After playing the heck out of Ace Combat 2, I immediately sought out the sequel, Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere. Craving more of the same arcade-like combat flight action, I eagerly popped the game into my Playstation and started flying.

The first thing I noticed is that the plane models are more highly detailed than the previous game. AC3 features a neat (if totally useless) feature that allows you to look around your plane and examine it from all angles. Ostensibly, this function allows you to look around and track enemy targets, but the onscreen and other maps do a fine job of this already. The other thing that immediately jumped out at me is the onscreen HUD, which contains all of the relevant information from AC2 (damage, missile supply, altitude, speed, map), but also a lot of irrelevant clutter, including green lines that "frame" the top and bottom of the screen and some other ornamental graphics. It took me several minutes to get used to this intrusive screen clutter, and I still don’t see the point of filling areas of the screen with useless graphics. You can toggle the HUD off, removing everything from your view, but this unfortunately also disables your battle map (brought up by holding the Square button) and all targeting ability, making it absolutely useless unless you just want to fly around for a while.

I know that I’ve started this review with a long rant about a somewhat annoying graphical feature of AC3, but after some time, it becomes almost invisible, and you’ll be able to focus on playing the game.

Similar to AC2, you’ll fly several missions in the long campaign mode, with 20 different jet fighters becoming available as you progress. Missions are familiar territory to fans of AC2, with air and ground, high-altitude, canyon flying and city attacks the norm. You’ll also have more landing and even midair refueling challenges, which you can opt out of by turning on an autopilot feature.

After spending several days playing through Ace Combat 2 a few times, here’s what I noticed as far as gameplay changes in AC3. First and foremost, missile targeting is faster, and targets are easier to hit with the formerly useless machine gun. Unlike AC2, you don’t earn money for flying missions, and new planes are unlocked periodically throughout the campaign. Most missions allow you to fly whichever available plane you choose, but certain missions force you to play as a particular jet. There are also new weapons for some missions, including different cannon and missile options. Mostly, though, you won’t find a lot of difference between these and the default guns and missiles.

Other than those changes, gameplay has remained relatively the same as AC2. The jets feel just a tad stiffer in turns, but the same arcade-like control and other non-realistic amenities are firmly in place (like huge supplies of missiles and unlimited machine gun rounds). You can also now brush against the ground ot other obstacles and keep going, as long as your jet is flying level, so accidental scrapes against water or the ground will result in taking a big chunk of damage but not necessarily a fiery doom this time around.

There are 30 missions in AC3, and the campaign branches at a few points, so you’ll be able to play through the game several times and see some new missions each time. The missions also now have multiple objectives, and many of them have in-mission updates that add new targets to your agenda. You’ll also have to deal with unforeseen events in some missions, like shooting down a launched ICBM, or stopping several planes that make a run for the sky from the base you’ve been assigned to destroy. These updates give the game an organic feel, as if you’re really thrust in the middle of an unpredictable battle. The mission environments are large and full of targets, and flying around and looking at the scenery is exciting by itself.

Namco has a solid series on their hands, and they’re continuing it with Ace Combat 4 on the PS2 (available in Japan later this week!), which seems posed to take the graphics of the franchise to a whole new level. I’ll have a review of that game in the near future, but until then I’ll be playing AC3 and considering legally registering "Maverick" as my middle name.