Ace Combat 6
Posted: 2008-03-22 12:27pm
Continuation of this thread, as someone will probably bitch if I necro it.
Who else, if anyone, thought this game was broken? IMHO it is the worst Ace Combat game, as in least fun and most annoying, since the PS2 (i.e. worse than 4, 5 and 0, it's hard to compare with 3 and 2). Here are some problems I had with it;
* The game forces you to kill air targets quickly for the wrong reasons; i.e. retarded and helpless allies. Killing air targets quickly is frustrating, because;
* Normal missiles are virtually worthless on air targets. The effectiveness of missile guidance has been going steadily down since AC4 (where it was arguably excessive). AC4 and 5 were 'clear everything on the map' shoot-em-ups largely because with a bit of practice it was '2 shots, 1 kill, rapid repeat'. AC0 had enough AI and weak enough missiles that the air combat was genuinely challenging and interesting. However in AC0 you didn't usually have heavy time pressure due to incompetent allies, so you could wait for a good moment and line up your shots carefully. If AC6 enemies flew like AC4/5 enemies the weak missiles would be fine, but they dodge at least as well as AC0 enemies if not better (obviously I prefer decent standard missiles over docile enemies by AC6 has neither).
* The gun is overpowered. You can kill anything with a short burst, often without it actually looking like you've hit it. The 'completed entire game using just the gun' medal is there because this is much easier than doing the same for AC5. This is what renders the normal missiles worthless; by the time you get in range for them, you might as well just use the gun.
* SAAMs are still basically one-shot, one-kill as long as you don't have to evade. This makes some bits of the game (i.e shooting down the insanely hypermaneuverable drones) much less frustrating than they would be otherwise. It is however rather incongrous. Enemies will dodge furiously if you're close but fly along serenely when illuminated by SAAM guidance radar. Maybe this is because;
* The 'missile warning' alarm does not shut up. The thing is going off for literally 75% of the game, with most of the remaining 25% being flying between waypoints. In previous AC games, sections like this were intense. Since it happens all the time in AC6, it just gets annoying and grating.
* Of course the alarm is going off because you're constantly getting shot at, which means you have to keep breaking pursuit; and 'snap off a couple of missiles while you turn past the enemy' as in AC5 doesn't work because the missiles are useless. Again, this just means the gun is the most useful weapon, because you can snap of bursts whenever an enemy crosses your flightpath and odds are you'll down it. Newsflash, Namco; this is supposed to be Ace Combat, not Blazing Angels.
* The level design is generally boring and uninspired. In particular, the final level is boring and derivative (and the final two levels are much easier than the preceeding few). The missions are so long because they have a lot of repetition. The checkpoints are there because losing half an hour of progress because you made a mistake would be immensely frustrating. Sometimes there isn't a checkpoint and it's immensely frustrating anyway. The 'half an hour of playtime' issue comes because the point quotas for decent ranks are so high, which means spending lots of time killing huge numbers of non-core targets. Which brings me to;
* The time pressure mostly comes from the wrong place; allied stupidity. The actual time limits are generous. But the ground forces have a habit of getting themselves killed if you don't kill all the mission critical targets quickly. Of course, killing a complete set of mission critical targets makes all the unkilled bonus targets in that set disappear, lowering your potential score. So it's sensible to leave one mission critical target unkilled while you pick off the noncritical ones. But oh no, your allies aren't quite helpless, they will eventually kill a single target on their own. So you have to worry about killing enough to prevent them dying, but not enough for them to win before you're done killing secondary targets.
* This would be doable if there was only one force to worry about at once. But there isn't. The game gives the impression that the various ops in a mission don't start until you get to the relevant bit of the map, but more often than not this is a lie; allied forces start dying and complaining about being down to 40% of their force before you've even ventured over to their side of the map. Of course sometimes this is your fault, because you're in a dogfight that drifts into a new part of the map and an unwanted 'operation X starts' banner appears. Sometimes your allies die for no apparent reason at all, i.e. a new group of fighters spawns on bombers you're supposed to be protecting when you thought they were clear and went off to do something else, or the cruiser you're protecting suddenly sinks despite destroying every single enemy ship, aircraft and shore battery in the vicinity.
* The allied command system sounds good but is actually very rarely useful. I don't care if it's heretical, I preferred AC5's four-plane system.
* The battle against the five giant 'air cruisers' sounds fun, and probably should be, but is rendered an unfun pile of frustration by the above issues (particularly on hard or above, where extra targets are present). The best tactic is, as usual, to spray everything in sight with machine gun fire (at least, after you've expended all of your XMA6s; incidentally the medium range missiles are the only non-broken air-to-air weapon). The battle versus the Arkbird is two orders of magnitude more fun.
* The menu system and HUD design is ok but less helpful than previous versions (i.e. your current mission rank is no longer shown on the HUD).
After these gameplay issues, the fact that
* The music is definitely not as good as 4 or 5 (in which it was ridiculously awesome) and IMHO not as good as 0.
* The story is bland, disjointed and contains offensively stupid characters who you never start to care about. Both the combatant nations are sketchy caricatures compared to previous AC backstory.
* Yet another Ulysees-asteroid inspired megaweapon? Come on...
* The real-time cutscenes look bad compared to AC5's prerendered ones.
* There are less planes and weapons available. This includes less variety of enemies to blow up.
* The game is fairly short, about as long as AC4.
* The interestingly detailed enemies from AC0 have disappeared, to be replaced by the standard 'one super-squadron plus faceless hordes' setup.
hardly matter.
Good stuff, in brief;
* Graphics. Better than the previous generation but not exactly awe-inspiring. The main visible improvement is the persistent missile trails.
* Aircraft handling. A touch more realistic while still being suitable for what is essentially a shoot-em-up. Stalling occurs at more sensible times. The high-G turns are nice. The flight ceiling while not realistic isn't as annoyingly low as AC5.
* I haven't spotted any planes flying through mountains or buildings AC5 style.
Indifferent stuff;
* The proximity fuses on the missiles. Sometimes they kill in one hit, sometimes they don't. I like the realism in principle, but in actual gameplay the unpredictability would be annoying, were it not for a) you have such a ridiculous missile inventory that shooting off two at every air target would not be a problem and b) it doesn't make sense to use the standard missiles on air targets anyway, when the gun does the job faster and more reliably.
After this I am even more convinced that AC5 is the best Ace Combat game to date. It had the best level design, concept (war between actual superpowers, not two-bit poxy countries, with an interesting twist as opposed to AC0's stupid one), music, scope and general execution. The characters were a little silly but were actually engaging. Despite being a bit too easy, even on Ace (whereas AC0's difficultly level was spot-on for me), I still find it the most fun AC game to play.
I haven't tried the online mode yet. I remain optimistic that these issues were the result of the game being rushed out, and that AC7 will be awesome.
Who else, if anyone, thought this game was broken? IMHO it is the worst Ace Combat game, as in least fun and most annoying, since the PS2 (i.e. worse than 4, 5 and 0, it's hard to compare with 3 and 2). Here are some problems I had with it;
* The game forces you to kill air targets quickly for the wrong reasons; i.e. retarded and helpless allies. Killing air targets quickly is frustrating, because;
* Normal missiles are virtually worthless on air targets. The effectiveness of missile guidance has been going steadily down since AC4 (where it was arguably excessive). AC4 and 5 were 'clear everything on the map' shoot-em-ups largely because with a bit of practice it was '2 shots, 1 kill, rapid repeat'. AC0 had enough AI and weak enough missiles that the air combat was genuinely challenging and interesting. However in AC0 you didn't usually have heavy time pressure due to incompetent allies, so you could wait for a good moment and line up your shots carefully. If AC6 enemies flew like AC4/5 enemies the weak missiles would be fine, but they dodge at least as well as AC0 enemies if not better (obviously I prefer decent standard missiles over docile enemies by AC6 has neither).
* The gun is overpowered. You can kill anything with a short burst, often without it actually looking like you've hit it. The 'completed entire game using just the gun' medal is there because this is much easier than doing the same for AC5. This is what renders the normal missiles worthless; by the time you get in range for them, you might as well just use the gun.
* SAAMs are still basically one-shot, one-kill as long as you don't have to evade. This makes some bits of the game (i.e shooting down the insanely hypermaneuverable drones) much less frustrating than they would be otherwise. It is however rather incongrous. Enemies will dodge furiously if you're close but fly along serenely when illuminated by SAAM guidance radar. Maybe this is because;
* The 'missile warning' alarm does not shut up. The thing is going off for literally 75% of the game, with most of the remaining 25% being flying between waypoints. In previous AC games, sections like this were intense. Since it happens all the time in AC6, it just gets annoying and grating.
* Of course the alarm is going off because you're constantly getting shot at, which means you have to keep breaking pursuit; and 'snap off a couple of missiles while you turn past the enemy' as in AC5 doesn't work because the missiles are useless. Again, this just means the gun is the most useful weapon, because you can snap of bursts whenever an enemy crosses your flightpath and odds are you'll down it. Newsflash, Namco; this is supposed to be Ace Combat, not Blazing Angels.
* The level design is generally boring and uninspired. In particular, the final level is boring and derivative (and the final two levels are much easier than the preceeding few). The missions are so long because they have a lot of repetition. The checkpoints are there because losing half an hour of progress because you made a mistake would be immensely frustrating. Sometimes there isn't a checkpoint and it's immensely frustrating anyway. The 'half an hour of playtime' issue comes because the point quotas for decent ranks are so high, which means spending lots of time killing huge numbers of non-core targets. Which brings me to;
* The time pressure mostly comes from the wrong place; allied stupidity. The actual time limits are generous. But the ground forces have a habit of getting themselves killed if you don't kill all the mission critical targets quickly. Of course, killing a complete set of mission critical targets makes all the unkilled bonus targets in that set disappear, lowering your potential score. So it's sensible to leave one mission critical target unkilled while you pick off the noncritical ones. But oh no, your allies aren't quite helpless, they will eventually kill a single target on their own. So you have to worry about killing enough to prevent them dying, but not enough for them to win before you're done killing secondary targets.
* This would be doable if there was only one force to worry about at once. But there isn't. The game gives the impression that the various ops in a mission don't start until you get to the relevant bit of the map, but more often than not this is a lie; allied forces start dying and complaining about being down to 40% of their force before you've even ventured over to their side of the map. Of course sometimes this is your fault, because you're in a dogfight that drifts into a new part of the map and an unwanted 'operation X starts' banner appears. Sometimes your allies die for no apparent reason at all, i.e. a new group of fighters spawns on bombers you're supposed to be protecting when you thought they were clear and went off to do something else, or the cruiser you're protecting suddenly sinks despite destroying every single enemy ship, aircraft and shore battery in the vicinity.
* The allied command system sounds good but is actually very rarely useful. I don't care if it's heretical, I preferred AC5's four-plane system.
* The battle against the five giant 'air cruisers' sounds fun, and probably should be, but is rendered an unfun pile of frustration by the above issues (particularly on hard or above, where extra targets are present). The best tactic is, as usual, to spray everything in sight with machine gun fire (at least, after you've expended all of your XMA6s; incidentally the medium range missiles are the only non-broken air-to-air weapon). The battle versus the Arkbird is two orders of magnitude more fun.
* The menu system and HUD design is ok but less helpful than previous versions (i.e. your current mission rank is no longer shown on the HUD).
After these gameplay issues, the fact that
* The music is definitely not as good as 4 or 5 (in which it was ridiculously awesome) and IMHO not as good as 0.
* The story is bland, disjointed and contains offensively stupid characters who you never start to care about. Both the combatant nations are sketchy caricatures compared to previous AC backstory.
* Yet another Ulysees-asteroid inspired megaweapon? Come on...
* The real-time cutscenes look bad compared to AC5's prerendered ones.
* There are less planes and weapons available. This includes less variety of enemies to blow up.
* The game is fairly short, about as long as AC4.
* The interestingly detailed enemies from AC0 have disappeared, to be replaced by the standard 'one super-squadron plus faceless hordes' setup.
hardly matter.
Good stuff, in brief;
* Graphics. Better than the previous generation but not exactly awe-inspiring. The main visible improvement is the persistent missile trails.
* Aircraft handling. A touch more realistic while still being suitable for what is essentially a shoot-em-up. Stalling occurs at more sensible times. The high-G turns are nice. The flight ceiling while not realistic isn't as annoyingly low as AC5.
* I haven't spotted any planes flying through mountains or buildings AC5 style.
Indifferent stuff;
* The proximity fuses on the missiles. Sometimes they kill in one hit, sometimes they don't. I like the realism in principle, but in actual gameplay the unpredictability would be annoying, were it not for a) you have such a ridiculous missile inventory that shooting off two at every air target would not be a problem and b) it doesn't make sense to use the standard missiles on air targets anyway, when the gun does the job faster and more reliably.
After this I am even more convinced that AC5 is the best Ace Combat game to date. It had the best level design, concept (war between actual superpowers, not two-bit poxy countries, with an interesting twist as opposed to AC0's stupid one), music, scope and general execution. The characters were a little silly but were actually engaging. Despite being a bit too easy, even on Ace (whereas AC0's difficultly level was spot-on for me), I still find it the most fun AC game to play.
I haven't tried the online mode yet. I remain optimistic that these issues were the result of the game being rushed out, and that AC7 will be awesome.
