Ace Combat 5: The grand finale.
So I finally got through the endgame of this and pretty much enjoyed it, except the parts I didn't. There's a couple bits that kind of got on my nerves, notably the damn tunnel in the penultimate level. On the bright side, the part of the mission before that isn't hard, but it does take time each attempt and considering how easy it is to make a single mistake during the tunnel run and die and THEN have to repeat the entire damn mission all over again that adds up after awhile. I miss the in-mission checkpoints from 7 for missions like this, because when 7 had a tunnel run(very suspiciously like this one) the checkpoint was before the tunnel so you didn't have to replay the entire dogfight sequence before that. And there's the inherent issue of dickhead behind me lobbing missiles at me that I have no way of dodging or spoofing WHILE I'M RACING THROUGH A DAMN TUNNEL!(and while you technically can shoot him down before that, that doesn't stop him from showing up in that sequence because plot).
At least the mission after that went pretty smoothly, even if there's a lot of deadtime at the beginning while Afterburning across the map.
It is a shame, because the cutscenes for mission 27 are really nicely done. The attack on the Kestrel gets my approval as a former Carrier sailor and bit where everyone Shows up to join you in the assault on Grunder is pretty awesome. It does raise the question just where most of these guys were, because for a while it felt like you were the only pilots flying for Osea for like the entire war and suddenly all these guys show up(Yeah, I know half of them are Yukes but still)
Other comments of note:
-Osea really builds their shit to last. The Space Shuttle lost some of it's ablative surfacing and caused it to be lost with all crew. The goddamn Arkbird takes structural damage, loses two main engines, loses it's backup engine and then it's backup-backup engine before FINALLY crashing into the ocean. I mean, JFC, what kind of black magic is keeping that thing aloft? Fun mission but seriously....Yeah, I'm nitpicking a game about airplanes going pew pew where war is bad but pew pew pew plosions look how cool this shit is.
-I know this series is meant to be arcady and bombastic but there's a point where it feels like it crosses the line between action movie bombast and michael bay broke into the writers room when nobody was looking and rewrote the last third of the script. When you go from AU WW3 to The presidents of 2 major superpowers both had their leaders kidnapped by belkans and nobody noticed and then suddenly GIANT NUCLEAR SATELLITE! I mean, we went from Missile Submarine Aircraft Carriers to Armed Space Planes to vast insidious Belkan conspiracies to Nuclear terrorism to GIANT NUCLEAR SATELLITES WITH MASSIVE LASER BEAMS! AC4 had Stonehedge and megalith but that was downright restrained in comparison.
-So seriously, how the hell did the Belkans lose the war? Considering they've got top notch planes and fighter pilots and Nukes(and a willingness to use them indiscriminately) not to mention the ability to hijack like EVERYTHING and infiltrate without being noticed and Kidnap two heads of state without anyone noticing to prolong a world war, like seriously, one would have thought these assholes would have wiped the floor with everyone else 15 years before when they were presumably at full strength.
I'm going to play AC Zero in a few months and I'm sure it's be just as ridiculous when I see everything firsthand but for now, I gotta ask.
-Along the same lines, how the hell is North Osea Grunder Instruties still in operation in AC7 after the shit they pulled here and the revelations they were a Belkan front? You'd think they would have gotten their asses shut down and assets seized in the interwar period but nope, they're making drones that bites Osea in the ass again a decade later. Or maybe Osea literally never learns anything is the real lesson here.
-I'm now afraid to ask but I'm gonna anyway: Please tell me "Belka did nothing wrong" is meant to be a joke. I want to say it has to be but I've seen enough shit in the last few years in the real world to know there are always people willing to defend...well, anything.
-So the devs know that a massive hunk of metal on a re entry course into the atmosphere with a massive amount of kinetic energy and presumably a ton of nukes onboard is still a massive hunk of metal full of nukes with a massive amount of kinetic energy no matter how many bits you shoot off of it, right? Because while it's a cool setpiece, I can't help but feel that the even it all the forward kinetic energy was canceled when the SOLG blew up, it's still got all the nuke stuff to worry about, so even if Ragriz didn't detonate the nuke very close to a populated area, it's dropping a bunch of nuclear material into the bay outside the Osean capital. Which all gets glossed over.
I know, stop taking it so seriously Dalisclock, it's a silly game about airplanes going pew pew, but I had to get it off my chest and the game takes it's own story seriously so there's some serious gameplay and story dissonance going on here.
