Ordering your wingmen adds an extra bit of depth to the proceedings, but they really don't require much of your attention.
Your wingmen are mostly just there to create additional targets for your enemies, and also to provide some lively banter throughout each sortie. Oftentimes, they (or someone else) will radio into you with yes/no questions, which you can respond to by pressing left or right on the D pad, respectively; or you can ignore the questions entirely. This is useful early on to clue you into the primary uses of the wingman commands--for instance, one of your squad will suggest the dispersion tactic. More than anything, though, it contributes sort of a role-playing element to Ace Combat 5's missions by letting you--as opposed to your jet's cannons, missiles, and bombs--become involved in some of the drama. For what it's worth, the frequent in-mission dialogue is frequently unnecessary, but sometimes it is critical to the mission. You'll probably sometimes wish you could order your squad to maintain radio silence so that you could concentrate on more-important matters than your feelings about each other.
Based on your performance in missions, you earn cash with which you can buy new planes. Also, most planes have what's basically an experience point meter, which fills as you earn kills with that plane; fill it up, and an even better plane will become available for purchase. In practice, it can be quite a dilemma trying to decide on whether to stick with a single plane for a few missions and max out its kill meter, or try out all the numerous other planes you've unlocked.
In addition to the good-sized campaign, Ace Combat 5 offers some nonstop thrills in the form of a fast-paced arcade mode, which strips away the storyline and focuses on a near-constant string of progressively tougher time-sensitive challenges. This mode showcases how essentially entertaining Ace Combat 5's simplified flight mechanics are, but it also demonstrates how important the campaign's story is to giving meaningful context to all the dogfighting.
There's an arcade mode to keep you busy in addition to the rather lengthy campaign.
Ace Combat 5's beautiful presentation helps the game a lot. Highly realistic clouds, missile contrails, and terrain, in addition to a silky-smooth frame rate and the option of three different viewpoints (the most useful of which is the transparent HUD, but the coolest of which is the first-person cockpit view), help make this game really believable just from a visual standpoint. A widescreen display option is available, to boot. The terrain graphics hold up nicely even when you're skimming the surface, and the game's plentiful explosions look good, though they aren't terribly complex--don't expect location-based damage or anything like that.
All the while, Ace Combat 5's music soars seemingly together with the airplanes that are depicted in the game. The soundtrack serves to heighten the suspense and tension of the game's missions, and it provides a driving beat for the action and a calming change of pace during the story sequences. Likewise, the quality of Ace Combat 5's voice work is mostly quite high, though some of the deliveries fall a bit flat. But there's just so much dialogue happening so quickly (during the missions, anyway) that the net effect of the chatter certainly is convincing. A Japanese-language track is also available, and you can toggle subtitles on or off in either case. The rest of the game's sound effects are solid, from the roar of your afterburners to the threatening buzz of your machine guns.
It's been several years since the last Ace Combat game, and this latest installment doesn't do much to change an already-winning formula--but not much was needed to keep this series feeling fresh and exciting, especially since there just aren't many other flight combat games on the market. Those looking for a complex flight simulation on consoles need not apply to Ace Combat 5, which is much more interested in delivering the thrills and drama of Top Gun-style cinematic depictions of modern dogfighting--something that the game achieves very capably.
Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War (PlayStation 2):
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