I have to start this review by saying that while I’m acquainted with flight simulators, they aren’t my main plat du jour.
So, when I touched Project Wingman, it was with utter, complete ignorance that it was a homage to the Ace Combat series. In fact, I bought and played Project Wingman before I played my first Ace Combat game, and the similarities and differences are interesting and jarring. I even thought it was an AAA game!
Which wasn’t the case.
To me, this game is visually gorgeous. Your plane travels through smooth cloud with air resistance on your wings, you can see forests on fire, the sea is shiny. In the course of the game you’ll fight over seas, deserts, forests, cities and ORANGE cordium mining fields, and the lighting effects on the plane are also a treat to see. The color palette choice is also striking. With the myriad of different scenarios, there isn’t an oversaturation of a specific color, and tones vary depending on the time of the day the mission takes place and the severity of the mission. From what I gathered, fans of this game tend to poke fun at the orange, and this is for a reason: After a specific mission, EVERYTHING WILL BE ORANGE. This at the same time does give a nice impression of how serious the war is becoming, but… it actually makes the last stages somewhat troublesome. To me, it was quite hard to see what I was shooting at, and the picture above is a MILD version of what may happen.
The combat itself is smooth, and you do feel the differences in handling, speed and turn whenever you buy a new plane. An important aspect is that the game does give you a brief tutorial, but doesn’t hold your hand: You’ll have to figure out for yourself the best angle to fire missiles because missions are long and there are no checkpoints or opportunities to reload. One of the best things is that, whenever someone fires a missile on you, a holographic triangle hovers around your plane informs you the exact angle of approach of the projectile (at least in third person). Since flares take thirty seconds to reload, and in late game you’re often the target of literal macross missile attacks, you’ll have to master dodging by yourself and pay attention to the radar informing you of how close the enemy missiles are. Sadly things can get too grindy since missions don't give much money-wise, and the price of planes skyrockets from the middle to the end.
The missions themselves add a nice variety with the scant style of the genre, though they are WAY too long (every mission can end up with fifteen minutes to half hour long) without checkpoints or reloads. This tiresome impression gets worse since there are missions with ‘twists’ (as in, the mission starts in a specific way, then turn to another requiring another loadout) or surprise bosses, forcing you to restart. Another sore spots for me is that, due to poor allied A.I, its easy to find yourself in an endless literal loop of dodging missiles trying to pot-shot mission-sensitive foes.
Lastly, the final boss was a pain, and not the good kind.
The Story itself is rather basic (and that by itself is not bad, not every game needs to be a Disco Elysium) but the characterization is the best part, being surprisingly good considering the scant material that there was to work with (since there are no cutscenes, just mission briefs and in-mission chatter). You can pinpoint the personalities of your teammates and even some of the enemies by the style of their dialogues alone, which is always a feat of writing, and characters from both sides are surprisingly fleshed out. This is helped by the really good voice acting, nearly everyone showed a really good range between 'casual danger' to 'casual professionalism under stress’ (which is another rare feat in voice acting). Almost no one was wooden, with tones shifting depending on the situation, stressing that they are pros, but things got dangerous.
Monarch himself is an interesting case: He is a ‘silent’ protagonist in order to better project the player (and after that I found that its also a mark from the Ace Combat series) into the game, but he doesn’t fall for the same traps as others of his kind: here, other characters openly discuss Monarch and make jokes about him, and banter with other pilots from other groups help flesh out who he is without having him to say a word. The emotional responses to what’s happening on screen coming from his teammates, offering the player someone to relate to.
But the jewel of Project Wingman’s crown is the music. Jose Pavli really knocked it off the park with the musical score. The orchestrated themes have specific tones for different characters, missions and situations. Similar missions will have similar specific themes, but will be completely different. Quieter missions will have a quieter, but tense beat, frantic missions will have an urgent tone, and the famous ‘furball’ mission even has an anime-inspired theme (Macross, specifically!). This is the kind of soundtrack that you definitely buy as an extra.
So overall, I recommend Project Wingman to those curious about the genre and seeking an entry point.
VideoGame I can't believe its not butter- I mean AAA
I have to start this review by saying that while I’m acquainted with flight simulators, they aren’t my main plat du jour.
So, when I touched Project Wingman, it was with utter, complete ignorance that it was a homage to the Ace Combat series. In fact, I bought and played Project Wingman before I played my first Ace Combat game, and the similarities and differences are interesting and jarring. I even thought it was an AAA game!
Which wasn’t the case.
To me, this game is visually gorgeous. Your plane travels through smooth cloud with air resistance on your wings, you can see forests on fire, the sea is shiny. In the course of the game you’ll fight over seas, deserts, forests, cities and ORANGE cordium mining fields, and the lighting effects on the plane are also a treat to see. The color palette choice is also striking. With the myriad of different scenarios, there isn’t an oversaturation of a specific color, and tones vary depending on the time of the day the mission takes place and the severity of the mission. From what I gathered, fans of this game tend to poke fun at the orange, and this is for a reason: After a specific mission, EVERYTHING WILL BE ORANGE. This at the same time does give a nice impression of how serious the war is becoming, but… it actually makes the last stages somewhat troublesome. To me, it was quite hard to see what I was shooting at, and the picture above is a MILD version of what may happen.
The combat itself is smooth, and you do feel the differences in handling, speed and turn whenever you buy a new plane. An important aspect is that the game does give you a brief tutorial, but doesn’t hold your hand: You’ll have to figure out for yourself the best angle to fire missiles because missions are long and there are no checkpoints or opportunities to reload. One of the best things is that, whenever someone fires a missile on you, a holographic triangle hovers around your plane informs you the exact angle of approach of the projectile (at least in third person). Since flares take thirty seconds to reload, and in late game you’re often the target of literal macross missile attacks, you’ll have to master dodging by yourself and pay attention to the radar informing you of how close the enemy missiles are. Sadly things can get too grindy since missions don't give much money-wise, and the price of planes skyrockets from the middle to the end.
The missions themselves add a nice variety with the scant style of the genre, though they are WAY too long (every mission can end up with fifteen minutes to half hour long) without checkpoints or reloads. This tiresome impression gets worse since there are missions with ‘twists’ (as in, the mission starts in a specific way, then turn to another requiring another loadout) or surprise bosses, forcing you to restart. Another sore spots for me is that, due to poor allied A.I, its easy to find yourself in an endless literal loop of dodging missiles trying to pot-shot mission-sensitive foes.
Lastly, the final boss was a pain, and not the good kind.
The Story itself is rather basic (and that by itself is not bad, not every game needs to be a Disco Elysium) but the characterization is the best part, being surprisingly good considering the scant material that there was to work with (since there are no cutscenes, just mission briefs and in-mission chatter). You can pinpoint the personalities of your teammates and even some of the enemies by the style of their dialogues alone, which is always a feat of writing, and characters from both sides are surprisingly fleshed out. This is helped by the really good voice acting, nearly everyone showed a really good range between 'casual danger' to 'casual professionalism under stress’ (which is another rare feat in voice acting). Almost no one was wooden, with tones shifting depending on the situation, stressing that they are pros, but things got dangerous.
Monarch himself is an interesting case: He is a ‘silent’ protagonist in order to better project the player (and after that I found that its also a mark from the Ace Combat series) into the game, but he doesn’t fall for the same traps as others of his kind: here, other characters openly discuss Monarch and make jokes about him, and banter with other pilots from other groups help flesh out who he is without having him to say a word. The emotional responses to what’s happening on screen coming from his teammates, offering the player someone to relate to.
But the jewel of Project Wingman’s crown is the music. Jose Pavli really knocked it off the park with the musical score. The orchestrated themes have specific tones for different characters, missions and situations. Similar missions will have similar specific themes, but will be completely different. Quieter missions will have a quieter, but tense beat, frantic missions will have an urgent tone, and the famous ‘furball’ mission even has an anime-inspired theme (Macross, specifically!). This is the kind of soundtrack that you definitely buy as an extra.
So overall, I recommend Project Wingman to those curious about the genre and seeking an entry point.