Project Wingman

Casually pulling 40G while you backseat WSO wife G-Locs only for you to hear the best antagonist's farewell monologue. [i] Monarch...when you hear the thunder... when the storm...comes for you... remember me. [/i]

Its good, but the boundaries are stupid. Like my bad for being too good at the game and killing all of the enemies too quickly, then getting bored and hunting for the ones not in the combat zone, but are visible on radar

It has the formula of a good air combat game: [X] Set in post-apocalyptic future. [X] Wild super weapons. [X] A cohesive storyline. [X] Aircraft and weapon choice. [X] Reasonably open combat areas. [ ] A-10 Warthog... :( I went into the game blind, and as I played, it had me thinking it was a remake of an early 2000s title. It's not polished, but I found that to be part of the charm, never once did I find anything to be immersion nor game breaking. It has substance to establish its own universe, I think. It so much reminds me of games I'd first played over 20 years ago. Foremost, Lethal Skies: Team SW. And of course, the 2000s Ace Combat games.

After really enjoying my first taste of jet games with Ace Combat 7, I took a long break before deciding it was finally time to try Project Wingman to satisfy a sudden urge for some dogfighting. I was honestly surprised by how immersed and occasionally frustrated I got, but overall I had a great time with it. To be real, I went in only knowing four things about the game: there is a conflict, a character named Prez, an antagonist named Crimson 1, and an amazing soundtrack. I mostly zoned out during the story campaign, as all I really cared about was flying and shooting with some awesome jets. The game offers great variety, and I appreciated being able to equip multiple missile combinations on a single jet, unlike Ace Combat's more restrictive weapon slots. The flying felt smooth and the action was exciting, though my main issue was the lack of a checkpoint system. Most of my deaths came from overusing the AOA limiter and failing to check my altitude gauge, so that was definitely on me. Once I cleaned up my flying habits, though, it was smooth sailing. Project Wingman is a fantastic way to scratch that Ace Combat itch. I've heard the Frontline 59 campaign is great too, but I haven't had a chance to play it yet.

This game is a dollar store Ace Combat clone with some of the worst controls and the worst UI I've ever seen. It's a game made for hardcore military otaku who own $300 flightsticks that wants to be ultra-realistic but only when it serves to make the game more of a dull slog. None of this is more evident than the first campaign mission, which was so dull I uninstalled the game and refunded. The first mission has you bombing a bunch of small boats, and that is where the game starts to suck. The boats are so small that you can't actually see them: you have to instead switch to your bombs and move a circle around (which you can see through your plane's cockpit for some reason) until it turns red. You then release a bomb and hope that the boat you can't see doesn't move out of the bomb's blast radius before waiting a full 90 seconds for the game to load another bomb. It's boring, it's tedious, and it's a pain to do because you can't see where you're going when you're trying to track your bomb reticule through the floor of your cockpit. The UI also really sucks. The starting plane has an absolutely tiny field of view out of the cockpit and something like two-thirds of the screen is taken up by the inside of your plane. I don't know much about fighter aircraft, but I feel like plane cockpits generally are not designed with giant horse blinders because the pilot is generally not a horse. Avoid.

Fun game. Works with HOTAS and Track IR which is neat.

I might be in the minority as a 3rd-person view + Keyboard with no Mouse Aim player, but when it comes to arcade flight sims on PC, this game does quite a lot different to Ace Combat 7 that I find more fun: - Keyboard input sensitivity is significantly lower & easier to control - Freelook on mouse without needing to hold down a button - 3rd person camera is further back so you have greater situational awareness instead of half the screen being the plane - Standard enemies are more willing to get into turn circle dogfights with you - Plane physics feel impactful, making handling differences highly prominent - No extremely short mission objective timers - Missile behaviour is more arcadey like old Ace Combat titles - Gun aiming is not guesswork and guns are satisfying to use without modding - More gunpod types: Rapid/Heavy/Canister as well as standard Medium - Visuals and sound effects are more arcadey, befitting an arcadey flight sim - Multiple special weapon types at once This was more than enough to tide me over the lack of checkpoints and somewhat repetitive mission objectives in this game. You can really feel that AC7 is a controller game with keyboard+mouse shoveled in, Project Wingman actually feels like it built with PC in mind. You won't get as many advanced manuevers as AC7 in this game, but the average Keyboard+Mouse player has difficulty using those to begin with due to the controls. Some bugs were encountered even 6 years after release, but nothing game breaking. Campaign completed on the highest Mercenary difficulty

Its indie Ace Combat. Missions are well designed and really engaging. Plane roster is decent with a variety of Frankensteined modern jets to choose from. Planes can have up to 4 weapons along with guns, allowing for a disgusting amount of carnage with certain loadouts.

Boring, missions are too long with no challenge. Too many pointless dialogues during flights.

TL:DR - The missions can last for well over 30 mins, don't reward failure (not even like 10% or something), and have no checkpoints. People claim this game is a labour of love but the game design itself is so cruel it makes me wonder where the 'love' part is. Don't believe the hype. ======================================== This is one of the most time-disrespecful games I have ever have the misfortune of engaging with. The first four mission briefings told me NOTHING about what kind of combat to expect. No orders. Just a lore dump. 4 times in a row. So, naturally, I skipped the 5th one. At the end of the VERY long 5th mission - it was easily 30 mins long - I am asked to attack a certain target. I am not told that this target is under a structure and you need to fly low to the ground in order to attack it under the roof. Perhaps that was covered in the Mission Briefing - the one I skipped because the previous four were just a waste of time - but I doubt it. This game doesn't have a story. There is no effort at all to create a story. There is a plot that keeps getting repeated. This game feels like it was written by Netflix writers. This is not the place to discuss the difference between plot and story, but the short version is this: The plot is the events that happen. The story is how people react to the events that happen. At the end of the first mission, (spoiler), and your fellow squadron members says 'holy crap what the hell was that?', or something along those lines. Then, after (spoiler) one of them says a line that sounds like it was lifted from a Marvel film, and not one of the good ones. I can't say what the line is without giving away possible spoilers, so here's something similiar: 'Okay, I guess that just happened'. Some people will say 'these guys are indie, give them a break'. Okay. Cool. Let me finish the story from before. I do the Star Wars trench run like the game wants me to and take out the three remaining buildings. I am immediately swamped/ganked by high-level enemy fighters. 'No worries, I'm playing a game called Project Wingman, me and the rest of the squadron can handle this' Perhaps we could've, but I'll never know because they all ran away like scared little pissbabies. By the time I reliase I have literally no support from my squadron and are fighting *ridiculous* odds, the radio voice FINALLY decides to tell me that these guys are too powerful and that I should try to escape. LONG after it was actually possible. Even now some people will try to defend the devs. Wait. I'm not done yet. I played that mission for over 45 minutes and all I got for my efforts was a 'retry/quit' screen. Not, say, 10% of my earnings. Nothing. I hadn't failed any missions before so I didn't realise how anti-gamer the design was, and I've played too long to get a refund. ANOTHER ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ flight sim ruined by ♥♥♥♥♥♥ anti-gamer design. I don't know why I even bother at this point. - People will also rave on about the crew and how likeable they are, especially Prez. They must've gotten a different copy of the game, because the drivel I heard in this game didn't even have any personality beyond 'who cares as long as we get paid'. The voice acting itself is fine, but the devs literally-as-is-written spam the voice lines. The characters comment on every single thing you do, every time you lock on to an enemy or fire a missile they let you know that yes, you have actually just done the thing you wanted to do. OVER. AND OVER. AND OVER. AND OVER. wow if only there were some other way to give feedback to the player without nagging them They talk so much that it's amazing that they don't ACCIDENTALLY have a personality just from the fact that pareidolia exists. And they rarely say anything useful or meaningful, so it's all just noise ANYWAY. The flight itself is smooth and all that, but the game doesn't respect your time at all. They did well to make the game and all of that, but not having checkpoints in such long missions is just a ♥♥♥♥ move, it's that simple. Having said all of that: It's still a better game than Ace Combat 7.