The most forgotten of all forgotten games this. There was, of cause, Ace Combat 1 and 2 that everyone remembers, but these were arcade games. I mean proper arcade games. From the arcade and everything. You remember those places right? Ace Combat 3 on the other hand is an arcade flight combat game i.e. real physics will not be found here but it never saw the inside of a dark and dingy arcade, it's cabinet was never stained with cigarette tar.
So, nobody remembers AC3. Why? The Euro and US versions of this game arrived in the West mutilated. For whatever reason, read 'laziness', Namco stripped the Japanese version of Ace Combat from 50 missions to 30 missions and then removed all the Anime story line and then released it in Europe, America and Australasia. Thanks to this spoilage, most reviewers at the time bemoaned AC3 Electrosphere and condemned it to the land of forgotten games. Which is frankly no more than Namco deserve for this sloppy treatment of a great game.
And it is a great game, it really is. The first thing that strikes you about Ace Combat 3 is just how utterly amazing it looks. It is quite fiercely one of the crowning graphical achievements of the Playstation 1. As you sweep over cities and mountains and islands, and as you dog fight enemy craft, you'll see a lot of the features that were in Ac4 already in AC3 on the PS1. You have replays, which look pretty cool, external views that you can examine your aircraft and a missile-cam. The sense of speed is impressive as you fly along and the detail of the 3D models, from the aircraft, to the sky scrapers, to the tunnel walls is all very impressive. The cut sequences, which in some cases are generated using the games 3D engine, also look pretty good too. Graphically, AC3 stands out from the crowd.
Despite the story being all but stripped, this is the gist of it: General Resource Ltd and Neuwork Inc are the two massive corporations locked in a dispute that is threatening all-out global war. Your job in the game as part of a New United Nations is to stop that. Naturally, peace can only be achieved by shooting and killing and a good deal of insane aircraft piloting.
So, it's the usual Ace Combat affair; blow up some ships, shoot down some planes, bomb some radar installations, fly down a valley and of cause fly down some underground tunnels. Ace Combat wouldn't be Ace Combat without some ludicrous underground section. AC3 doesn't disappoint either, there is fairly large chunk of underground flying, and has a large underground city too. Hey, Electrosphere is set in the future! The only minor gripe is the weedy mega-ship. As most fans of the series know, there is usually a giant flying aircraft to pound the hell out of in AC games, and AC3 has them too, but in AC3 are kind of weedy. However, there is a mission in space which no AC had ever done before, or indeed ever done again, which sort of makes up for that.
So who should play this? Retro Graphics Whores certainly. Anyone who was a fan of 1990's Japanese Cyberpunk. I'm huge fan of Bubblegum Crisis, Genocyber and Oedo 808 and this game, also based in the Artificial Intelligent future is clearly influenced by these, and anyone rooting round looking for something retro Playstation to play.
Ignoring the fact there is no story, AC3 remains a very playable shooter. The difficulty is balanced, the game fun and the journey, if not detailed in the narrative sense, is in the visual sense very enjoyable. I can also recommend the soundtrack, that while owing a nod to the Ridge Racer school of soundtracks, is a touch more soulful than it's road based stable mate, and does embrace the cyberfuture megalopolis theme of AC3 well.
It ain't rare and you should be able to pick up a copy for a few quid.
3DOKid.
