Sonic Wings Reunion – PS5 Review

Sonic Wings Reunion is a sequel to the original Sonic Wings (Aero Fighters in Western markets), a vertically-scrolling shoot ’em up from Tecmo that was originally released in arcades back in 1992 (with a popular conversion hitting the SNES a year later).   Several sequels followed, with Aero Fighters 2 and 3 being released on the Neo Geo, Sonic Wings Special landing on the Saturn and original PlayStation and Aero Fighters Assault making it to the N64, albeit as a 3D shoot ’em up.  However, back in May of this year, Sonic Wings Reunion with it finally making its way to Western shores now.

Unlike some recent shoot ’em ups, Sonic Wings Reunion isn’t too bothered about telling its story.  There are no opening cutscenes, no description of who you are fighting and why and really no preamble at all.  There’s not even a tutorial to get you started.  You just start the game, pick your character and go.  And where most shoot ’em ups have their gimmick, that thing that sets them apart, Sonic Wings never really did, aside from giving you a choice of playable characters (reasonably rare back in 1992 but not so much now).

The game does hint at a story though in terms of your playable characters all having a nationality.  Blaster Keaton is from America, as if his name didn’t tell you that already, while Japanese, English, Swedish and Russian (spit!) pilots complete the roster.  Along with a dolphin who works for the UN and somehow pilots a fighter jet with flippers.  Maybe its good that there’s no real story but what is nice is the art used for these characters.  The whole interface does have a sleek, modern look with some nicely drawn profile pictures.

What’s interesting is that in solo play you can pick a secondary character from the roster and use their bomb/special attack.  That’s a pretty good idea and it works well in practise.   While most of these attacks are your usual smart bomb type, there are a few exceptions.  The one that freezes time can certainly be useful.  But beyond that, there’s not really a gameplay mechanic or system that stands out and needs too much explanation.

The gameplay itself is simplicity itself and this extends right through the whole package.  You know the set-up.  You’re in a jet at the bottom of the screen, enemies are coming in from the top (mostly) and either flying along a fixed route, aiming themselves at you or firing bullets in your direction.  You fire back with your primary gun with (or ) and can use your bomb/special by pressing ( activates your wingman’s bomb if you’ve selected one).  The controls are limited to a strict 8-way control system which feels odd on the analog stick and so we would have loved a full-analog option.

So, you fly up taking out enemies, avoiding attacks and working your way through the game’s seven stages (eight if you include the rather pointless bonus one).   You can pick up power-ups to upgrade your primary guns, bombs to replenish your stock and tokens to increase your score, and actually they might be the most interesting thing given that they are actual money signs – such as dollars ($) and pounds (£) – that match the stage your are playing on.

End of level bosses jump in and try to inject a bit of interest but they’re all a bit generic and not all that much fun to fight.  Also, the final boss is just rubbish.  It looks stupid, has no sense of epicness at all and its attacks aren’t interesting.  And by the time you’ve beaten the game (well, first loop), you won’t even have broken fifteen minutes on the clock which is compounded by the fact that the game has no extra modes (aside from a Training Mode) and even the trophies only ask you to beat the game with each character.  There’s nothing in there to inspire better play.  No reason to try anything different because there’s nothing different to do.

While the game ends up being pretty dreary and uninteresting, the choices of difficulty settings do at least make a pretty marked difference and will cater to a lot of skill levels.  We were able to 1CC the game on Easy pretty much right away while Normal only offered a little more resistance on the later levels.  Hard definitely ups the ante if you want a challenge.  There’s one past that too but that just seemed to make the game almost unplayable.

What really hurts the game though is this visual makeover that they’ve given the series.  They’ve pushed it into a 2.5D view that makes no use of the extra verticality and instead of using polygons to add some real detail, it all just looks really flat and simple.  The enemy and background textures are incredibly plain, giving the game the feel of an upscaled budget game from two generations ago and this is compounded with some serious issues with bullet visibility that led to several ‘what hit me?’ moments.  Also, the final level just looks absolutely ghastly.  None of it serves a purpose.  It’s just uninspired, drab and horrible for gameplay.

The music is a different story with several soundtracks on offer (each linked to the pilot you pick) that mix up everything from horrible J-Pop, intense folk and shreddy rock guitar.  It might not be to our taste but it certainly stood out.

Mercifully, in the time since the original release, the price for this game digitally has dropped by half.  Honestly, £25 for seven short stages and barely any real replay value makes that seem roughly £20 too high but it’s a step in the right direction.  But ultimately, this is a game that won’t bring the series any new fans and could possibly lose it some.  One to avoid unfortunately.