Rogue Aces Reviews
Yes, we do Iron Maiden jokes too!
If you can look past some uninspired visuals, you might find yourself having a lot of fun with Rogue Aces.
While there are elements of Rogue Aces that work well, and I can appreciate the effort put into setting up some variations with multiple modes, I also found it better suited to short and moderately-long play sessions over long ones. A periodic break helped to keep it all from feeling quite so repetitive. Aside from the challenges with landing I think the balance strays too quickly to the extremes rather than having a tough but more fair sweet spot in the middle. Either I’d have a run in the Normal Campaign that ran long and felt too easy or I’d go to the Frontline Campaign and have significant leaps in difficulty by about the third island. There are some fun and crazy moments to be had like the first time you jump from your damaged plane into the cockpit of an enemy fighter to give yourself a new lease on life, but in the end there’s not all that much variety. If you’ve been itching for something that feels very arcade-like, this can be fun, but if you were hoping for something deep it doesn’t fare as well.
The core of a fun game is there, but the fun is merely fleeting when it really should be relentless.
Rogue Aces is a cracking little game that’s great fun and has plenty to do. Its graphics and sound design are decent but it’s the addictive gameplay hook that will keep pulling you back for “just one more go”. It’s perfect for portable gaming, so its presence on both the Vita and the Switch is very smart thinking by the developers. So while it’s still fun on the big screen at home, its short play design loop makes it an ideal purchase for the commuting gamer on the go. Plus it’s less than a tenner so what are you waiting for?
Fans of shoot-'em-ups will find a fun game here. The polished controls and action that keeps going with little breaks is a good pick-up & play experience. The arcade gameplay mechanics and slight elements of a plane simulator offers a better take than the usual standard. It's only hindrance is the lack of variety from mission-to-mission, mode-to-mode.
I enjoyed Rogue aces gameplay and satisfying explosions, and the variety of multiplayer modes on offer. And its solid controls mean you can jump right in if you are playing modes with auto-land on. However, it did not take long for the experience to become repetitive because of the extended campaign mode and lack of varied missions. Finally, the landing mechanic made arcade mode inaccessible to me as I could not master landing, even after spending half an hour in the tutorial trying to get the hang of it.