Title: Dropship: United Peace Force
Platform: PS2
Released: May 29, 2002

Ahhh, Dropship, what could have been. Every time that I go and browse the PS2 section of any video game store and see the game there I get all misty-eyed. Dropship is the sort of game that should, by rights, have started the next great trend within its genre. It’s primarily a flight combat game, much like Ace Combat, but with a few key differences. For starters, it displays far, far more ambition than any Ace Combat game.

When Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies came out in late 2001, it was pretty much love at first sight for me. My PC wasn’t able to play the latest or greatest flight sims of the day, so AC4 was the next best thing. It was pretty, had a big selection of planes and it was a lot of fun. Over the next few years, Namco released Ace Combat 5 and 0 for the PS2 and my love affair with series turned into a doomed relationship. AC4 got a free pass because it was good looking and there was nothing else quite like it. AC5 and 0 changed almost nothing about the formula they had inherited from Shattered Skies. Sure, AC5 added the near useless ability to give pre-selected commands to your wingman and AC0 had different styles of play, but overall it was like Namco just stopped trying. The games still looked good, but the gameplay was really showing its age. Ace Combat became a flight-based shooting gallery. Every plane you could buy came with a ton of missiles and some very powerful secondary weapons; the enemy AI could best be described as brain dead. Dying in Ace Combat became less about the opposition and more about the player becoming bored. You could also be assured that every game would have at least one mission where you would have to fly down some sort of narrow trench or corridor to destroy some super-weapon or the other. Even worse was that these games were supposed to be set in the near future, but in place of believable scenarios or smarter enemies were giant flying fortresses and planes equipped with lasers. It all became a little too silly. Then I came across a copy of Dropship at my local EB Games.

Looking at the game box, there is nothing that tips you off to the quality of the game contained within. There are no blurbs calling it an ‘Editor’s Choice’ or ‘Best of E3’ or whatever. Starting up the game won’t change your opinion quickly either. It’s not a looker; the texturing is weak and there are plenty of jaggies. Don’t be fooled. Where Ace Combat is silly, stupid and stale, Dropship is serious, smart and fresh. The setting for the game is the near future and you play the role of a pilot for the United Peace Force; imagine a better armed and more useful United Nations. Given the real world setting, the developers wisely chose to go for a realistic feel. You won’t find a single airborne behemoth or game breaking laser weaponry. They’ve also been very clever about your choice of vehicles. There are only 5 aircraft in the entire game and you cannot choose which one you take out on a mission. This is only a fraction of the choice and freedom you get in any AC, but it works out much better. In AC, more vehicles did not equate to more choice; you often ended up buying and using maybe 2-3 out of the huge list available to you. By restricting you to a particular plane in each mission, Dropship forces players to put some effort into each of the missions. You no longer have the option of restarting with a different plane and loadout; you won’t be saved by the ride you pick. You have a particular vehicle and a particular weapons loadout and you have to finish the mission with what you’re given. It adds a real sense of realism and maturity to the game. Another trick that Dropship has is that some of your planes can pick up and deploy armored vehicles. The game is called Dropship after all.

By making it necessary for the player to ferry units around the battlefield, the game really makes you feel like you’re participating in a wider conflict with greater strategic goals. Oftentimes, when you play AC, you’ll be told that you’re task is to support an allied ground offensive. What this really means in the game, however, is that the allied tanks will sit there getting blasted to bits unless you, the flying wonder, come and save the day. In contrast, every time that you are told that you’re supporting an allied offensive in Dropship, the game really means it. You’ll have to pick up an allied vehicle (or two) and then fly them to their destination. While you’re doing this, you’ll never be flying very high mind you; once loaded your craft is less maneuverable than before, making you an easy target for enemy SAMs (surface-to-air missiles) or fighters. Once you drop your cargo at their destination, you may have to switch to a support role. Here again, Dropship excels. Every plane in the game allows you to switch between a full on flight mode and a hover mode. Hovering not only allows you to land and take off in very small areas for your cargo runs, it also makes for a better experience when you have to support your allies. In AC, doing strafing runs on ground targets was a boring grind; you had to make multiple passes to clear everything and since your plane was so fast and the enemies, including the SAMs, were so dumb the challenge was minimal. In Dropship, SAM units are deadly; your only chance of victory is to either fly fast and very low or play hide and seek behind enemy structures or the terrain. Providing support for the units which you’ve just disgorged then becomes a wonderfully tense experience. You’ll often have to get to the drop off point by flying 50 feet off the ground, your dropship balanced on the edge of speed and control. Once you’ve dropped your troops off, you’ll often find yourself hovering a few feet off the ground, watching enemy SAMs go over your craft by the smallest of margins, as you find anything to hide behind. All while watching for enemy air units. It’s exhausting, tense and almost too much; but only almost. You can argue that you’re still saving the day for your friends, but the way that it’s handled makes all the difference. For the most part, the level designers have done a great job with balancing the mix of usable aircraft, objectives to meet and the obstacles in your way. There are, however, a few places where they haven’t managed this properly.

The main sticking point that I have with this game is with the vehicle mix. Note that I said vehicle not aircraft. Sometimes, the game will drop you into a vehicle driving section. I’m guessing this was done to either break up the gameplay or make you feel more involved in the events around you and it almost worked. There are certainly times when you’re driving along in an APC, watching the skies above you be crisscrossed by aircraft that you certainly get the right feeling of helplessness and connectedness with your AI comrades. Sadly though, the full impact is lost due to the horrible controls and responsiveness of the land vehicles. When you’re flying an aircraft, all is right in the world of Dropship. The controls are as responsive as you could want, easily allowing you to switch between flying and hovering. Additionally, the aircraft all have a great sense of weight and momentum to them; the bigger dropships can’t stop on a dime and you really get the sense that they really are bigger and clumsier than their fighter cousins. You don’t get that feeling with the ground vehicles; there is almost no sense of connection between the ground and the APC or tank that you happen to be driving over it. It’s almost as if you’re floating over the ground. It doesn’t help that the driving missions are far more linear than any others in the game. There is one correct way to beat these missions and you’re almost always severely outnumbered and outgunned. They’re just not fun. Apart from the second to last mission, which is just insanely difficult, the flying missions are much better balanced than the driving ones.

As long as you don’t mind the occasionally stupid driving portions of the game, you’ll find a great little flight combat experience. The levels are designed intelligently, the aircraft all handle well and the game does a great job of crafting believable scenarios for you to interact with. It’s a shame that most people ignore Dropship and gravitate towards the stagnant Ace Combat. This game took some real chances with an established formula and it tanked. It’s sad to think that years from now, we’ll have AC10 to play and one of the best flight combat games to ever be released will be all but forgotten.

-Nikhil