Back in the Fight with Wings! Remastered Edition
by Marcus Estrada
[divider] [dropcap]C[/dropcap]inemaware was a big name in PC game development back in the day. Amiga owners were particularly smitten with the team that released games such as Defender of the Crown, It Came from the Desert, and Wings. Nearly 15 years after its initial release, Wings has been updated as Wings! Remastered Edition for modern computers. Of course, it has also seen a visual overhaul to bring it into the current generation. How does it play as a modern game with retro sensibilities?
It’s still exciting! In Wings! Remastered Edition, you begin as a young man poised to enter World War I as a pilot. After quickly earning your wings there’s no longer a dull moment. Each day a new task is handed down and players must engage in one of a couple mission types. The first offers a 3rd person 3D flight mode where you must shoot down enemy planes or blimps. The other mode takes a 2D top-down perspective and has you picking off enemy soldiers, trucks, and the like or bombing bridges and buildings. Although the majority of missions are the first type, there’s still a lot of 2D ones as well.
Dogfighting is by far the most engaging (and stressful) part of the experience. When in flight you must be careful of your surroundings at all times. If you aren’t careful an enemy might be able to fire off several shots right at you! In other cases you might fly too close to the ground or an explosion and cause trouble. Wings! Remastered Edition excels at making players feel that they’re really a part of the 56th Squadron. I did my best to shoot down enemy planes before they could do so to my own teammates. Unfortunately, sometimes they are killed in action. Of course, if you’re not careful it might be your plane that gets shot down. The first time my pilot died was an unexpectedly grisly sight too.
It’s impossible to accurately gauge how fun the 2D sections might have been before, but they stand out as somewhat antiquated today. Your plane moves incredibly slow which is a big issue in regards to missions at hand. For example, the task might be to shoot as many soldiers as possible. That doesn’t seem hard until you realize that they’ll scroll on by before your plane can be properly moved into position. Luckily you never have to destroy all of these soldiers, but other missions do require all targets to be neutralized.
Wings! Remastered Edition starts out as a very easy game, and this might be an issue for some. For many stages it feels like the kind of title that’s entirely impossible to lose! Once you get around to stages 70-100 enemies start executing smart moves, being more aggressive, and overall ratchet up the difficulty. But considering that’s about 2 hours into the game some players might not make it that far after being turned off by the initial friendlier difficulty. Of course, players who don’t care for a challenge can run through tons of stages before ever breaking a sweat.
Fans of the original game should grab Wings! Remastered Edition because it is a very faithful remake. Basically all it adds are better sound effects and newer graphics to replace pixel art. However, those who don’t have fond memories of the original might still be interested. Gamers looking for something with tons of dogfighting missions will particularly enjoy this rebirth of a classic.
[divider] [author image=”http://cliqist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/marcus.jpg” ] Marcus is a fellow with a love for video games, horror, and Japanese food. When he’s not writing about games for a multitude of sites, he’s usually still playing one. One day when he became fed up with the way sites would ignore niche titles he decided to start his own site by the name of Pixel Pacas. Writing about video games is something he hopes to continue doing for many years to come. Some of Marcus’s favorite games include Silent Hill 2, Killer7, and The Sims. [/author]
[…] The only info we have regarding Rocket Ranger Reloaded at the moment is the teaser trailer above, the concept art shown below, and the beginnings of an official site, all of which indicate that the game is heading to Kickstarter. When is it hitting Kickstarter exactly? Given that we’re rapidly approaching the unofficial Kickstarter deadzone that is the holidays I’d say it should be within the next week. While you wait for the campaign to start why not check out the trailer, take in that concept artwork, and read our review of Cinemaware’s other Kickstarter effort, Wings! Remastered Edition. […]
[…] PC games. The team has jumped to Kickstarter to revisit those glorious days. They were able to fund Wings! Remastered Edition a year ago and create a pretty darn fun final product (check out our review!). Of course, with that […]