Red Wings: Aces of the Sky

Microsoft WWII Simulator was my first experience in a wartime plane simulation. It was amazingly fun the first time out and worked well with Saitek controls (love those suckers). Beyond this game and great controls, I’ve been actively avoiding flight simulators. They just were never my cup of tea. If they made Wing Commander again, I would reconsider this. Anyway, there is your trip down memory lane and it gives you some perspective on how much ‘flying’ I have done in the video game world.

Breaking my streak of avoiding flying games, I managed to get wrangled into reviewing Red Wings: Aces of the Sky on the Nintendo Switch. Red Wings is a WWI biplane simulator that puts you right into gorgeous cel-shaded dogfights, simplistic controls, and a variety of different options for power-ups. While avoiding complicated flight simulators, I have to say I have enjoyed the simplicity of this game.

Anyway, let’s get started.

Red Wings seems to be built on one idea – simplicity. While I certainly had my fill with learning controls and gauging meters in the WWII simulator mentioned above, the reason I have actively avoided flight simulators is because of their complication — I always just wanted to fly and fight. I wasn’t trying to become a pilot in my spare time or suddenly jump into the Air Force at the age of 44, rather I just wanted a World War flying game to play that took almost zero thought (respectfully). Red Wings does this and it does it in a few ways.

The controls are probably the easiest I have come across since playing Afterburner in the arcades. Your left Switch thumbstick controls the direction of the plane, while the right stick controls the acceleration/deceleration of the aircraft. The Switch thumbsticks were seemingly built for this moment, as they didn’t hurt once with the hours of playing I did with them. I’ve not been a huge fan of the joy con controllers, especially the ones that break, but this time around these were a perfect fit for the flying and fighting task at hand. They were smooth, they did what you expected out of them, and they improved the experience of flying a biplane. Outside of the sticks, you fire your forward guns with the ZR button, while activating power-ups when called upon using the directional pad. This is the type of game where the controls don’t get in the way of the fun gameplay, as they’re seamless, even, dare I say it, enjoyable.

Shifting over to power-ups, the game features a skills tree and the ability to unlock different planes that have different attributes. Initially, you’re given power-ups by default and they are as follows:

Barrel Roll – Self-explanatory, but helps you to avoid fire sometimes.

Squadron – Getting help from your fellow pilots.

Quick Comeback – This allows you to do an immediate about-face when you’re flying. It helps a lot.

Fatal Takedown – This is essentially your ‘power’ move that ends your enemy with a fancy cutscene.

The above are really quite useful in the game and are assigned to your directional pad underneath your left thumbstick. They are quick to pull off and the benefits are quite good. I’m impressed that All in! actually found four things that didn’t seem like they were thrown in there to take up space. Honest-to-God, these are useful power-ups.

Related to power-ups, if you need motivation to keep playing this game, and it isn’t really the type of game that you would want to play for hours upon hours, so motivation does help, the game has a built-in skills tree that is filled full of improvements for fighting in the sky. The unlockables are power-ups, which range from ace perks, meaning you can improve upon the original power-ups you were given, or percentage perks to help you during fights, such as adding 10% more heat resistance to your machine guns so they won’t overheat. For each power-up improvement, you have to fork over a certain amount of stars, which you earn through achieving goals in successful missions you fly. For example, if you get the highest amount of score in a mission and you complete the mission in a certain amount of time, then you would earn stars for those accomplishments. Those stars translate to upgrades. You will feel encouraged to go back and ‘do better’ in past missions to achieve more stars. It’s like you’re playing Pac-Man Championship Edition and want to earn a perfect star count — same deal, except you earn perks with that star count.

As complicated as the above might seem, they are included and upgraded with the greatest of ease. The game works hand-in-hand with power-ups and upgrades. Again, simplicity is the name of the game here.

As for planes, you unlock them as you get further and further into the story. You have the ability to apply different skins to different planes, while easily understanding that each plane has a different set of attributes. Those attributes all even out in the game in some way or fashion, which means some planes offer you different ways to play (speed v power), but ultimately no matter the choice you’re going to be happy.

All of the above combined, the game does feature two modes you can play in. They are as follows:

Story Mode – While the stories are meaningful on paper, and they are different depending on what side you choose, the variety of missions that come with this mode are what make it special. All in! Games does a good job to give you different challenges and different scenarios as you play through the story. Some are easy as just shooting down planes, others are as complicated as bombing bridges. The devs do their best to keep you out of a stagnant mindset with the gameplay design and for the most part, they pull it off. The game is still not meant to really be played for hours and hours, but the content has enough variety to make you feel like you’re playing something just a tad different each time.

Survival Mode – This mode is what you would expect from a survival mode. You are thrown waves of enemies and your job is to knock them out of the sky. The initial survival mode, on easy, consists of 13 waves. Each wave has about 5+ planes in it, so you’re not going to be bored. It’s a neat mode, but if you want more variety, then story mode is your calling.

At the end of the day, Red Wings is actually a good game. Is it great? Probably not, mainly for longevity reasons, but it’s fun to play. It feels like a well-designed and executed WWI dogfight game and it certainly is a comfortable bit of fun on the Nintendo Switch. Will it be replacing your Flight Simulator on your PC anytime soon? No, but that’s okay.