Playing every PS1 game - A IV Evolution, Ace Combat 2, Ace Combat 3, Action Bass

A IV Evolution Global

Listen. I love city builder and strategy games. Sim City 3000, Zeus and Cities Skylines (particularly SC3K) are amongst my most-played games. I can even do console-based tile builder games (well, I played Civilisation II on the PS1 for a bit). But to paraphrase Jane Austen, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a complex simulation game must be in want of a sophisticated tutorial and intuitive control system. This game provides me with neither.

Best loading screen on PlayStation.

Digging around, this is a Western release of a popular Japanese we-apologise-for-the-delay-‘em-up series called A-Train. I’m sure it’s good and all, but booting up just throws you directly into the game with zero direction. I have to assume that primers on how the game is actually played are all in the physical manual, which I don’t have. So I fiddled around for a few minutes but let’s be honest, these games are difficult to get to grips with at the best of times, let alone when you’re without a mouse and keyboard and have to use the controller to shift a cursor awkwardly around a 240p screen.

I want to want to spend time on this game.

I’m sure if I stuck at it for hours I might be able to work out what to do, but…sorry.

Kept my attention for: 20 minutes
Did I finish it?: No
Overall: ?/10

Ace Combat 2

(A sequel to Air Combat)

I was a bit wary about this one, as I’m not a fan of flying games generally. I’d heard a lot about Ace Combat 3 having a nice ‘aesthetic’ to it, but its predecessors don’t get mentioned very often. With a mid-97 release date there was a chance this could be a bit ugly and janky.

Death from above.

Well, I was pleasantly surprised. It’s a fun arcadey console flying game. There is some sort of plot in there, and the game does have rather fancy ‘briefing’ sections where a smooth voiceover explains the context of each level, but it’s all rather vague and is little more than set dressing. In 1997 you didn’t need a reason to blow up buildings and fighter jets; just get out there and start dropping lethal ordnance from five thousand feet.

You get a cool mutli-angle replay of the last thing you blow up in a level.

The obvious lack of care about the whys and wherefores of the preponderance of death you’re delivering is striking in comparison to what you would get in a game now, where there is simply no way you’d be let loose over the skyline of a city to start turning buildings to rubble and ground forces to pink mist without having it impressed firmly upon you beforehand that these people were all devout nazis, violent fundamentalists, simply bad people. In 1997 you would have been asked why any of that mattered in a computer game. We were at the height of the post-Cold-War ‘end of history’ zeitgeist where all this seemed fantastical enough to not make anyone feel much about any of it. That’s not to say I think that’s really a bad thing, either; just an observation.

Pre-flight, you can choose a wing, er, woman to follow your instructions (kill people in the air/on the ground).

Back to the game. It was clearly made by skilled developers who understood how to design for 3D and high-fidelity experiences. Everything about it is tight and runs smoothly. There are barely any load times. There is a simple ‘plane buying’ mechanic (I didn’t realise how common this seemed to be) and flying around in an F-18 feels suitably cool. There are enough unlockables to make you want to replay the game to get the trickier ones.

Just like Beggar’s Canyon back home.

It would have been good to have a bit more variety to the gameplay, but I guess this was the issue I always had with flying games - there are no walls to bang into and the environments can get a bit dull; you do spend most of the time looking at empty sky, after all. There are a few change-up levels where you navigate canyons or cannot fly above a certain (low) height, but not too much more than that.

Your co-pilot is always on hand to remind you not to give up.

Kept my attention for: A few hours
Did I finish it?: Yes
Overall: 7/10

Ace Combat 3

I went into this expecting an improvement on Ace Combat 2. I did not get it. All you can say about it is ‘more of the same’. Aside from changing the control scheme to make the left-right buttons roll the aircraft rather than yaw and thereby not change forward direction, making manoeuvring more fiddly, and the UI look and feel changing to a very Y2K circles-and-blobs scheme, it really is just the same game. The plot is the same, the levels are the same, the enemies and objectives are the same.

More of a muted vibe.

Reading around the subject revealed that the Japanese version of this game had a fully-voiced character-driven plot, and bags of extra levels, all of which were chopped out of the international version. This explains a fair bit. As it is, though, there’s something about it that’s not quite as enjoyable as Ace Combat 2. Along with the dialogue, all the little pep talks your co-pilot would give you in the game’s predecessor are also missing, making for a rather lonely game, though the soundtrack is better.

At least Ace Combat 2 had a few different strings of text to accompany a ‘Kaboom’.

For the rest, just re-read what I said above.

Kept my attention for: An hour or two
Did I finish it?: No
Overall: 6.5/10 if you never played Ace Combat 2, otherwise 3/10

Action Bass

I have never played a fishing game, and my suspicions that I wasn’t missing much were confirmed with Action Bass. I’ve been known to do a little bit of lure fishing myself, so I’m not totally unfamiliar with what’s going on, but what I also know is that of all the sports which feel like they would not translate to a videogame particularly well, angling is definitely in the mix.

Start reeling.

Pick a lure, cast your line, reel it in and hope for a bite in the process. When you do get a bite (which predictably happens shatteringly fast compared to real life), reel it in while trying not to break the line. That’s it. What else is there to say? I couldn’t get past level 1.

Not large enough, unfortunately.

The ambient audio track does capture the peaceful vibe of being alone out there with nothing but the quiet rippling of the water and buzzing of insects. I think if you really liked fishing games it would work for you.

Just you, the fish, and a boat.

Kept my attention for: 45 minutes
Did I finish it?: No
Overall: 4/10