One stellar component of The Belkan War is the story. Not content with using the same real-world nations most political thrillers are concerned with, Namco gives us Ustio, Osea and Belka – three countries who have some serious business with one another. Seasoned players may remember these from previous games, and The Belkan War is actually somewhat of a prequel, letting the narrative flow in past tense. You sign up for the ultimate war with some stereotypical, hardass playful-pinching-back-at-the-base buddies, and fundly enough one of them is called Pixy. Everyone loves Pixy.
Throughout the single-player campaign, you will come across many interesting locations, and some that are completely boring. Big, flat, and open can be used to describe quite a few levels, and worst of all these seem to be the air-to-ground missions, flying back and forth over endless fields shooting down windmills and the like. The helping hands to avoid this monotony are the open-ended missions. At the briefing you are given the opportunity to escort an ally, take enemy fighters head-on, or do some air-based reconnaissance – just to name a few. However, this feature would seem more impressive if the most exciting option wasn’t always the simple air-to-air dogfighting.
This jet farts explosions.
But is it really that exciting? The biggest, most obvious, fundamental flaw of most flight combat games - which is more often than not a gamebreaking detriment – is the lack of speed. This isn’t limited to realistic flight games such as Ace Combat, but even carries over to other titles in the Crimson Skies and Star Wars franchises. Thankfully, these titles make up for the sluggish sense of speed with other great gameplay elements, including trick flying and varied weapons – but Ace Combat has none of these. This is bare bones, fighter pilot flying around, shooting with machine guns and firing missiles. Sure, you can choose several missile types and bombs, but they all feel the same. This also goes for the aircraft; while cosmetically different, they all handle in the same manner and statistics don’t mean quite as much when you get into the real action. It is true that some planes are noticeably different – but when this happens, it is clear which of the group is the better choice to go with for the particular type of mission you are playing, while all the others sit in the hangar. If there is one thing to take away from this review, it is that I never once felt engrossed in the experience - I was always just playing a video game. For a series touting the true air combat experience, it falls quite short of this accolade.
Despite the perceived lack of speed, the aircraft do control well, with different options for the novice and advanced players. Most players will probably find the novice controls simple better – the left analogue stick controls all movements, while various shoulder buttons handle acceleration and braking. Controlling the aircraft is good fun, and they even behave like real planes would – fly directly upwards and take the speed down for an engine stall. Even so, this isn’t particularly useful, and could have been implemented better. In contrast, the excellent Crimson Skies provided a very useful stall function.
I thought they told me this jet had heating?
Technically speaking, the graphics do give us some pretty aircraft models and sweeping mountain ranges. The problem is, the fundamental nature of this type of games gives the players no chance to experience what the graphics could really show. The external camera is lousy, so most players will stick with the cockpit view. This means a very limited view of the surroundings, and the enemy fighters rarely buzz around your plane showing off their pretty wings. It really is wasted talent. The camera can be panned and circled around the aircraft mid-flight, but most of the time is spent chasing after the enemy in front of you to bother.
The instant replay mode is truly a sight to behold. This actually shows your action from all different cinematic angles, and in this instance the aircraft are indeed seen to be going extremely fast. To quote Leonardo DiCaprio in The Aviator – “Without something standing still behind the planes...we've got no idea of how fast we're moving. We got no sense of relative motion!” Most of the time the action is from the cockpit view (at least, this is the most accurate) as you circle around the blue/black/red sky looking for the dots to line up in your sights with a missile. The only real sense of speed is when your fighter ends up going too fast and rushing past an enemy – but by this point you are well out of range and therefore must make another sluggish pass surrounded by monocolour sky. The little dial saying 1000mph isn’t given justice due to the drab surroundings.
Flying off into the sunset.
But it’s realistic! A real fighter pilot would also see mostly sky all day, and doesn’t get a wide range of completely different aircraft or weapons. Like previously mentioned, this will be fine for some players, but realistic does not automatically equate to good. That’s like making a game based on living around the house, taking out garbage, going to work and coming home to eat dinner. It’s realistic, but who is going to play it? Nobody, that’s who.
Sound effects and music are a mixed bag. Explosions and any metal-on-metal action collisions are generally handled nicely – pump up those speakers to get right into it. Depending on the different camera view the player selects, the sounds are actually quite different. For example, the first-person view means the machine guns are nothing but an annoying buzzing noise – annoying so much it really is painful to use them. If you switch to an external view, the guns get the reception they deserve. Again it’s realistic, but that doesn’t necessarily mean making it sound worse is going to help.
What The Belkan War does, it does fairly well. The shooting is fun, and the aircraft and atmosphere give a solid overall experience. The problem is, so much is under-utilised. Graphical prowess is limited, no killer flight moves, no surprising weapons and no surprising mission structures. It is as much as anyone could expect from playing any previous Ace Combat games – never anything more. Pick it up if you enjoyed the original games, but if you are tired of the same old formula – or skeptical about the gameplay possibilities The Belkan War can give, it won’t do anything for you.
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