Platform: Switch (reviewed)

Developer: All in games.

Publisher: All in games.

Release Date: May 21st, 2020

Price: $19.99 (debut price $17.99)

It’s a shame that the Great War (World War One) hasn’t gotten more attention from game developers than it has. The air war itself lends itself to a game. There is no radar, no ECM and certainly no guided missiles. It’s machine guns and the MK-1 eyeball for you. In the early war years weapons were particularly interesting, remember they had to figure things out as they went. People took after each other with bricks and pistols until someone figured to strap a light machine gun onto an artillery spotting plane. Even then it took a while for someone to figure how to get it to fire ahead without destroying the propeller. So this would seem the perfect setting for a video game. Heck, the real-world aircraft practically had arcade controls anyway so let’s do it! Well they did it, but the results are mixed, so let’s take a look and see what’s good, what’s great and what crashes in flames.

Red Wings: Aces of the Sky is a third person aerial combat game. It’s neither a flight simulator nor an arcade game but combines aspects of both and not always to it’s advantage. Each mission you strap on a period aircraft that tries, at least a little, to be realistic. The Albatross is fast, the Fokker Triplane is maneuverable but, your guns have unlimited ammunition, and you have to watch their heat. The controls are what you would expect on an console but you also have four canned abilities: barrel roll, squad attack, quick turn, and a strange pistol shot, that instead of being a last ditch roll of the dice, is just a way to kill a nearly defeated foe and get a brief cut scene. All of these abilities are on a timer, save for the pistol shot, so you have to use them wisely.

The flight model is fun, at first, but it quickly wears on you. There is a skill tree that you can put points into, but it’s pretty simple. There are some interesting abilities towards the end, but they require you to save up your skill points. You get more skill points by scoring well during missions. But the skill tree is shared between the two campaigns, so getting into the opposing faction’s campaign is easy once you play the first. Most missions have you flying around attacking waves of enemies until you defeat them all. Sometimes you’ll destroy enemy fuel balloons, or defend your own fuel balloons. While in these mission types, health and fuel are a consideration. If you run low on either, there are floating balloons that you can collect that will replenish them. Occasionally, you’ll fly a bomber and drop bombs, or play a mission that consists of only flying through the hoops of the fuel/health balloons. But this gets old quickly. There are technically two campaigns—The Alliance (UK, France, Russia) and the Entente (Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire.) The campaigns are quite similar, though there is a story, particularly at the start, but it sort of fades as you go and it sort of tapers off, and the game becomes a grind. Beside campaign mode, there’s a survival mode where you defend against thirteen waves of planes–or for as long as you can at least. In addition to survival mode, there are other planes to unlock—most of which unlock after completing certain missions. Some will unlock if you complete specific challenges on each level. At first blush, the art is impressive in its comic style in a similar manner to Bomber Command. There’s not much to see and you fly over the same countryside mission after mission.

Bottom line Red Wings: Aces of the Sky: I don’t know what to do with this one, what it does it does pretty well, even if it can’t make up its mind what game it want to be. It’s neither fish nor fowl and it could have been so very much more.

The good:

Excellent concept.
Great artwork.
Easy controls.

The bad:

Design not well thought out.
Lackluster story.
Little replay value.

Red Wings: Aces of the Sky Review