Post by Lezard on Jun 15, 2008 13:47:22 GMT -5
Review #1 – June 15, 2008 – Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception (2006)
“One fears what One cannot see or detect”
This statement is true is a lot of cases, both in a general and wide sense. People are generally afraid of something if they cannot see it. They do not understand it and they cannot view it’s coming. The same goes in the essence of War. When Stealth Technology Camouflaged ships and planes from being picked up my enemy Radar, it opened an entire world of possibilities of their attack strategies. They could fly right behind an enemy base and strike, without the Enemy knowing until they could spot them in the sky about to strike.
But is just Stealth Technology really that scary? You can’t detect them on Radar, but at least you can still see them in the sky before they attack. What would it be like in a war if your enemy had created not only Stealth Camouflage but also Optical Camouflage? To be virtually unseen from Radar and from your own eyes until an attack is initiated from them (Philadelphia Experiment anyone?) Bandai Namco decided to make a simulation of what that would be like in their rendition of the classic Ace Combat series on the Playstation Portable, Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception!
This is my first Review for this Semi-Week Review thing on here. I hope you enjoy it!
Storyline
Ace Combat X starts out in the middle of a war between two countries, Aurelia and Leasath. You are an Ace Pilot, and your squadron is pretty much all that’s left of the Aurelian Air Force. You are sent on a mission to stop a seemingly small group of Leasath Aircraft from bombing Aurelia’s last standing Stronghold, Aubrey Base. The Mission goes at ease, and the sky is clear, or so it seems. An enormous Plane seems to appear out of nowhere via Optical Camouflage and launches an SWBM (Shock Wave Ballistic Missle), completely wiping out your squadron aside from you, whom took a Nose-Dive just at the right time. Now the games begin. You are a lone pilot, setting out to liberate your country from the Leasath forces and to destroy the Camouflaged Airborne Fortess, the Gleipnir.
The storyline within Skies of Deception follows a normal Mission based system where you proceed along your map of Aurelia, attempting to liberate the country and free it from Leasath’s control. There are 15 missions in total, along with 15 other “Mission Branches” where you can be in the same area, but be doing a different mission depending on which route you take during Campaign Mode. While 15 missions does not sound like much, it takes quite the time to be able to complete this game, even for an experienced player.
This is not a simple “Destroy a couple aircraft and you move onto the next mission” type game, such as many portable games are known and hated for (Ex: Star Fox Commmand) You will be doing many different types of missions, such as Search-And-Destroy missions where you’d simply be going out and taking down an enemy fleet(s) to free a city, Rescue missions where you would need to clear a path for trapped Comrades so they can escape back to a base while you fend off enemy forces, Raids where you will have to strategically fly around enemy radar fields to strike a base for supplies, amongst many other things. This game’s storyline and varied missions will not bore you, unless you just don’t like games like this.
Visuals
Almost the first Question for a PSP game (Or just about any Game) nowadays is always “How do the visuals look?” since this nifty system has utilized clean-cut 3-Dimensional graphics in a lot of ways much better than Nintendo’s portable system seems to be doing. If someone were to ask me about the visuals of this game, I would simply reply to them by saying “Ace Combat 4” At first it seems very hard to believe that a portable system could be able to sustain the same Graphic quality of a Playstation 2 game, but this game does not disappoint.
Almost everything in the game is very detailed, from the planes, their paint-jobs, to the territories you will be exploring and even the Docking Bay where you choose your Plane, Tune them up, But Parts, etc. I did say “Almost” everything was very detailed, and that is very much true. Once in awhile, you will find something that isn’t too detailed such as the occasional city with only Skyscraper type buildings in the city alone with a flat surface underneath them with lights on them to signify the existence of smaller buildings (Normally the case for the smaller cities, but the larger ones are more detailed)
As far as the visuals of Contact is concerned, it is near-perfect, if not perfect. You will see splashes and waves in the water if you were to fly down low and almost touch it, or if you were to fire a missle, bomb, or Machine Gun Round into it. Most Buildings within towns will not have much of a reaction if you were to bombard them with missles or bombs. Contact with enemy planes, is, however, pretty detailed, explosion-wise. True, you can’t really tell if there’s visual damage when you fire a round into an enemy plane with your Machine-Gun since they are moving way too quick for you to be able to look, but when they are destroyed the explosions look very detailed and realistic, in a way.
Controls/Gameplay
There won’t be all too much to say about the controls of this game. It follows the same layout as pretty much all of the past games have had….
R – Accelerate
L- Decelerate
X – Fire Machine Gun
O – Fire Special Weapon/Missle
Triangle – Switch Target
Square – Switch between Special Weapon and Missle
Control Stick – Roll/Steer Plane
D-Pad – Trim up/down/left/right
Since it follows that same type of layout, it will be fairly easy for a player of the past games to just pick it up and start playing with a good feel right away. The game offers a great variety of areas and different ways to fly, such as around snowy mountains, through cities, and even through small caves and underground facilities as well as the traditional Normal, Hard, and Ace difficulties. Players new to the Ace Combat series may feel a little weird with the layout, as the game isn’t something you can just pick up and be great at your first run-through, even in the Normal Difficulty, but it will get easier fairly quickly, as you play through the game and begin teaching yourself strategies for combat, such as ways to dodge missles and such.
Music/Sound
Ah, the music of the Ace Combat series has always been fun to listen to. The Quiet, steady tunes for Mission Briefing, the Epic, fast paced rock music for Big Boss-Type Battle Missions. Ace Combat X is not an exception to that rule just because it’s on a portable system. The soundtrack is just as wonderful as any of the soundtracks of the other games and will give you a great playing experience if you play with headphones on.
As for sound effects, they were also very well done for this game. You can hear very detailed things, such as Machine-Gun rounds hitting Planes, Water, Buildings, etc. They’ve made it very realistic, sounding with different sounds for each of those above mentioned: Water, Buildings, Planes, as well as ground targets, such as AA Guns, SAMs, and Tanks. Explosions are very….loud. Just as they should be, they can really make you jump if you have your headphones in and you go in for a close range attack and blow an enemy plane or stronghold away.
OVERALL
Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception is a great addition to the Ace Combat franchise, as well as a great addition to the PSP’s library. It utilized an engine very similar to the engine from Ace Combat 4 and was able to make a console-feeling game on Sony’s nifty portable system with all the joy of the franchise: Varied Missions, a great, lengthy Storyline, Over 30 obtainable planes (some exclusive to ACX) and much, much more!
The only things that can bring this game down would be the poorly detailed smaller towns, which have mostly flat surfaces with just lights on top of them to symbolize buildings. Other than that, it is a great game that just begs to be picked up and played. If you’re a PSP owner and wish to try out the Ace Combat franchise, then this is your game!
My Rating: 9.5/10
Thanks for reading my review. Stay tuned next time for another review that will be coming! Here’s a hint as to what it will be of.
“A key opens doors”
Be sure to let me know what you think of the review! See you on the 29th!
“One fears what One cannot see or detect”
This statement is true is a lot of cases, both in a general and wide sense. People are generally afraid of something if they cannot see it. They do not understand it and they cannot view it’s coming. The same goes in the essence of War. When Stealth Technology Camouflaged ships and planes from being picked up my enemy Radar, it opened an entire world of possibilities of their attack strategies. They could fly right behind an enemy base and strike, without the Enemy knowing until they could spot them in the sky about to strike.
But is just Stealth Technology really that scary? You can’t detect them on Radar, but at least you can still see them in the sky before they attack. What would it be like in a war if your enemy had created not only Stealth Camouflage but also Optical Camouflage? To be virtually unseen from Radar and from your own eyes until an attack is initiated from them (Philadelphia Experiment anyone?) Bandai Namco decided to make a simulation of what that would be like in their rendition of the classic Ace Combat series on the Playstation Portable, Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception!
This is my first Review for this Semi-Week Review thing on here. I hope you enjoy it!
Storyline
Ace Combat X starts out in the middle of a war between two countries, Aurelia and Leasath. You are an Ace Pilot, and your squadron is pretty much all that’s left of the Aurelian Air Force. You are sent on a mission to stop a seemingly small group of Leasath Aircraft from bombing Aurelia’s last standing Stronghold, Aubrey Base. The Mission goes at ease, and the sky is clear, or so it seems. An enormous Plane seems to appear out of nowhere via Optical Camouflage and launches an SWBM (Shock Wave Ballistic Missle), completely wiping out your squadron aside from you, whom took a Nose-Dive just at the right time. Now the games begin. You are a lone pilot, setting out to liberate your country from the Leasath forces and to destroy the Camouflaged Airborne Fortess, the Gleipnir.
The storyline within Skies of Deception follows a normal Mission based system where you proceed along your map of Aurelia, attempting to liberate the country and free it from Leasath’s control. There are 15 missions in total, along with 15 other “Mission Branches” where you can be in the same area, but be doing a different mission depending on which route you take during Campaign Mode. While 15 missions does not sound like much, it takes quite the time to be able to complete this game, even for an experienced player.
This is not a simple “Destroy a couple aircraft and you move onto the next mission” type game, such as many portable games are known and hated for (Ex: Star Fox Commmand) You will be doing many different types of missions, such as Search-And-Destroy missions where you’d simply be going out and taking down an enemy fleet(s) to free a city, Rescue missions where you would need to clear a path for trapped Comrades so they can escape back to a base while you fend off enemy forces, Raids where you will have to strategically fly around enemy radar fields to strike a base for supplies, amongst many other things. This game’s storyline and varied missions will not bore you, unless you just don’t like games like this.
Visuals
Almost the first Question for a PSP game (Or just about any Game) nowadays is always “How do the visuals look?” since this nifty system has utilized clean-cut 3-Dimensional graphics in a lot of ways much better than Nintendo’s portable system seems to be doing. If someone were to ask me about the visuals of this game, I would simply reply to them by saying “Ace Combat 4” At first it seems very hard to believe that a portable system could be able to sustain the same Graphic quality of a Playstation 2 game, but this game does not disappoint.
Almost everything in the game is very detailed, from the planes, their paint-jobs, to the territories you will be exploring and even the Docking Bay where you choose your Plane, Tune them up, But Parts, etc. I did say “Almost” everything was very detailed, and that is very much true. Once in awhile, you will find something that isn’t too detailed such as the occasional city with only Skyscraper type buildings in the city alone with a flat surface underneath them with lights on them to signify the existence of smaller buildings (Normally the case for the smaller cities, but the larger ones are more detailed)
As far as the visuals of Contact is concerned, it is near-perfect, if not perfect. You will see splashes and waves in the water if you were to fly down low and almost touch it, or if you were to fire a missle, bomb, or Machine Gun Round into it. Most Buildings within towns will not have much of a reaction if you were to bombard them with missles or bombs. Contact with enemy planes, is, however, pretty detailed, explosion-wise. True, you can’t really tell if there’s visual damage when you fire a round into an enemy plane with your Machine-Gun since they are moving way too quick for you to be able to look, but when they are destroyed the explosions look very detailed and realistic, in a way.
Controls/Gameplay
There won’t be all too much to say about the controls of this game. It follows the same layout as pretty much all of the past games have had….
R – Accelerate
L- Decelerate
X – Fire Machine Gun
O – Fire Special Weapon/Missle
Triangle – Switch Target
Square – Switch between Special Weapon and Missle
Control Stick – Roll/Steer Plane
D-Pad – Trim up/down/left/right
Since it follows that same type of layout, it will be fairly easy for a player of the past games to just pick it up and start playing with a good feel right away. The game offers a great variety of areas and different ways to fly, such as around snowy mountains, through cities, and even through small caves and underground facilities as well as the traditional Normal, Hard, and Ace difficulties. Players new to the Ace Combat series may feel a little weird with the layout, as the game isn’t something you can just pick up and be great at your first run-through, even in the Normal Difficulty, but it will get easier fairly quickly, as you play through the game and begin teaching yourself strategies for combat, such as ways to dodge missles and such.
Music/Sound
Ah, the music of the Ace Combat series has always been fun to listen to. The Quiet, steady tunes for Mission Briefing, the Epic, fast paced rock music for Big Boss-Type Battle Missions. Ace Combat X is not an exception to that rule just because it’s on a portable system. The soundtrack is just as wonderful as any of the soundtracks of the other games and will give you a great playing experience if you play with headphones on.
As for sound effects, they were also very well done for this game. You can hear very detailed things, such as Machine-Gun rounds hitting Planes, Water, Buildings, etc. They’ve made it very realistic, sounding with different sounds for each of those above mentioned: Water, Buildings, Planes, as well as ground targets, such as AA Guns, SAMs, and Tanks. Explosions are very….loud. Just as they should be, they can really make you jump if you have your headphones in and you go in for a close range attack and blow an enemy plane or stronghold away.
OVERALL
Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception is a great addition to the Ace Combat franchise, as well as a great addition to the PSP’s library. It utilized an engine very similar to the engine from Ace Combat 4 and was able to make a console-feeling game on Sony’s nifty portable system with all the joy of the franchise: Varied Missions, a great, lengthy Storyline, Over 30 obtainable planes (some exclusive to ACX) and much, much more!
The only things that can bring this game down would be the poorly detailed smaller towns, which have mostly flat surfaces with just lights on top of them to symbolize buildings. Other than that, it is a great game that just begs to be picked up and played. If you’re a PSP owner and wish to try out the Ace Combat franchise, then this is your game!
My Rating: 9.5/10
Thanks for reading my review. Stay tuned next time for another review that will be coming! Here’s a hint as to what it will be of.
“A key opens doors”
Be sure to let me know what you think of the review! See you on the 29th!