Rogue Aces

Genre: 2D Flight Combat Game

Players: 1

.

Review:

Rogue Aces is a 2D Flight Combat Game with some Roguelike elements where players pilot an aircraft against wave after wave of enemy fighters, tanks, battleships, and bases, and must be mindful not only of incoming enemy fire, but also their own ammo and fuel supplies and, most importantly, the game’s physics.

Visually, Rogue Aces is a throwback to classic cartoony arcade games, though the level of detail here is high enough that I’d hesitate to call it pixel art. In any case, it’s an appealing art style that works well for the game’s arcadey feel. This is accompanied with somewhat less fitting rock music (I can’t tell if this game is going for a World War I or World War II aesthetic, but in either case, electric guitars don’t feel right at all), and an amusing British general giving you orders and making dry comments about your success or failure.

When it comes to the gameplay, Rogue Aces is absolutely brutal, and not necessarily in the best way. Players can take multiple hits from enemies, but one misjudged run-in with the ground can be fatal, and since this game requires targets to be taken out with ammunition that is in extremely limited supply and only refillable by landing, and you’ll be going near the ground a lot. The game does thankfully provide an autopilot for landing so you don’t need to go through delicate process of landing manually, but depending on your game mode, it may penalize you for making use of it.

This might not be quite as bad if the action wasn’t so zoomed in you could easily be coming up on a cliff face or the ground without realizing it, and it might also be alleviated if players were provided enough supplies that they didn’t have to resupply so often, but unfortunately this game seems to have a deep-seated desire to punish players who don’t make its physics system second nature.

It’s a shame too, because some of this game’s elements are really clever, such as being able to take over enemy bases after bombing them to smithereens, resulting in a new place to resupply as well as additional allies to assist you. And when it isn’t making you throw your controller in frustration at how absurdly easy it is to die to the landscape, the game’s physics are pretty fun too.

I can see players who learn the ins and outs of this game’s mechanics and physics getting a lot of fun out of Rogue Aces. However, for me, it was just repeated frustration as I died over and over again. For fans of old-school 2D Flight Combat Games looking for a challenge, this game may be worth a look, but I feel everyone else is better off staying away.

tl;dr – Rogue Aces is a 2D Flight Combat game with Roguelike elements that has players fighting off enemies and capturing bases using their plane. The game has some inventive mechanics and potentially fun physics, but it seems designed to frustrate players by making them die repeatedly not to enemies, but to the landscape. The result is a game that will only be enjoyed by those willing to really get used to this game’s physics… and even then, they’re still likely die a lot.

Grade: C+

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