Ace Combat 2 (PSX)

Developer:

Namco

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Release Date:

1997

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Systems:

PlayStation

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This week on Super Adventures, I'm playing Ace Combat 2: the classic PlayStation dogfight 'em up by the people who've watched Top Gun.

It was made by the legendary developer/publisher Namco, who started creating their own video games in 1978 and didn't stop until 2005, when some mad businessmen fused them with Bandai Games to create a hybrid creature called Bandai Namco. Though the interesting thing about Namco, is that they were responsible for games like Pac-Man, Galaga, Time Crisis, Ridge Racer, Splatterhouse, Soulcalibur, Tekken, Klonoa and Katamari Damacy, and I somehow haven't covered a single one of them yet. I wrote about Tales of Symphonia by Namco Tales Studio (formerly known as Wolf Team), but I think this is actually the first proper Namco-developed game on Super Adventures!

Here's another fact for you: for some reason the first game was renamed Air Combat when it was released in the West, even though the Japanese game's title was in English to begin with. This is doubly weird and confusing because the Ace Combat series is the successor to Namco's arcade flight sim series... called Air Combat. I could understand why they'd want to use that brand if it already had some value in the West, but it doesn't seem like the arcade games ever made it outside of Japan. Anyway by Ace Combat 2 everyone was using the same name and the confusion was over (until the sequels).

You might be curious why I'm starting with the second game. I've got a few reasons, but I think the main one is that I actually finished it, many years ago, and I'm really curious how the hell that happened. Is it really that good, or just really really short?

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When you put the CD in you get a CGI intro of what looks like an Su-35 and a brand new F-22 launching from a carrier and going up against four ancient MiG-21s. I feel like I already know how this one's going to end.

One of the MiG manages to keep up with the F-22 for a while and we see it trying to lock on with its black and white gun camera. But the Su-35 comes flying out of the sun like Han Solo to hit them with a missile at point blank range and fly through the explosion. A lot of people are under the impression that modern air combat is about hitting your target from miles away, but it seems that what you really want to do is get in close enough to scratch the paint.

Alright, now I get to play with the options screen.

It's got a 3D DualShock that moves to match what I'm doing with the analogue sticks! I love it when games do things like this with their control config screens. Though for a PlayStation 1 game I'm happy when they recognise the analogue sticks at all; the original Air Combat only used the D-pad.

There's two different modes here: 'Novice' lets you turn the plane by pulling left and right like it's a space sim, and 'Expert' makes the analogue stick work like a real stick, rolling the plane when you pull it to the side. Personally I like space sims more than flight sims, and it defaulted to 'Novice', so I'm going with that.

There's also a separate difficulty mode for the gameplay in general, and I'm leaving that on 'Normal'.

Oh no, NA-P2700! I've got Discord friends that live there!

It seems that 'they' have seized control of the administration while the leaders were all out doing some diplomacy, and that's about as specific as the game want to get about where we're going and who we're fighting. Stories typically try to get you emotionally invested, but not this one! This one's all business.

All I know is that I'm part of the Special Tactical Fighter Squadron "Scarface" and I'm going to be shooting a lot of planes and boats before this is sorted out.

Hah, we're going to Twinkle Island.

This has some nice music by the way. It's like arcade game military funk, or something.

Okay, I've got four options on the top of the screen to try. From right to left: 'System' is for saving and quitting, 'Data' shows me my campaign and my player stats (apparently they're separate), 'Arsenal' is my local jet fighter retailer, and 'Mission' starts the mission. So I'll do that then.

Always nice to get a proper briefing, with a 3D map and arrows and everything. Especially if it's skippable.

It's a rush sortie mission, apparently. Rebel planes are coming to bomb our base and it's my job to fly over and stop them. But first I'll need a plane.

I only own two right now, an A-4 Skyhawk and an F-4 Phantom II, both developed in the 50s, and both a bit crap these days. But the bars say that the F-4 is a little less crap at everything except for ground attack and stability, and seeing as I'm attacking air targets it seems like a better choice.

One thing I already like about the game is that it's got genuine recognisable real world planes in it. Sure that's true of almost every flight sim, but the game doesn't take place on our Earth, so they could've easily pulled a Ridge Racer and made them all up. Instead of just some of them.

There's no option here to change the paint job on it though sadly. You're not a true ace until you have an iDOLM@STER idol on your tail fin.

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon (PC)

This screenshot's from the 2011 spin-off Ace Combat: Assault Horizon, which is like a regular Ace Combat game, except different. 

It's especially different to Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy, known in Japan as Ace Combat 3D: Cross Rumble, because that's actually a 3DS remake of an older game... called Ace Combat 2.
I feel like they've made this unnecessarily confusing.

Okay, I'm starting the first mission.

CODE NAME : GAMBIT

"Break now"? What does that mean? It sounds like they want me to make a sharp turn to avoid ploughing into the back of another plane, but the sky looks clear to me. I guess it's just the game's way of saying "Wake up, it's time to shoot things."

I said nice things about the music earlier, and it turns out that the combat music's pretty good too. It's not ridiculously dramatic like the later games, but it does have a guitar solo (with tapping), so it works for me.

Hey is that an aircraft carrier down there on the right?

Man, all I did was fly down to look at a boat and now my plane's freaking out at me! At least I understand what it wants me to do now. It wants me to pull up and stay with him.

I suppose I should probably be going off to sort out those red arrows on my radar, but I had to check out the ship first. It might be low polygon and the textures might be warping, but it's still an aircraft carrier to me and I hardly ever get the chance to fly down and buzz the tower like this.

Oh crap. Was this that base I was supposed to be protecting?

Right, time to shoot at bad people. Or people that are fighting for the opposing faction to the one that's employed me anyway. There's two boxes up there with TGT next to them, so I'm going to assume that my HUD isn't tagging my allies as targets and go remove them from my sky.

That's how it's done!

Actually it's not, that was rubbish. Turns out that the cannon takes forever to kill anything, and that's when they're not even bothering to evade. If they turn you don't get a projected target to aim for, so it's hard to lead your shots and get your bullets to meet them where they're going. I should probably stick to missiles in future.

Okay, where's the next bad guy? I can't set my throttle, but I do have a button to max out my thrust so I'm going to hold that down, get within range, and send a couple of missiles up their ass. And then two more missiles after that, as these bombers are tougher than the average plane.

Air Combat (PSX)

Here's what the original Air Combat looks like if you're curious. They made a real effort to improve the landscape and get more polygons on screen for Ace Combat 2 and you can kinda tell.

The two games basically play the same, aside from the lack of analogue steering, but this feels even more sluggish. Plus if you get hit, the computer voice keeps saying "Alert, body damage!" over and over and over, like there's anything you can do about it.

Plus you have to finish the whole game to get rid of that paint job, which I have no interest in doing because it's so damn tedious. I want to go back to Ace Combat 2!

Alright, I shot all four bombers down, so that's mission complete! I didn't even need to land the plane.

It's got a little animated map that shows the path you flew and the targets you hit along the way, which is cool. Why don't first person shooters do this?

You can see here that the level is just a small rectangle, but I don't think I was in any danger of accidentally hitting the boundary. It's not where the bad planes are, so I never had reason to stray too far.

Hey I got paid for my kills! Even better, I wasn't fined for all the things their bombers blew up while I was screwing around (though I did have to pay for all the damage they did to my plane).

It's interesting that 'Wingman's Pay' is listed there, but I didn't pay anything. Was I flying that mission all by myself then? What were all the white arrows on the radar then?

They also gave me a KF-C7! I've never heard of the plane before, but it's given me a sudden craving for fried chicken.

Actually they haven't given me the plane, they've given me the opportunity to spend half my cash to buy the plane. Unfortunately I can't compare its stats to the planes I already own, so I have to compare screenshots to know if it's any better. Not great UI design.

Oh, it's slightly more stable than the F-4, but slightly less mobile. I don't know what that even means in terms of its handling, but I do know I'd rather keep the 60,000.

CODE NAME : EASY MONEY

Oh shit, I wasn't expecting the bombers to start off facing me on this mission! I had the engines going full-burn trying to catch up to them, so I didn't have much chance to react when I discovered I was flying into oncoming traffic.

Fortunately I survived, either because I'm awesome or because planes don't collide in this, I've no idea. But now I have to turn around and chase them again. Turning 180 takes forever in this!

I love the messages that come up every time I score a kill. I've been getting a lot more of them now that I know that the white arrows on the radars are enemies too; they're just not mission objectives like the red ones. Taking these other planes down means a lot more money for me and a lot fewer missiles in my ass, which is good because repairs cost money and I haven't found a way to replay missions to get extra cash.

Crap, a MSSL! Where's the chaff button? Where's my countermeasures?

Oh, I don't have any. Well okay, if they can just hold off on blowing me up for just a couple more seconds, I'll finish getting a lock on this C17, fire off a couple of my own homing missiles, and then heroically swerve out of the way in the nick of time.

Nope, I got a missile in the ass for being an idiot. I was at 36% damage before and now I'm at 72%, so at least they're consistent in the hurt they inflict, but it also means I can't survive a third missile hit. No auto repair on this thing. My plane's tougher than most of the enemy jet fighters though, who all go down in two hits... which just happens to be the number of missiles I can fire off before I have to reload.

Yeah I'm flying a Phantom II that carries 64 missiles and has to reload between shots, like I said the game doesn't take place on our Earth. It's a nice planet though; I like the pointy cardboard mountains.

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy (3DS)

Though I have to concede that they look a bit better in the 3DS remake.

Assault Horizon Legacy is surprisingly faithful to the original AC2 in a lot of ways, with the same missions, though it adds attack manoeuvres (automatically line up the plane for a kill) and evasive manoeuvres (dodge missiles) and makes it harder to kill things and dodge things by yourself. Takes a bit of the satisfaction out of it, but it's still a joy to slowly swoop around in.

It's also got some actual story to it, with characters! Same events, it's just you're given more context and reason to care about any of it.

CODE NAME : CITY ON FIRE

I'm in an actual city for this mission! It's mostly just painted on but there's a few skyscrapers around. The mission name is 'City on Fire' but thankfully it hasn't come to that yet, despite all the fighter debris I've been raining down on them. I think I've pretty much cleaned the skies out by this point.

Though the briefing told me I was supposed to be blowing up a docked carrier and it's not here. Fortunately I can bring up this handy overlaid map, which is telling me... that I'm in the wrong city. It's docked at another, much bigger, city further down the coast.

I can never resist being a daredevil whenever I see a bridge.

In my defence, if you leave the title screen on long enough a demo video comes on and the pilot in that couldn't resist the bridge either. Plus it'd be really hard for me to mess this up, as the plane moves too slow for me to make any mistakes (I also vaguely remember it bouncing off the ground the last time I played the game, but I don't feel like testing that right now.)

Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Legacy (3DS)

The 3DS remake is a little more detailed, but not as much as you'd maybe expect from a system that can play Metal Gear Solid 3. Also I wish I could say I was showing off by doing this, but it's piss easy. The planes just fly too well (not complaining).

I've spotted that carrier I'm after by the way. It's just to the right of the... uh...

...well that's funny. I'm pretty sure this isn't New York. Any resemblance must be purely coincidental.

There's also these little anti-aircraft gun turrets scattered around everywhere, so I should probably sort them out for fun and profit.

The trouble with blowing up anti-air guns is that it means I have to fly towards them, and that tends to get me shot. Doesn't damage me that much, but it's beginning to add up. I've been circling the bay at low altitude, hitting each gun with a single missile and flying right past to hit the next target. I wish I could watch a replay of it all later, but the replay feature only shows you the last few seconds leading up to your final kill, so it's a bit rubbish.

But I finally got the job done with my plane still slightly intact and absolutely no city on fire, so I'm calling that a win. Especially as I unlocked an F-16!

This is new as well. I can finally hire a wingman!

It doesn't seem like I can have them both selected like this, I edited the gif because I wanted to see them spinning together, but I have to pay for them so maybe it's for the best that I only have one sidekick out with me.

But who do I pick, "Slash" or "Edge"? Am I more of a Guns and Roses fan or a U2 fan? Actually I'm going to pick Edge because she reminds me of Joanna Dark from Perfect Dark and Slash looks like one of the nameless goons she shoots by the hundreds.

I've no idea if the two pilots have different stats, but they do have different planes.

Actually it seems like they have a different set of planes, as their chosen fighter depends on the objective I give them for the mission. If I tell Slash to cover my tail he picks a KF-C7, while Edge goes with the F-16. But she prefers the KF-C7 for engaging enemy aircraft.

I think I'll tell her to attack enemy ground units, as I prefer taking on the planes (also I don't know what 'Secure the Base' means).

CODE NAME : TIN CASTLE

And I'll be flying my beautiful new F-16. I prefer the look of the F/A-18, but this'll definitely do for now. I've come around to third person view as well, because you can watch the ailerons moving on the wings as you turn. Also this seems to be the only way I can tell I'm even flying a different plane, as they all feel the same to me.

This guy I'm fighting is in a MiG-29 and I wouldn't mind one of them as well. It's a nice looking plane, especially as I haven't been able to scratch it yet. I'm starting to get the impression that this might be an ace called Ricochet, because they're doing a better job than most at dodging my missiles. Not that it's that hard to do, as all you need to do is turn around.

I got them in the end, because I'm just that good... then I crashed into a tower and blew up. My first failed mission! They expect me to pay for the repairs and try again, but if I can't earn more cash by replaying missions then I think I'm going to load my last save instead. I need that money for planes and wingmen!

I don't play a lot of flight sims and I don't know what they're like these days, but I feel like they could probably use more castles in them. Or interesting buildings in general.

On my second go I managed to take out all the guns in the towers without flying into one, and then put two missiles into the TNT storage warehouse to finish the job. Mission complete!

Hey I got a badge for shooting down Ricochet! I also unlocked an X-29 but I don't know if that's related. I would've rather had their MiG-29 to be honest, but I do love the forward swept wings of the X-29.

Oh, my wingman survived by the way, which I was a little concerned about. They cost a fortune, 8750 for one mission (about the same as it costs to get a replacement plane after a crash), but I'm going to keep hiring them because I like seeing their blue arrow on the radar sometimes and they're probably keeping some of the enemies off my back by being a distraction. Plus they might even be shooting planes down, I don't know!

CODE NAME : MIDNIGHT ASSASSIN

I had a choice of two missions this time, one was a ground attack on a mine, the other involved a night-time interception of fleeing aircraft. I like dogfighting more than taking out turrets, so I picked the air combat one. I wasn't expecting them to have a jamming device that's turned my radar to static!

All I've got to work from is those three arrows on the left, that are presumably pointing me to the closest plane. Fortunately I don't really need any more than that. In fact this level's fine, though that just makes things more tense for me knowing that the next one might be the one that's bullshit. It's going to happen... sooner or later, one of these missions is going to drive me to tears of frustration. But not this one.

CODE NAME : SLEDGEHAMMER

Oh no, it's a bloody escort mission! Why didn't I see this coming?

Though it's been fine as well to be honest. Years of playing TIE Fighter has left a voice echoing in my head saying:

"Mission critical craft, under attack! Mission critical craft, shields down! Mission critical craft, hull condition critical! Mission critical craft, destroyed! Abort mission, mission a failure." 

So I tend to expect the worst. But all that happened was my bombers advertised that help was wanted, and I came over to blow up the fighters that were hassling them. There were no waves of anti-aircraft missiles to intercept or other such nightmares. Man space sims are stressful.

CODE NAME : RISING HIGH

This mission has me dogfighting high above the clouds. Though not for long as I keep stalling and falling back to the ground. Thankfully I haven't collided with it... yet. My shiny new MiG-29 remains unmangled.

You might be wondering "Why is he still doing more missions? Doesn't he usually stop playing after the first hour or so?" Well that's usually true, but... I haven't been playing it for an hour yet. After 8 missions I'm only about 40 minutes in, so they're over with in about 5 minutes on average. Feels longer while you're playing though.

And I'm still writing about them because they keep giving me new things to write about. The game's always about shooting down planes or shooting up guns, but there's usually a twist to it. Plus I haven't revisited any locations yet, so I'm always somewhere new.

CODE NAME : SWORDSMITH

This mission has me hitting guns (marked red on the radar) without damaging the towers next to them (marked yellow). That just means I have to make sure I have the right target selected. The real problem I'm having is hitting the guns at all, as they're recessed into the ground. All the missiles I've been firing keep impacting on the surface!

I tried to get in low, fire the missiles at the last possible moment, then heroically swoop back out again, and it would've worked if my plane hadn't stalled and dropped me into a wall!

There's no checkpoints so now I have to replay the whole mission again from the start. All five minutes of it!

Wow, I just realised that I got my fuel counter down to 71%. I'm not sure I've ever seen it that low before. It's the closest thing I've got to a time limit on these stages, but it's hard to stress out about it when it's never come close to being a concern.

CODE NAME : TOY BOX

Whoa, I've found a space shuttle! I thought this mission was about blowing up a secret stealth plane n a hangar, not an actual space shuttle. That's what I get for skipping most of the briefing I suppose.

Sorry space shuttle, but you gotta blow up now. Yeah, I know, I should deal with the plane getting a missile lock on me first. I just want to get my own missile lock done first! It'll take like half a second.

One thing I like about this game is you don't have to spend ages flying over empty landscape to get into the action. Even when you don't appear right next to your objective you'll get stuff like this to blow up along the way, and you never have to fly back and land the plane afterwards.

CODE NAME : SEAGULL

Wait, what's this? What's going on? They want me to land the plane this time? I don't know how to land a plane! Especially not on a tiny carrier.

Oh, they've put a green arrow on screen so I can just follow that. Also there's two dotted lines forming a crosshair, so if I can stay pointed at them I'll be doing alright I expect. Though it does seem to be taking me there the long way around. Yeah, the lines aren't taking me anywhere near the boat, what's going on?

They only gave me 96 seconds to get the plane on the boat, and by the time I gave up on the indicators and tried landing it manually it was already too late. Landing failed.

CODE NAME : ONE NIGHT STAND

The good news is that I didn't have to replay the level after utterly failing to land. In fact I got promoted afterwards! I'm now a Chief Master Sergeant. Sadly this didn't unlock power armour for me to wear.

Now I'm flying down a ravine to attack an enemy submarine base. It's like a Star Wars trench run, except with fewer turrets and some nice reflective water down there. Uh, it looks better in motion.

The game might not be that pretty compared to what came after it, but after seeing the original Air Combat I can definitely appreciate what they managed to squeeze out of the hardware here.

Hey my wingmen changed their outfit! When did that happen? Why did that happen?

This is another fake screenshot by the way, as I can still only bring one of them out each mission. I should probably stop here though as I've been playing for about an hour now and you've scrolled past enough screenshots.


CONCLUSION

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Ace Combat 2 is a game about getting within 1000 units of a target and then tapping the missile button twice. Sometimes you have to wait for the enemy plane to stop turning first, sometimes you have to fly at an AA gun from a certain angle to hit it without destroying something else, but you basically point the crosshair at a mission objective over and over again.

I suppose you could call it a bit repetitive, but there's been enough variety in the situations you have to deal with to keep me interested. And it's the good kind of variety, not the kind where it suddenly gets massively unfair and frustrating, and you fly right into a difficulty spike. It's like it wants players to stick with it until the end or something. In fact I get the impression the game wants to you to come back for a second playthrough as well, and not just because it's under two hours long. You can unlock alternative missions with alternative aces to kill and medals to collect, there are two separate branches of missions at one point, and it has three endings! That's a lot of endings for a game with barely any story.

There's no cutscenes to watch, no conversations while you're flying around and no mid-mission complications. It's not a game about waiting around for events to transpire, it's five minutes of hitting targets, then it gives you a score and a promotion and tells you what the next mission is. That suits me though, I get bored if a mission drags on for too long in a game (especially if I blow up right before the end and have to replay the whole bloody thing). There's always something to do, but you're not constantly bombarded with 'ENEMY MISSILE LOCK!' warnings whenever you try to do it and the pace is fairly relaxed. At least it was for me on 'Normal' difficulty. The movement's a bit slow as well to be honest, but the planes turn just quickly enough to make swooping around hitting target after target feel like a joy.

I don't know if there's a Gran Turismo of combat flight sims, but Ace Combat has to be the Need for Speed of them... or maybe the Ridge Racer seeing as it's by Namco. Either way there's just enough realism in it to make you feel like you're actually playing around with a garage full of multi-million dollar toys, despite the fact that it obviously feels nothing like it would in real life. And even though the sequels have gotten successively more spectacular (and their soundtracks are downright epic), they haven't made this one unplayable by existing. Thankfully.

You know, I had a feeling I might like this game, seeing as I've beaten it before, but I was surprised at how much it clicked with me. The 90's guitar soundtrack, the blocky PlayStation visuals, the simple gameplay, the short missions, the garage full of planes, it all worked together to put a grin on my face. It's also good for podcasts I've found, as you don't even need to pay attention to the briefing, never mind anything else that's being said. The 3DS remake's not quite the same game, as it has more story and the 'attack manoeuvres' button alters the gameplay a bit (without adding an irritating 'lock on' minigame like its namesake Assault Horizon does), but it's pretty good too! So I'm giving them a shiny star to share:


Actually screw it, they can have one each! They deserve it.

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Wait, before you scroll down to leave a comment about Ace Combat 2 I just want to say... thanks for reading!

Also, this was supposed to be the last game on Super Adventures before my two month break, but because you're all awesome I've got one more bonus game for you coming up. Probably not hard to guess what it is from the image, but maybe harder to guess whether I'll enjoy it or not. You know what I'm like... or do you?