"Ace Combat: Zero Feedback"

Ace Combat: Zero

Do the name Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglas, Saab, Mikoyan or Sukhoi sound familiar to you? That's alright, this isn't a pop quiz and not knowing any of these name won't curtail you from enjoying Ace Combat: Zero. A mission base amalgamate part arcade, part flight simulated game from Namco. In this sixth installment of the franchise, name The Belkan War, the player is trust into the role of a mercenary pilot in a story that is the precursor to Ace Combat 5.

Life as a mercenary pilot…

As a mercenary pilot for Ustio, you begin off in a familiar mission to down several enemy bombers. You are initially given three real world license, old 1950's jet fighters for this promising start. As you taxi off the runway, you are pair by a single wingman who you can issue commands such as defend my six, joint attack on a single target, free attack, focus on ground, or focus on air attack. You can also assign a secondary special weapon for him and give him the permission to use them in the appropriate moment. Although you could assign him special secondary, you couldn't change his designated plane. As the player progress through the game, other license planes like the F-14D, F-2A, F/A-22A, Su 27 are unlock. Some require the completion of the mission, other require you to shoot down its corresponding Ace. You could then purchase these war machines in the garage with money you earned. Each plane comes with three special secondary weapons, which can be outfitted to your plane for multirole purposes. During mission, depends on how merciless or fair you are, a new Ace Style Slider is introduce that will slide accordingly to your action. If you believe in all fair play and won't hit the innocent or an opponent when he's down, then you become a knight Ace, for the opposite, you will become a mercenary Ace, in between is the soldier ace. What this bring out is different encounters during dogfights with different ace squadrons. This gives the player a little leeway to altered the scenarios a bit, but still it isn't a lot. Compare to any dead scripted as is fly by, it manages to stay fresh that is until you manage to beat everything to get that all important texture for your favorite plane. Aside from these changes, some stage also breaks up into three possible options. You are to choose one of them either defend the carrier from aerial attack, focus on the ground targets only or a mix of both. This along with the ace style meter will requires the player to go through the game at least three times for a completion record.

Better AI

Life as a fighter pilot demands a lot from you, and no, they don't want to know your age. What you have to do is engage in a lot of dog fighting and for the first time in the Ace series, the enemy AI has been enhance substantially to provide a challenging close quarter combat. No longer are you like in the previous series, fire two missiles and forget it. Enemy makes an effort to evade and gang up on up and they do it with competence. At least better than anything I have seen so far. These fight, especially against the ace squadron in the later mission are extremely fun. AC:Zero don't just throw planes at you on masses, which technically true, but Namco mix up a bit with huge sci-fi fortress, this time it's a monolithic laser gun, an enormous super bomber, an underground tunnel aperture and some fantastic dueling at the finally. All in all, the improve AI spice things up a bit. That's not to say there isn't concession, several elements as seen in previous series had been tone down, practically the tunnel run that mimic Star War's final Death Star attack. I'm actually glad this is gone as the example from AC5 brought a lot of unnecessary aggravation and to this day, I still resent it.

Graphic and sound

The improvement in AC:Zero is marginal, there seen to be more low resolution JPEG texture trees on the ground, some of the fighter models look better and refine. Other than that, the graphic is virtually identical to AC5, which made me ask, is this an expansion? This is still a very pretty game. The soundtrack however is superb, when you get to the very final duel, crack up the volume because the orchestra really stir up some excitement.

Story

The plot of AC5 was a cringe inducing experience. There were a lot of work that went into the CG team, which I feel was a total waste of human talents when there isn't a solid script or compelling plot to complement it. This time around, the studio used live actors and layer the scene with filters to almost create a dreamy effect. It's really not bad, in a technical and professional sense is very well done. However, actors are given awkward scripts to read. Not good script, but really strange materials that feel like it was translated from Japanese and probably is. Funny thing about video games is despite the enormous production cost, studio houses still won't hire a descent writer to pen a descent script. Almost any blogger can write better than this.

Overall opinion

I really like AC:Zero for its better game play, but after going through another set of sorties. I can't help but to feel there's very little originality behind this. Yes, it has been done before and to death. Despite the new implementation that encourages replay, the game is still same old Ace Combat. Is it possible to tolerate a seventh in the series, especially when I already know it's going be another giant monolith of a gun that I will be destroying, a giant bomber the size of an island that I need to down, or another into the tunnel you go sort of run and destroy the core sort of thing. Not to mention all the regular drones that you click and shoot. There is no original material left except recycle one that's repackage and resold to diehard fan boys.

AC:Zero is a good game. From time to time it feels like an expansion pack. There are some good elements to it, but is shorter than AC5. It is still a good run and possibly a final sortie for me in the series.

Score: 8

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/22/06