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Thursday 6 March, 2008
GAMEPLAY
Now that I'm near the end of the game, things have picked up since my last entry. I've gotten past the hurdles of the early and mid game, and levels are much more a test of my flying skills then my ability to manage my resources to get a plane that would let me dominate a level. The level I started with was an interesting one. I had to fly through a network of radars while remaining undetected. As I flew closer to the ground, the radius of the radar decreased, opening small holes that I could slip though. Sadly, the radar can only been seen on the "radar" screen, leading most of my level to be played as a small red triangle avoiding various sizes of circles. In another level, where I had to shoot down an orbital laser platform, I began to feel that the with the large target on the underside labelled "Laser" and the dodgeable bullets, it almost felt like I was playing a 3D shmup. The other level that really stood out to me was the last level. Though the begining of the level is trivial (simply shoot some ground targets) the most annoying thing about the level is its opening, which takes several minutes. This would not be much of a problem if not for the second stage of the level, which requires the player to fly quickly through a narrow corridor. As mentioned before, the collision detection in this game is a little quirky, and the control scheme tends to fall apart when trying to maneuver through tight corridors. Crashing is common, and to crash sends you all the way to the begining of the level, much to your chagrin.
DESIGN
In general, Ace Combat is one of the few remaining flight simulation series. Its success is attributed to its strong story, realism, and incredible gameplay.
When it comes to realism, Ace Combat does not disapoint. The aircraft's parts move realistically as you fly, missiles behave reletively realistically; even the Prandtl-Glauert singularity can be seen when you hit mach 1 in your fighter. Mission objectives are now much more focused; where AC4 would simply have "Score so many points in this time limit" AC5 chalenges you to protect friends, destroy enemy contingents, break through fortresses, and even fly in formation. With its story, Ace Combat 5 has a number of realistic cutscenes which depict your fighter wing. The many characters have a realistic feel to them, and make you want to get farther into the game. The story's few downsides are, without a doubt, the miserable poetry your wing mates spout during missions. When you're in an intense dogfight, a wingman breaking in to eloquently (and sometimes ineloquently) describe the snowy terrain below really kills the mood. Otherwise, the controls are well thought out, and the camera system, which allows you to follow enemies and missiles, is a joy. The only issue I had with camera was with bombing, as when in 3rd person view, it was often difficult to get the bombing indicator on the target without loosing a good deal of altitude, leading me to either crash on bombing runs, or drop my bombs point blank onto their targets.
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