Red Wings: Aces of the Sky Reviews

This recommendation comes with a couple of big caveats: the game is better in co-op, and the difficulty spikes quite a lot for the finale, so you'll want two good flight gamers to get the most out of this, not to mention a big screen for the split-screen co-op view. If you want to get all of the achievements, don't play without a second ace pilot. Also, due to the short length, I'm glad I got this cheap in a bundle. Gameplay is pure arcade fun at first with old-school slow planes, the ability to roll and avoid damage, and infinite ammo with a heat limit. After a certain number of kills, you can perform a finisher on a weakened enemy where you pull a pistol on the other pilot, which the game reminds you is historically accurate but probably wasn't 100% explosively fatal. One other power the game gives you is to summon allies to shoot down your targets. At first you might wonder, why do that when I can do it myself? It's a really awkward power to use too. The answer is that summoning the allies continues your combo, so they might be the only way to keep racking up big points in certain situations. An aspect of the arcade-feel is the combo scoring. Basic enemy planes are worth 100 points, but destroying a second plane before the combo counter disappears gives you a multiplier that grows with each kill. The combo counter stays for a few seconds since you last hit a target, so it's not too difficult to keep growing unless you run out of enemies in range. Naturally, all of the levels have challenge goals, and many of them require scores only reachable by near-perfect combo chains. By beating the missions with a high score, you earn stars which can then be added to an upgrade tree. Skill upgrades include recharging powers faster, weapon heat resistance, getting more critical hits, and slower fuel loss. Your basic front-mounted gun is decently effective, but the fastest way to destroy an enemy (or get destroyed) is to smash through them while rolling for generous invincibility. There's an essential skill tree upgrade so this maneuver increases your combo, and being able to target enemies through clouds is another high-value skill. Happily you can reset skills at any time. The other reward for doing well in missions is new skins for your planes. Different planes do have different stats, but the skins are purely cosmetic and range from historic references to silly costumes. After the basic enemies, you'll also encounter: small balloons that summon enemies either when destroyed or at regular intervals, tougher enemy planes with regenerating armor or your ability to roll and avoid damage, ace planes that are both tougher and have your powers, and finally giant blimps covered in machine gun nests which you destroy in sections. Sadly you can't roll through balloons and blimps because that would be too effective. The campaigns are basically mirrored versions of each other, which feels like a missed opportunity. One side has a famous ace pilot and you join his squadron, while the other has you join a squadron bent on defeating that famous ace – but it's not like the latter ends in a fight against a noticeably tougher ace. Both campaigns end in boss fights against two blimps and a horde of enemies. Levels in the campaigns are also mirrored but have a decent variety. Sometimes you just have to kill all of the enemy, while other times your only goal is to find spy balloons hidden in the clouds. After difficult combat missions, the next mission might be to zoom through a chain of fuel resupply rings because your fuel tank was hit and you're about to run dry and crash. Occasionally they throw you into a bomber plane and send you to hit ground targets. After you finish the campaign, there's a Survival mode with three difficulties, and also you can battle against your co-op partner. The Survival challenges are decently enjoyable and you only lose points for dying, but getting the achievements to beat the devs scores requires actual perfection. If you like flight games, this is a high-difficulty member of the genre with old-fashioned style and arcade fun. The game is rarely fair, especially when groups of enemy planes all simultaneously decide to gang up and shred your plane in seconds. Perhaps that's realistic to the era. Maybe early pilots were shot down nine times out of ten. I didn't enjoy getting marginally better at the game with experience, but I did start dying a lot less and that can't all be attributed to the skill tree because very few of the skills make your plane tougher. But what I can't stand is a game that values co-op multiplayer over singleplayer. Co-op would make the hard missions and challenge goals easier, unless your partner isn't good at the game. If you like trying for all the achievements and don't have an ace pilot friend, don't play this.