hours to get to a designated target or having to execute a perfect thirty degree turn whenever you wanted to break from formation. While the gameplay may not be realistic, the aircraft models most definitely are. All of the planes are very detailed and look great. It’s obvious the Namco put all of their resources into anything that flies, but nothing on the ground got a slice of the graphics cake. The trees look like cocktail toothpicks, the ocean (that does look nice in all of the cut scenes) is flat and completely unconvincing, and buildings look like metal, plaid building blocks. This isn’t a big strike against the game, since you are often speeding along so fast everything is a blur.

Now, if you played the last Ace Combat game, not much has changed. There are two separate game modes; Campaign and Arcade, just like the previous game. In Arcade mode, you play a series of progressively difficult missions in which you need to shoot down so many units in a certain amount of time to move on to the next stage. It’s a fun mode, but it’s crippled by the lack of competitive multiplayer mode, or any multiplayer mode. The lack of multiplayer really is the game’s biggest flaw, and it’s surprising since the last Ace Combat game had a few multiplayer modes. It really is the only big problem with the game, but the campaign mode makes up for all that. In the Campaign mode you play through thirty plus missions all tied together with about 15 CGI cut scenes. These can be quite lengthy, and are absolutely gorgeous. The story centers around you, as a member of the Osean Air Force (you are named only by your call sign, “Blaze”) and your 3 wingmen as you are attacked by a once friendly country, and the story eventually leads to you having to fly through a miniscule train tunnel to save the free world. It’s not the most deep, thought provoking story but it links the missions rather well and has a decently surprising plot twist. The voice acting is quality, but the writing really isn’t. While all of your wingmen sound like the stereotypical rookie, jock and ace, they don’t say things that fit their tone. It’s a bit weird to hear a supposedly seasoned combat vet of the Air Force say something like “I just don’t want to fight” or “This was supposed to be a bird of peace…”. Though if you tire of the somewhat bizarre voice acting, you can just turn it off or revert to the traditional Japanese voices with english subtitles. The sound effects are just what you would expect: great. The engine sounds are very authentic and all of the weapons are very realistic as well. Hearing the ping of bullets hitting your plane or the roar of your engines really helps to immerse you in the action, and you can tell the Namco put a lot of work into getting accurate sound effects. The actual in game music (a mix of heavy orchestra and instrumental rock) is impressive, but what’s odd is that it is always at an extremely low volume- it’s basically muted. You can rarely hear the music, expect for at the end of the game when you unlock item in the menu bar which enables you to listen to every track in the game at any volume you wish. 

If you have played any previous Ace Combat game, you know what to expect from the gameplay and mission structure: choose a aircraft from your massive fleet of planes including F-22s, A-10s, Mig-29s and more, then charge into battle and begin to shoot down the numerous amount of enemies on the ground and in the sky and complete the linear mission objectives. Each mission is a little different; however, and like I said before; each one ties in well with the story. Some mission are more geared toward ground combat (bombing an enemy beach, for example) while others are decidedly air based (shooting down retreating cargo and fighter planes.)  Most mission are a nice mix of both that feels just right. As far as difficulty goes, it’s pretty easy to shoot down an enemy when you’re attacking him one on one, but if you are attacking more then 2 or 3, it will be hard to manage. The other enemies will flank you and attempt to distract you and deter you from shooting down their comrade. 

What has always been a selling point for the Ace Combat series is the sheer amount of aircraft that you can pick from, and Ace Combat 5 most certainly does not disappoint. You start out with and F-5 and earn “points” by destroying enemies and once you have accumulated enough points, you can buy more planes. Each plane has special weapon, such as a SAAM (a long range guided air missile), rocket pods, huge bombs and much more. Of course, there are 2 default weapons that every plane is automatically equipped with in the beginning of each level. Those are the “Missile” and the machine gun. The missiles are effective against air and ground targets, and easy to use; point your plane at a enemy, lock on and shoot. Unlike in the the last game, where you had an limited set of machine gun bullets, you can fire this gun endlessly. The down side to this is that now, you can’t return to base and rearm your missiles as you could previously. Each plane also has four possible paint jobs; The standard default paint job, the enemy’s paint job for that plane (which is earned once you beat the game), an all black paint job (earned half way through the game), and the “Ace” paint job, which you earn individually for each plane by shooting down a designated enemy plane in each mission, after you’ve beat the game. As far as controls go, Namco’s really nailed them. The game utilizes the same, tried and true left analog stick moves, right looks, but now the R1, R2 and Square buttons are pressure sensitive. For example, when you push lightly down on the square button, which controls the minimap, it will zoom out a tad. Press down harder, and it will zoom out farther, and so on until the entire map is shown. 

You have three different camera view options: Outside of your craft, Viewing from the cockpit showing the Head Up Display, and only the Head Up Display. If you’re going for more accuracy, stick to the regular Head Up Display which shows your current speed, altitude and more. But since all the planes look so great it’s fun to switch to the outside camera often. As for the cockpit view, it’s fine, but you field of view is restricted and it feels like something that you use for 30 seconds, and then switch to a better camera. The biggest addition gameplay and control-wise in this game is the command system. You can use the D-pad on the PS2 controller to allow your three squadmates to use special weapons, order them to attack only everything in you view screen, tell them to disperse over a wide area, or command them to cover you. While most of the time, the do follow your commands, It never really makes a whole lot of difference. The special weapon command is completely worthless, the forward attack command is rarely heeded, but the disperse and cover commands are alright. You’ll find yourself using them more often then not, if only by habit. The AI in the game is mostly solid, but as stated above your squadmates will sometimes not heed an order, but other then that they normally work together with you pretty intelligently. If you are chasing a bandit who’s at low health, one of your squad will often swoop into help if they can, and if you begin to move on a enemy that they’ve been trailing, they will pull back and cooperate with you. The one problem with the friendly AI is that they seem to have ADD- often times they will stop pursing a bogie after they have critically damaged them. The enemy AI is often not as smart as their counterparts- normally they will evade your missiles but sometimes they will all but ignore your missiles if they have something more important to focus on, like shooting down an ally or moving to a objective. That doesn’t happen very often; however, normally they put up a nice fight. While all of this stuff; the story, the gameplay, the content, the graphics, etc, will seem like it’s just ranging from mediocre to awesome, it all comes together to make a really cool, immersive experience that will really keep you hooked for the duration of the story. Unfortunately, once you do finish the game there isn’t much incentive to play it over again, unless you really love it- the story plays that much of a role in the missions that really don’t notice until you play through the campaign again. All in all Ace Combat 5 is an incredibly presented, both gameplay and graphics wise. It’s brought down a bit by the noticeable lack of multiplayer, but the cool story, fun gameplay, and amazing graphics more then outweigh that small discrepancy. 

At a glance, Mercenaries is exactly what it appears; a low rent Grand Theft Auto clone. Once you delve under the surface, however; it gains a personality of its own and will eventually have you hooked. The game begins with you as a mercenary working for the corporation “ExOps”, a morally gray security firm. You are dropped into Korea in spectacular fashion with the intent of capturing the deck of 52; fifty two radical figures in the North Korean extremist group. They’ve managed to invade parts of South Korea, and as expected, the South Koreans aren’t thrilled with that. Also involved are the Chinese, (they’re hoping for a piece of the Korean land pie), the Russian Mafia (RPGs for profit), and the A.N. (basically the U.N.).

You run around Korea doing missions for everyone but North Korea. The missions aren’t boring, not by a long shot: you’ll be biting your nails on some, and reveling in victory once you complete some of the difficult ones. However, they aren’t terribly inventive. Gunning down Mafia honchos for whoever happens to be hating them that day isn’t very far reaching, but it is fun. There’s also something to be said for the variety of the missions; one never feels like they just are doing the same thing for a different faction. Of course, you’ll be paid handsomely for your services; the game is called Mercenaries.

As I mentioned before, your main objective in the game is to capture the deck of 52. You gain intel on these despot’s location by completing missions for the four different forces. Once you have the intel, you pull up you PDA, and check your email. You’ll see something to the effect of “so and so is here, go get him”. As long as you have you have the intel, the member of the deck won’t change location, so you can go pick him up at your convenience. Picking him up entails handcuffing him and calling for an A.N. helicopter, which will pick him up and presumably send him off for a chat and tea with Guantanamo officials.

It’s rarely that cut and dried (luckily!); normally the member of the deck will keep an entourage of tanks, rockets, and helicopters to protect him. If it’s just too much for you, there’s the option of calling a air strike or something from long range, and going into “verify” the card later (taking a digital snapshot of his dead body and sending it to U.N. headquarters.) If you take the easy way, pay for the job is halved. Apparently, it’s harder to interrogate a dead guy. 

Just like in a regular card deck, the members of it are organized by suite. Clubs are the easiest, while Spades are the hardest to take down. Really, it’s possible to penetrate any Club’s defenses with a RPG and an assault rifle, but attack helicopters and carpet bombing is often required to neutralize a Spade. These 52 people are the focal point of mercenaries, and never fail to disappoint by the end of the game.

While the goal of the game is to find the deck, the real stars are the massive explosions: carpet bombing, artillery barrages, SCUDS, and AC-130s are just a few instruments of destruction available to your character (these fun little toys are sold by the Russian mafia). It’s absolutely a blast to nab your Card and run like hell while explosions abound in your path. The gunplay is also fun; there is a nice variety of rifles and rockets to keep the North Koreans on their toes. The vehicles are also top notch. Tanks, APCS, and Helis are all drivable (and also sold by the Russians), and all pack a punch. It’s really quite something to send a helicopter to the ground in front of you and be showered in fiery fragments. Both the explosives and vehicles are the best seen in a game so far on the PS2.   

Earlier, I compared the game to Grand Theft Auto. I’ve already established that this game is quite different from GTA; due in large part to its setting in a war zone. One thing that I wish the game had borrowed from the GTA series is a decent story and voice actors. Honestly, I think the actor for the Swedish mercenary was asleep when he recorded his lines. All in all, it’s very, very mediocre acting. Fortunately it isn’t so bad it takes from the experience, but that’s the best you can say for almost every character in the game. As far the story goes, it’s mostly obvious, textbook stuff. There are a few neat twists, but again: the best thing you can say about it is that it doesn’t bring down the experience. It’s unfortunate that a game so easily compared to GTA didn’t come up with a more compelling story.

Now, I have never been to Korea. I have done some research, though, and I’m pretty sure that Korean civilians don’t just drive one model of car. That’s right; the civilians in the game only drive one kind of car. It’s kind of grating to see the same, stupid white sedan round the corner in every town; Would it have been that hard for Pandemic to throw a few more car skins in there? There are several variations of a civilian cargo truck, but they stick to the outer roads. It’s not a gigantic deal, just a little weird.

It’s these kind of graphical discrepancies that bring the game down a bit, but all of the vehicles look pretty good, and the explosions and fire are amazing. The human models look alright- no one really expects the Mona Lisa in such an open game as this anyways.

Really, Mercenaries exceeded my expectations. It defined itself apart from other open world games, and nothing is as fun as simply wreaking havoc with your massive arsenal. The premise is interesting, and really in between the vehicles, premise, and guns, guns, guns, the game is just immersive. It will suck you in for hours, if you’re willing to accept the somewhat dry story.