Superbuu3's Review: Ace Combat 5: Squadron Leader

I feel like i may as well start writing some reviews again.

So here we have Ace Combat 5 a plane game by namco. I'd describe its flying as more arcadey then sim mainly because i can get away with flying like an idiot for quite a while without dying. Let's face it though if you can't do a loop the loop whenever you feel like it a plane game is fairly dull.

This game is fairly easy if you familiar with plane games, but there are a hell of a lot of unlockables and i think to get them all would require a decent amount of skill. Fortunately I used to play really terrible plane games on archaic machines so i'm used to planes handling like fridges and hence find the controls on this fairly intuitive.

In terms of gameplay you have a huge variety of planes and a squadron of pilots with you (normally 3) and you get to fly around and issue orders to them not particularly complex orders but it gets the job done. Lets face it any game your issuing orders your bound to be the one who's doing all the work. On the plus side of things your co-pilots are not stupid enough to make you fail missions, like is so common in games with AI controlled ppl on your side. Lets face it that is the single biggest flaw in games involving a squad.

Anyways in terms of graphics and presentation this game does look good. Looking at the planes they are amazing. There are nice cutscenes for the game for a complex story involving politics and a few explosions. personally the ratio of politics to explosions was too high for me so i ignored the story, bt if you care about story in a game like this you will be more then satisfied. I think there may have been a twist mind i tuned in and out long enough to probably miss it .

So all round I would say if you like planes flying fast and blowing up stuff gt this. You have a massive pay load of missiles so blowing stuff up is easy and fun. Although the difficulty randomly jacks up as soon as an ace appears and the game seems to think screwing with your targetting system is the same as the Aces flying better. Either way they do provide a challenge though personally i just change to machine gun and shott the crap out of them.