Wingman Program Review
need to know
What is it? An arcade air combat game set in a ruined futuristic Earth.
Estimated payment: $25/£19.49
Developer: D2 area
Publisher: Zone D2, Humble Games
Comment time: Ryzen 7 3700X, RTX 2060 Super, 16 GB RAM, SSD, Logitech Extreme 3D Pro Joystick, Xbox 360 Wired Controller
multiplayer game? No
Association: Official website
When I see an airplane fighting game that touts full HOTAS support, head tracking, and VR integration, I’d expect something pretty hardcore. Project Wingman isn’t really that, nor is it trying to be. It’s more of a modern-day Top Gun game that puts you in the cockpit of a jet plane as a superhuman mercenary ace in some sloppy, cinematic dogfighting action. There’s a lot of detail and variety in the different planes and loadouts, but it’s definitely not a simulation in the gaming sense I grew up with, like the IL-2 Sturmovik.
Even without the novice mode enabled, the controls are pretty retro. It’s possible to land on a runway of about 100 feet by coming to a near complete stop in mid-air and then barely kissing the ground with your wheels at the last second. G-forces aren’t an issue because making hairpin turns in any direction while traveling at hundreds of miles per hour won’t bother you or your aircraft. Flying upside down or sideways at top speed and maintaining a constant altitude more or less indefinitely is fine. If your speed drops too low, you may stall, but even that is forgiving and easy to recover. Accuracy is relative, as even small ground targets like tanks will take full damage as long as you drop HE shells somewhere near them.
(Image credit: District D2, Humble Games)
Whether you’re flying over icy taiga or a futuristic metropolis, the terrain looks beautiful.
That’s not to say Project Wingman isn’t fun. Sometimes you just want to get hot on a bandit and take them out with a proper fully automatic blast, or swoop down on a geothermal power plant, cover it with bombs, and then switch to an outside camera to enjoy the Hollywood fireworks. You want that radio voice yelling in your ear, “They’re on my six!” It’s just the vibe. It doesn’t matter who is yelling, or where their six is, or where “six” is. I’m just shaking.
If you want to fly a jet fast and blow up shit without worrying about stupid crap like structural integrity and blackouts, Project Wingman has you covered as long as you have a controller or a flight stick. The mouse and keyboard controls, no matter how I adjust them, are too sensitive and I wouldn’t recommend trying to fly like that. I had the absolute best experience with my trusty Logitech Extreme 3D Pro joystick, but the controls on a plain old Xbox 360 controller work just as well. Throttle management can be a bit of a pain, as you have to hold down the shoulder button to get on and off the throttle at a set speed, but it’s definitely playable.
Everything from the interior of the cockpit to the ambient and volumetric clouds also looks incredible. I was able to cruise at 60+ fps on max settings on my RTX 2060 Super, even with a lot going on. Each over-the-top explosion is satisfyingly exaggerated, with flames and smoldering debris confirming your kills, all accompanied by a wonderful bass “boom”! You can almost feel it with surround sound headphones. Moisture collects in the canopy and truly captures sunlight. Whether you’re flying over icy taiga or a futuristic metropolis, the terrain looks beautiful. The aircraft itself has been meticulously built with the utmost attention to the smallest details.
(Image credit: District D2, Humble Games)
A variety of real-world-inspired aircraft help keep things interesting, and each of the 21 campaign missions encourages choosing the right tool for the job. To support a beleaguered ground force, you might want to carry an air-to-ground attack aircraft modeled after the A-10. In primarily air-to-air combat, the dogfights following the MiG-29 may be faster than you. There are a ton of different weapon types that are good at different things, from smart tracking missiles that require you to stay pointed but are nearly impossible to evade, to ground-targeted cluster bombs that just need to scorch the earth. However, the hangars used to build these loads The UI is clunky and unintuitive, and is overly restrictive about which weapons you are allowed to attach to which mount points.
This 21-mission campaign tells an intriguing war story about a future where Earth is devastated by natural disasters, with the American West Coast physically detached from the rest of the continent and trying to do so politically. You fight for the disadvantaged Cascadians against the imperialist federation, trying to help them win their independence so they can enjoy their garage rock and voodoo doughnuts in peace. Most of the characters are just war movie stereotypes, with some predictable arcs but also some clever plot twists.
(Image credit: District D2, Humble Games)
It’s like a popcorn action movie in game form that’s always enjoyable for many of the same reasons.
Things can get a little repetitive, though, and while increasingly wild sci-fi super enemies add some much-needed variety, they can also be frustrating. For example, you’ll start encountering some missions with Flying Fortresses that require you to take out all discrete mount points before they drop. No matter how much firepower you throw at the fuselage, they seem invincible until you knock out every single antiaircraft gun. This was the funniest part of the wingman program, and it really shattered an already shaky fantasy for me. Regardless of the target, I still spend most of each mission chasing a single enemy fighter, as my AI wingman doesn’t seem to have the ability to stop priority targets from getting close to me while I’m chasing them.
What might bring me back to Project Wingman is the open conquest mode. You start yourself with a few basic jets and have to go on missions to get new hardware and hire more pilots. As your roster grows, you’ll conquer coastal maps to establish final confrontations. Managing your resources is a challenge, and it touches on a certain strategy that activities can’t do.
I spent a lot of time lamenting what Project Wingman didn’t have: better physics, smarter AI allies, more unpredictable characters, and more diverse objectives. But I also have a blast zooming in, painting the target, and trying to avoid missile lock-on. It’s like a popcorn action movie in game form that’s always enjoyable for many of the same reasons. I think it defies Newton’s laws and human biology, which makes me throw my joystick all over the floor in VR, but at 1080p it makes my heart pound and makes my Left alone for lunch.
Today’s best deal
Discover more articles in our categories Gaming & News ou encore Anime.
Thanks for visiting we hope our article Wingman Program Review
, we invite you to share the article on Facebook, pinterest and whatsapp with the hashtags ☑️ #Wingman #Program #Review ☑️!
