Red Wings: Aces of the Sky
Initially, I fell in love with the WW1-Era sounds, dialogue, planes and menu layout. The tutorial mission itself was a great entryway to better understand the controls, abilities and objectives of each mission. The controls themselves felt great. Simplistic enough for even the most beginner level player.
Some of my first thoughts were that it reminded me a lot of the plane missions in Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped. So I felt a bit of familiarity right off the bat. After spending a few more hours with the game and destroying hundreds of enemy planes, I realized something. The gameplay itself had gotten a tad repetitive. However, it is considered an arcade type game so I would never dock points from it for that. Repetition can hold value and for a game like Red Wings, I’d say that value holds up.
I found myself playing for an hour or two, stopping, and then coming back to it a few hours later or the next day. That was key for a player like me to fully enjoy the game and best experience it personally.
The two campaign storylines had tons of missions to spend hours with. The abilities and planes you unlock add more to the fun as you get further along. The dialogue was a bit stale at times but not enough to distract me from my objectives. The sound design was well done in terms of weapons, planes, and music. The graphics and art design were perfect for an arcade plane shooter such as this as well.
Overall, a game I probably would have never played before has opened up my eyes to further explore games out of my comfort zone. The experiences I had were fun, addicting at times, and simple enough for me to play for a bit and come back anytime I wanted to. Thanks, Red Baron. Not just for your frozen pizza but for your inspirational life and influences for the developers to make this game!
4 stars out of 5
