Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War for PlayStation 2

AN UNCHANGING WORLD
The Ace Combat Series takes place in its own persistent universe, with it's own history, cultures, and countries, and of course, wars.

The last game in the series, Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War, followed a squadron of rookie fighter pilots (with you in charge, naturally) as they fought against a country that had once been their allies, only later to learn that the real enemy was one they had defeated years ago, working behind the scenes, turning the very countries responsible for their defeat against each other in an attempt to take their revenge.

Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War, goes back 15 years, to the very war that laid the groundwork for the events that lead up to the events of AC5, with you taking the role of a mercenary fighter pilot hired on by the Republic of Ustio, a country that is being overrun by the Belkan military. As the game plays out, you will witness the events which led to the defeat of the Belkans and fight against a terrorist group that wishes to remake the map of the world completely.

The cutscenes in the game play out as a big documentary with a journalist interviewing pilots that knew or even flew against "you" during the Belkan War. What flipped me out was being aghast as to how pretty the cutscenes were, especially how realistic the people looked.....Until I realized they were real people. They actually used real people in the game's cutscenes. And to honest, I liked it. While it isn't Academy-Award-winning stuff, it is adaquate, and lends itself to create a distinct tone for the game that sets itself apart from all the others before it. At it's heart, The Belkan War isn't about The Belkan War at all, it's about the people you shoot down and how it has changed their lives because of it.

"CHANGING ENCOUNTERS"
The Belkan War is definitely more than a mere rehash of Ace Combat gameplay with just different scenery in the background. Although the controls and gameplay itself has changed little (thankfully, because it's just fine as it is), the actual intensity of the gameplay is a different matter altogether. New to the series is the concept of an "Ace-Style" that allows you to choose what kind of ace pilot you can be reknowned as.

In the game there are three kinds of enemy targets you can attack: Enemy targets necessary to accomplish the mission, regular enemy targets that try to hinder your progress but don't have to be destroyed, and neutral targets that you can choose to spare or destroy.

Your Ace-Style is affected by how you behave in relation to the targets. If you wish to go for glory and rack up the points (which in turn becomes money for you to buy more planes and such), you can destroy anything and everything with abandon heedless of any code of conduct, which puts you on the path of a Mercenary Ace. If you believe in the knightly code of honor that pilots back in the days of World War I adhered to, and choose to spare targets that cannot fight back, or let disabled aircraft (you get points for disabling them) flee to fight another day, you will be put on the path of a Knight Ace. If you choose to try and find a balance between the two (by restraining your aggression but not always being merciful) then you follow the path of a Soldier Ace.

The path you follow in the game isn't just for personal preference though. Events and encounters in the game, and what people say during missions change based on your Ace-Style. Throughout the game, you run into enemy aces, pilots that are every bit as skilled and driven as you are in combat, all aiming to take you out. The kinds of aces you fight against in the game changes (although not always in a few missions), fighting in a manner that befits your Ace-Style. And they're not pushovers, either. Even on Very Easy these guys aren't a cakewalk. They work together and try to beat you using their own distinctive tactics, and will dog you just as hard as you dog their wingmen and will break your missile locks just as hard as you break theirs.

However, even if in a few missions your Ace-Style does not alter the aces you fight, it does alter the cutscenes/interviews involving them. Also, just as in previous Ace Combat titles, there are "named" enemy aircraft in some levels. These aircraft also change depending on your Ace-Style, and shooting them down unlocks alternate paint jobs for your planes, or even unlocks the aircraft you shot down to fly for yourself.

Furthermore, in the Gallery section of the main menu, there is not only a viewer for the Medals you can earn in the game, but also a Battle Record that lists all of the aircraft (including Aces) that you have shot down in the course of the game and its subsequent play-throughs, showing a model on a stand with the same aircraft and colors of the enemy pilot, the name of the pilot, his biography, whether they survived their encouter with you, and what happened to him (or her) after the war ended if they did.

Little things like this go a long way to not only add replay value to the game, but also give some backstory to the game, not to mention build upon the theme of the impact you have on the people you shoot down.

BROTHERS IN ARMS
The previous Ace Combat game, The Unsung War, featured wingmen that flew with you and responded to your (although rather limited) commands. This concept carries over to AC0, but instead of having three others to give orders to, you only have one man at your disposal, however, he fights just as hard and relentlessly as any of the enemy aces you run into in the game. And just as in The Unsung War, your wingman has his own personality and quirks.

GAMEPLAY
As always, the gameplay in Ace Combat is a marriage of realistic aircraft models and environments with simplified, arcade-style gameplay and intuitive controls that, thanks to the PS2 controller, aren't far removed from using a real flight stick. Essentially, as in all Ace Combat games, the controls are such that you hardly notice them, and you are never tying your fingers in a knot trying to perform maneuvers. This has been made even more so in the PS2 iteration of the series due to the pressure-sensitive analog controllers, helping to vary the amount of thrusting and braking you can apply, among other subtle things that help to make playing the game enjoyable and not a chore in trying to figure out which button does what. Futhermore, the right analog stick offers free-look mode relative to the camera angle from which you are flying the plane to help get a comprehensive view of what's going on around you at all times.

While the game controls have mostly remained the same, the gameplay elements of AC0 have also been tightened up great, and adjustments made to make the game more challenging and more intense than previous Ace Combat games.

Of course, this is not to say the game is easy, as there are six difficulty levels in the game, which decrease the margin of error you have against enemies in combat ("Ace" difficulty you die in one hit from missiles). Also, when you beat the game, you unlock Free Mission mode, which allows you to go back and play any missions you did in your last play-through, however, you can only play missions that pertain to your Ace-Style. In order unlock every "version" of the mission in the game, you must beat the game at a minimum of 3 times to see through every Ace-Style. Furthermore, along with the styles, there are also missions that have you choose what part in the mission you wish to take. They usually cover purely air-to-air, air-to-ground missions, or a mixture of both.

Luckily the hassle of having to go through the game several times to unlock everything is kept low due the game's 18-mission length. While people complained that the game was too short, the truth is that in terms of replay, and playing every "version" of each mission, each difficulty level has 54 stages each, on top of a special "guantlet" mission that can be unlocked that pits you against several of the enemy Ace Squadrons you encounter in the game.

Furthermore, on top of the regular Campaign mode and all of the replay value for it, AC0 returns 2-Player battles to Ace Combat, which was missing from AC5. And compared to the rather bare-bones player-versus-player action in 4, Zero offers a wide variety of 2-player gameplay that extends not only to one-on-one dogfights, but also to competitions to see who can shoot down the most enemies, races where you fly through rings and through obstacles, and other modes of 2-player play.

The Planes
Of course, the stars of the game are the planes. Everything from F-4 Phantoms to F-15 Eagles to the mighty Su-37, to lesser recognized aircraft such as the Rafale and Typhoon, to several recurring exoctic aircraft that Namco came up with themselves for the Ace Combat Series. They are all licensed by their respective manufacturers, and there are quite a few of them in the game to unlock. However, unlike the experience-based system that AC5 used to unlock aircraft, AC0 uses the more traditional system of AC4, which gives out planes relative to how far you progress in the game, certain enemies you take out, and now the aces you shoot down. Hearkening back to the days of Ace Combat 4, your planes once more have a selection of special weapons to choose from to help them in their missions (unlike AC5's family system of planes that only had one special weapon to choose from). Naturally your plane starts off with one preferred special weapon, with the rest having to be purchased.

As in all AC games, there are a wide range of aircraft, each with something that sets them apart from the others (either visually or in performance), and with their own distinct special weapons.

Furthermore, is the amount of paint jobs you can pick for your aircraft. There are the standard paint jobs that come with the aircraft, and also paint jobs that reflect your ace style that can be unlocked, along with a special paint job that is usually unlocked by shooting down named aircraft.

Missions
I only have a few complaints about the game. One is not that the game itself is short, I like that. I just find the missions annoying at times, and not always developed enough to fully utilize the effectiveness of your special weapons, especially in air-to-ground missions.

Overall though, the missions in the game are pretty varied, from your basic bombing missions, to recurring visits to Area B7R, aka "The Round Table" where enemy aces fight it out for air superiority, to a mission against several super weapons you have to take out. All-in-all the missions are fun (for the most part), and the scenery is beautiful, especially the lighting effects. Sunrise and sunsets are absolutely beautiful and add alot of tone to the game's environments, as they always have in previous AC games.

THEME
There are several underlying themes in The Belkan War, most blatantly being that of fighting against enemy aces that are just as good as you are. To that end, the music in the game goes a long way to set the tone for the battles that lie ahead, with techno/hard rock/moody music for most of the mission you fly in, giving way to recurring thematical tracks when you fly against them, with the normal music giving way to Spanish-esque tracks driven home with acoustic guitars and other similarly themed instruments, which helps to heighten the intensity of the ecounters with the enemy aces. The final mission theme is probably one of the best in the Ace Combat series to date, being both very cinematic, operatic, intense yet also very down-to-earth and simple compared to the trademark songs in previous AC titles.

Little Things
Ace Combat Zero goes a long way by supplementing the gameplay with alot of little details, great and small, easy to notice, or very subtle. A recurring theme in the game is changing encounters based upon your behavior in the game, which might be seen as karma, and also on how your encounters with your enemies changes their lives. Whether be relfected by their words in the interviews in the game (which also have to be unlocked by doing different Ace-Styles, since the Aces change depending on what style you are on), or in the words of their biographies in the Battle Records, you actually get to see what kind of impact you had on their lives, and through that, the world.

Another little recurring theme is that of knighthood and the tales of King Arthur and the Round Table, which are oft-referenced to underhandedly in the game, but not directly relevent to the game itself.

A WORLD WITHOUT BOUNDARIES
This is by far the best Ace Combat for the PS2 to date, and that's saying something considering how good the last two were. By combining elements explored and used in prior titles, plus the unique narrative of the story, and the concept of hard-fighting ace enemy pilots with their own quirks and fighting style trying to take you out to help inject some nitrous oxide into the gameplay, and couple that with all the unlockables and replay value, and you have a game that you can get enjoyment out of for a good long while.