Uninspired and an ultimately disappointing sequel to AC4

User Rating: 6.3 | Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War PS2
By Decker12 | Review Date:
The latest Ace Combat game borrows heavily from Ace Combat 4 - way too heavily. It should have been named Ace Combat 4.5. There's just not enough improvements or excitement in the story to fork out another $50 for this semi-sequel/upgrade. Sure, there's more planes to fly, but most of the time you won't even bother buying them. Complete a handful of early missions and you'll be rewarded with a series of unlockable planes, each better than the other. As a result, the pacing feels off, because you'll jump from a beginner fighter into a powerhouse, skipping the 5 or 6 jets in between. Ace Combat 4 moved you slowly through the jet upgrades, and AC5 just tosses tons of cash at you and tons of fighters, most of which you'll never bother to pilot. Sure, you can fly all sorts of variations of mediocre jets, but in the end, you'll be sticking with just a few of them. To make matters worse, anyone with even basic knowledge of real life aircraft will be sorely disappointed in the game's stats that they put on each jet. It feels like the developers took a bunch of real life jets and just about randomly assigned them flight performance statistics. For instance, in AC5, the F16 is considered a below average dog fighter and has a relatively small score in air-to-air combat performance... even non-flight sim fans can appreciate how ridiculous that sounds. You can equip each of your 3 wingmen with different planes, which seem to make little difference on their eventual abilities. In missions, you'll be doing all the work. They'll score an occasional hit, and you can direct their fire at arbitrary things (such as "cover me", "attack", etc) but for the most part, you should just buy them the cheapest planes that are vaguely suited for your current mission and take things into your own hands. The missions all seem to be variations of the AC4 missions, including a beach landing where you provide close air support for a ground assault (IN THE RAIN no less, JUST like the AC4 mission!), some frustrating escort missions, high altitude dogfights, and some extremely far fetched and lengthy "boss" type missions. There's even a super-weapon that fires off and makes you climb above 5000ft to avoid it, JUST like AC4. In-mission reloading is rare in AC5, so you'll be using your guns more often (which now have unlimited ammo). Finally, the missions are not as clear cut as AC4. Often, you'll be doing your thing, listening to the prattle on the radio, maybe dogfighting, and then out of the blue, you'll get MISSION FAILED. Obviously something somewhere got shot down or whatever, but you have little clue before the fact. The most annoying thing about the game is that the wingmen NEVER SHUT UP. They're ALWAYS prattling on and on about this or that, and asking you questions that you must use the D-pad to respond. They all have a completely unrealistic, blatant disregard for orders. They'll offer Zen wisdom on war and peace. And they'll talk to you about anything. Over and over again. And then the enemy radio chimes in. Over and over again. The voice acting is over the top and often the context of the conversation has nothing to do with the mission. You're lucky to get ten straight seconds of silence in the game at any one time. Still, AC5 can be a fun game, with it's arcade pacing and easy flight modeling. Graphics are good, controls are tight, framerate keeps up. However the already contrived story eventually falls flat, the cutscenes are uninspiring, and it's hardly a sequel to the far superior AC4. If you want to truly experience this series, save the $30 and buy the now three year old AC4 in the bargain bin.

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