Red Wings: American Aces

Genre: Combat Flight Simulator

Players: 1-2 Co-Op / Competitive (Local Split-Screen), 2-10 Competitive (Online)

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Review:

(Note: Included in Little Racers + Red Wings: American Aces bundle, along with Little Racer.)

Red Wings: American Aces is a Combat Flight Simulator released in 2022 on PC and Nintendo Switch. This game, a direct sequel to Red Wings: Aces of the Sky, puts players in the role of an American fighter pilot flying missions for France during World War I.

Before going on, I should note that this game has strong similarities to its predecessor, and in turn, to 2018’s Skies of Fury DX, and as such I will be copying content from my reviews of those games and changing it where appropriate..

The gameplay here is firmly of the “arcadey” variety – gravity isn’t really a consideration and you won’t be stalling out no matter which way you’re flying. Also, you have flying balloons that repair and refuel your aircraft, special moves that let you bash into enemy aircraft without taking damage, and the requisite “fly through the rings” missions. In a sense, this plays almost more like a space shooter with a World War I biplanes theme, but as long as you aren’t expecting realism, the gameplay here is pretty top-notch.

Graphically, this game looks pretty good, making use of colorful cel-shaded 3D visuals, with nice touches like the sun shimmering off the ocean, and there’s even some good lighting this time around. Everything has a stylized, slightly cartoony look that works well for the game, and helps to keep the focus on the action. And the framerates remain consistently good, as well. I will note that this game’s use of what sounds like metal music is extremely anachronistic given the time period being depicted.

As with the prior game, the two areas I really wish this game had worked on was the content and environments. In the content area, you’ll only have a few types of missions you’ll play through – a regular combat mission where you’re dodging bullets and downing enemies, an escort mission where you’re doing that while protecting some friendly blimps from enemy aircraft, the aforementioned rings missions where you’re traveling through a specific course as fast as possible, and a few missions that throw a wrench into the gameplay, like forcing players to take out enemies only using the barrel roll move. This is a marginal improvement over the previous game, but you’ll still find things getting repetitive pretty quickly, and while the aerial combat in this game is certainly good, I was really wanting for something more substantial to apply my ace flying skills toward beyond “oh, here’s another ‘just kill all the enemies’ mission… and now another ring mission…”

The lack of variety in locales is another issue. Oh, don’t get me wrong, they look good enough, but beyond occasional clouds and different lighting conditions, they are, again, all the same. What I wouldn’t give for a fight in a mountainous valley, or amidst city skyscrapers! Or, if the game wanted to keep everything aerial, at least have stages fighting around a giant zeppelin or struggling with high winds and heavy weather as you seek out your enemies (zeppelins are in the game, but they’re fairly small). Just something beyond endless wheat fields below and nothing else.

American Aces does add a few new enemy types, as well as game mechanics like lightning that resets your ability cooldowns when you incorrectly time a trip into a cloud. However, for the most part this feels very much like the same game with a few things added in.

At the very least, one area where this game separates itself from Skies of Fury DX is its RPG-style skill tree, where you unlock permanent upgrades based on your performance in missions. This is a great addition, though I do wish, if they were going for a lack of realism, they got more outlandish and creative with these upgrades.

Also, this game drastically increases the difficulty over the first Red Wings game in multiple ways, with many of them less about skill and more about dealing with irritations. Early on, you’ll be hounded by persistent enemies far more often, something that can get really annoying when whatever you’re doing always seems to get interrupted by a hail of bullets from a random direction. What’s more, mission goals are far more difficult to complete to earn points for the game’s skill tree, with some that are literally impossible until you upgrade your equipment. The game compensates for this by making upgrades cost less, but even so it can feel maddening at times trying to make headway in this game

American Aces does improve on the original game by adding online play in addition to the 2-player local split-screen. However, don’t expect to get much out of this mode – the online lobbies are empty at this point.

Overall, Red Wings: American Aces is a disappointing sequel, reusing assets and gameplay from the original game but adding little in the way of new content. Some of the prior game’s problems are addressed here, but it feels like too little, too late. What’s more, the extreme changes to the difficulty make this game much harder to get into than the prior game. If you’re looking for a Combat Flight Simulator, you have better options than this on Nintendo Switch, and I would even count the previous game as one of those.

tl;dr – Red Wings: American Aces is a Combat Flight Simulator where players take the role of an American fighter pilot during World War I. The core gameplay here is good, but the missions are too repetitive, and the environments lack any sort of variety beyond their appearance. Even worse, while this game reuses gameplay and content from the previous game, the most significant addition it makes is a frustratingly high difficulty level. If you want a Combat Flight Simulator on Nintendo Switch, look elsewhere.

Grade: C+

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