Project Wingman
Hands down some of the most "simple fun" I've had in a video game. I played Ace Combat 7 recently as my first time in an aerial combat game for years, and it was good, but had a lot of big annoyance. Project Wingman on the other hand feels like the same kind of game, but distilled down to just the good bits. It also has more content than AC7 and is a third of the price. There's a campaign mode with 21 missions and there's also a "conquest mode" which is a sort of long-form mission based land-capture mode. The game looks gorgeous, planes handle well, there's a good selection of aircraft, and it's just really fun to play. Very polished, good voice acting - absolutely worth it.
Compared to AC7
Given that this and Ace Combat 7 are very similar games and I recently played through AC7, much of my feedback is in comparison to that game. So, compared to AC7:
- PW campaign is much more engaging
- PW has location and faction names that are actually memorable (not some nonsense like Erusia and Erosia)
- PW doesn't have stupidly long cutscenes
- PW voice acting is better
- When selecting an aircraft, PW actually shows you the numbers rather than just bar lengths
- PW has a better screen for comparing planes
- There are no aircraft modifications in PW, just the planes themselves
- PW has far fewer "bullshit physics" bosses
- PW has more content
- Although not all aircraft have the "high-G turn" from AC7, in PW there's a module on higher end planes called the AOA limiter which is a HUGE amount of fun. It basically lets you flip around in mid-air to do extremely tight turns
Pros
- Very pretty
- Controls are great
- Voice acted
- The sound effects and the feeling of blowing stuff up is awesome
- Storyline actually makes sense, and the voice acting is good
- Challenging. Playing on normal, it took me several hours to beat mission 9. I complained about the save system in AC7, but although the system in Wingman is even less forgiving (NO checkpoints), it felt much more rewarding to finish each mission
- Your squad mates are actually good at shooting things, and the enemy does actually shoot at them instead of always at you
- The AOA limiter is a game changer. It gives you a huge amount of freedom so you can be the "bullshit physics", and it's on a 2 second recharge with infinite use instead of carrying 4 flares
Cons
- You can tell from the store screenshots, but there's a filter on the whole game - like the contrast is way too high. Lots of things are very dark. I crashed into the ground several times because I couldn't see where it was
- There's a very confusing section just after mission 15. Firstly the mission says "stick to me so we don't get separated", but that plane is actually coded to stay near YOU, so if you slow down, it slows down even more to the point you stall and fall out of the sky. The second part is that mission requires you to "fly back to base" but the radar is so scrambled it's VERY unclear where that is. I flew across the map twice before I realised there was a tiny white dot in the scrambled map. Thirdly, that mission ends with an audio-only debrief that's quite long, and a lot of different unidentified voices are talking about something you can't see.
- It's a shame that the game finishes on it's worst boss fight. Once you finish the campaign there's one last mission where the leader of Crimson Squad shows up again (even though you've beaten them twice) and there's just a one on one boss fight where he has a load of experimental weapons and can flip over in mid air to avoid your missiles. It only took 3-4 attempts to beat him, but the campaign would have felt so much better if it had just ended on the last campaign map rather than a "bullshit physics" boss fight.