Recent reviews by Yago

If you've ever played Euro Truck Sim (or its variants) and thought "I wish you could drive other vehicles and not just trucks in this", and if you're fine with lo-fi 3D graphics, this is what you're looking for.

Beautiful little ditty of a game, full of passion and fun, for long time Sonic fans or newcomers alike.

TLDR:
I play many games, but air combat games are pretty much new to me. Bought on a whim, really enjoyed it. Do recommend.

MY BACKGROUND:
As someone who's played video games for most of his life, I like to boast about the variety of games I've played and enjoyed. Despite that, I've played very few flight simulators or piloting games or whatever you want to call it. The only notable example I'd played was Elite: Dangerous. So this was kind of an impulsive purchase for me. I bought the game last year, and due to real life reasons, silently dropped it after having played through what turned out to be about a quarter of the main campaign. However, on a whim, I've recently come back to it, and I'm glad I did.

GAMEPLAY:
I like the gameplay. Like I said, I had little experience with this kind of game, but I had fun slowly figuring out what works and what doesn't. While it does let you choose an appropriate difficulty setting for your skill level and adjust it at any time, Project Wingman makes it clear from the beginning that it won't forgive mistakes: no mission in this game has any checkpoints. If you die or run out of ammo, you have to start the mission over. This means you have to actually pay a bit of attention to mission briefings and consider what loadout you'll bring to the field (maybe not early in the campaign but definitely later on), which was unexpectedly fun. But also that you have to develop your skills -that is, paying attention to your altitude and flight vector, where your enemies are on the radar, how much ammo you have left in each of your weapon slots, how to avoid missiles etc.- or you'll be shot down and find yourself back at the hangar before the mission. On the normal difficulty setting, I've definitely died several times throughout the campaign, but it was never frustrating. I don't remember ever being annoyingly stuck on a mission. The campaign, in terms of length and variety, was just right in my opinion. For reference, I beat it in about 12 hours. For achievement hunters: The gist of it seems to be "beat the campaign in hard mode", "unlock all planes" which takes just a bit of grinding, "survive long enough in the roguelike mode" (a game mode that, from what I understand got added after release and I haven't tried yet), and one more hidden achievement that I don't know how to get. Maybe it's "get all the other achievements"? Who knows!

STORY:
It's a good story that also doesn't get in your way if you only care about shooting enemy targets. I can't say much without spoiling it, but it had good beats, likable characters and some surprises (for a novice of the genre such as myself). I think it could have been presented a bit better in some parts, but overall I definitely enjoyed it. Also a piece of advice: if you enjoy character interactions, always make sure that your plane has two seats. I noticed this way too late.

VISUALS:
Since you're a fighter pilot, you don't usually get a detailed look at many things, but in my opinion the game is a beautiful spectacle. However, I'm easily satisfied with a game's graphics as long as a it has a coherent visual style, so your mileage may vary.

MUSIC:
The music was great. My only complaint with it was that I wasn't consciously hearing it enough, so I listened closer and whenever I did, I realized I was being graced by a banger every time. I was just focusing on staying alive too hard to notice the beautiful soundtrack. The themes fit beautifully with the missions and even with the specific factions that you encounter. I'll have to resist listening to the OST in my daily life to experience the same high these compositions gave me again in the future.

A somewhat text-oriented game where you transport goods and people around the galaxy. Occasionally you get attacked by pirate fleets. Happens more often in uninhabited star systems. You can choose to go for a career in piracy too, but I haven't done that.

+ Free and open source!
+ Enjoyable writing. There are many planets, and each one has a description (along with a nice photograph) that details what kind of place it is. Also, the game follows a storyline, but I haven't had much opportunity in exploring that yet, even though several in-game years have passed. I don't know if I've reached its end, as it could be incomplete. Apparently, more storylines are on the way.
+ You're given a lot of options for customizing your ships.
+ Very relaxed game. After paying off your initial loan, you won't have much financial trouble. Paying the salaries of your crew (if you choose to have a fleet) isn't difficult.
+ The assets are all in open formats, so they're easily moddable. But if you want to create new content instead of changing existing stuff, Check out the wiki![github.com]

- Not really a problem but I should still list this: There is no music. But if you're the kind of person to be bothered by a lack of music, you probably have a playlist suitable for this game already. If not, start making one!
- Although your options for customizing ships are many like I said before, the hulls don't allow many modifications to one ship. Which is a good thing because you can't just slap every nice thing on your ship and go destroy the galaxy, but it does feel a bit limiting.
- The gameplay mechanics are a bit shallow, but they aren't bad. It's not a huge issue for a game that doesn't aim for hundreds of hours of playtime.

Overall, if you like captaining or exploration, give this game a try.

This is a game that rightly states "not all boss fights have to be fights."