ok so i gotta find a good use for this thing. i think i’ll start giving my opinions on the video games i purchase. kinda like a review without all the professionalism haha. and with battlefield 3, call of duty, mario and mario kart 3ds, and plenty others coming out soon…i think it’ll go pretty well. so with that being said, i’ll get this shit goin with “reviews” of fifa 12 and ace combat: assault horizon.
ok so fifa 12. it was a tough thing to do, improving on last year’s game. the gameplay was smooth, the goalie ai was better…basically it was standard affair with ea sports games. improvements all across the board while not losing much at all from the core experience. this year isnt any different. the new defense system is a vast improvement. rather than having a single button to both pressure and tackle, the controls are now split between separate buttons for contain, tackle, and jockey. subtle as it may be, it makes the game all the more realistic. the big highlight of the new game is this new online league mode. basically, you choose a real pro club to represent online, and for everything you do in the game you earn experience points. and these points go towards furthering your club in an online league. at the end of the week, the club with the most points wins, earning bragging rights, and the “season” starts over. the cool part is that its based on skill, rather than the sheer number of fans each club has because it uses the average amount of xp each player earns for their club.
now the only negative thing once again, is the goalie ai. it has once again gotten better…but still isnt perfect. it seems that while they continually can make outstanding saves, they will tend to screw up the easy ones. especially on shots from distance…which has always been a problem with goalie ai in fifa. any shot from distance has a better chance to go in rather than a one on one with the keeper.
with all that being said…fifa 12 is great. unlike madden which seems to have gotten stale over the years, fifa along with nhl have just continued to get better. that ea canada office sure knows what they’re doing.
on to ace combat. now i will admit this might be alittle biased as i feel like i’m one of the few that actually love this series. ok so lets start with what stayed the same basically. most of the weapons are basically the same. each plane has a large amount of regular missiles to work with, as well as a machine gun. and you can then equip your plane with one of a few special weapons which include bombs, highly accurate missles, and long range missiles that can lock on to multiple targets at once. the only real difference is that the machine gun now overheats, rather than using a set amount of ammo.
now to the new features. the game now features real world locations. including, miami, dc, and moscow. as far as i can tell, each area seems to be pretty geographically accurate. aside from straying from the fictional worlds we are accustomed to, there were also some giant gameplay changes. most notably, is the inclusion of helicopter missions, both as pilot of a gunship and a door gunner, as well as a mission as a gunner of an ac-130 laying cover fire down. while the ac-130 mission feels more like a way to offer a change of pace, the helicopter missions are actually a lot of fun. as both the door gunner and ac-130 gunner you dont have control of the aircraft so you are kinda stuck on rails as far as where you’ll be going. but when you are the pilot of the gunship, the missions function the same as the plane ones. you get free reign over the map, and are given a series of objectives to carry out. the big difference is that you can actually use buildings for cover in a helicopter. these missions are a refreshing change of pace from the tried and true formula.
they also made some great changes to the airplane gameplay. when close enough behind an enemy plane you can now trigger “dogfight mode” or dfm. in dfm the camera zooms in and your plan semi-automatically stays behind the enemy. a large target reticle appears and will charge until it turns red, and once that happens you can fire an ultra accurate, super homing missile. this mode is super effective against the enemy ace pilots who are skilled enough to out maneuver missiles fired the regular way. now, just as you can target enemies in dfm, they can do the same to you. and admittedly, it can be pretty stressful trying to get away from super missiles. however, the game gives you a cool mechanic to do just that. you can slow down so that the enemy plane is close behind you, at that point the game gives you an indicator that you can perform a counter-maneuver. this lets you do a quick somersault, a cobra maneuver, or barrel roll that sends your enemy past you and instantly puts you into dfm on them. its a pretty handy feature, and it also looks pretty badass doing a cobra to get away from the enemy. and these things go to the helicopters as well. when a missile is fired at you, you can perform a barrel roll to avoid the attack.
now all that being said, the game still has a few drawbacks. your wingmen are still pretty useless. even when they say they’ll take care of smaller enemies so you can tackle the big objective, you tend to get targeted by those lesser enemies. its almost as if the wingmen dont even have to be there for the game to function. another thing, is they finally included flares/chaff for your planes. its a welcome feature, but it doesnt seem to always help. i found myself screaming at the game multiples times about what the point of the flares are if they dont work. also, the campaign was painstakingly short. it took me a few hours to get through, and that was with a bunch of slip ups from trying to pick the game back up. also, unlike in the previous games, i felt little connection to the characters. in one game, you were a squadron that was betrayed and left to seek revenge, and in other games the storyline introduced you to characters that had their own back stories and developed personalities that changed throughout the games. here, you are four friends, two of which are wingmen, one is a bomber/ac-130 pilot, and the other is a helo pilot. while you get to know them pretty well, their personalities never change, and seem to just fill certain requirements, one being a smart ass, one a general good friend, and the other being all about business. at no point did i ever feel like i would be upset if i lost one of them, as i had felt in previous games when your wingmen were killed off. even your enemies dont have the backstory you would hope for. you are given a 5 minute cut scene about your main enemy about halfway through the game, which just doesnt feel quite enough to make him menacing. especially when you find out he is starting this war over a killed wife in an off target bombing raid. now, i can kinda give this a pass considering that its konami’s first attempt at an ace combat with multiple characters/storylines all going on at once. it’s just disappointing coming from modern warfare, where infinity ward does such a great job creating a plot including multiple characters all over the world, to a game that tries to do that, and falls short.
all that being said, its a good game. not great or anything. but between the additions of helicopters and the new dfm mode, ace combat finally seems to be moving forward rather than relying on a tried and true gameplay formula. all of the changes are welcome for the most part.
