Despite featuring thrilling moments and massive potential, Project Wingman: Frontline 59 is the most incredible disappointment I’ve had on PSVR2 so far.
When I first got into the cockpit of a fighter jet via VR in Project Wingman, I was blown away. I was having so much fun tracking enemies, looking around me, and flying; all the while feeling like I was sitting in a Top Gun movie. The feeling is incredible, but it’s so short-lived it was almost more of a demo to tease you and move on; rather than being a full game..
Project Wingman: Frontline-59
Developed By: Sector D2
Platforms: PlayStation 5 [Reviewed on PSVR2], PC (New DLC Exclusive to PS5 currently)
Release Date: October 3rd, 2023
What Project Wingman does right, it does insanely well. The new VR missions for PSVR include two key features: eye tracking and rumble support (along with exclusive missions for the headset). Both those new features heighten the experience of the game beyond anything it’s been on so far and showcases how cool PSVR2 could be.
The eye tracking alone makes the game feel like a real life military jet because it tracks to targets near perfectly. It doesn’t auto aim anywhere you are looking, instead you can glance over enemies and track the one you want to keep an eye on, or you can look hard at a new enemy and swiftly target them instead. It works no matter where you’re looking, so if you are peaking over to the side, or above you, you’re able to swiftly move targets with no problems. It makes flying in the cockpit all the more authentic because you are not pulled from the game to press buttons to aim.
The rumble in the headset is incredible when it works. When an enemy jet flies near you, or over your head, you truly feel the power as it rumbles about. My major issue with this is how it isn’t utilized more often. I would love for the rumble to function with firing guns—especially the main gun—or have a slight vibration when doing air maneuvers/increasing your acceleration. Simply having it blast when launching from the ground would have been awesome. They really shouldn’t be afraid to let the rumble have full strength. It’s a great concept that never fully engages the potential it offers.
That’s where I stand with the game overall, it just misses the mark in terms of offering a complete experience.
The new PSVR2 missions—a major highlight of this release—consist of just 6 missions. That’s it. It’s honestly the most disappointed I’ve been in a while because I had an absolute blast playing them.
When I got this game I was so excited to play it, I hooked my VR up right away, grabbed the sense controllers, and booted it up instantly. My first issue was the sense controllers didn’t work. None of my other games I currently have on PSVR2 use a normal controller, but this game does. (Maybe another game does, I don’t know, but of the several dozen I own, none do.) I feel like in a VR space there is an ability to make the sense controllers work perfectly, especially with a detailed cockpit that has two very noticeable levers present, but the game deactivates them entirely.
Then the second issue is the fact ONLY those six levels are playable in VR. Reading some press releases for the game, and what was sent to me, it makes it seem like the entire game is playable in VR. After all, it is VR compatible on PC, so I’m not sure why we kind of got shafted here. This is why I delayed my review a little bit. I wanted to see if maybe this was an error and some day 1 patch would unlock VR mode, but currently there isn’t an option.
Instead the game plays in “screen mode” on the headset outside of these six missions, and it’s kind of pointless to call this a VR title all together. So, you basically get the same game that released three years ago without basic VR support. If the full game was in VR in similar respect to those six missions, it’d actually be a truly incredible experience. Instead we get what feels like a stripped down version of the game.
In terms of playing in VR, it has some minor issues with rendering while in VR. It doesn’t seem to fully utilize the Unreal Engine features to fix any of it, and clearly isn’t utilizing foveated rendering. The ground textures are horrendous, and trees often pop in a lot, but it’s designed in a way for you to be screaming across the sky and not actually looking at any of it. In that way, it’s not necessarily a huge deal.
The only major visual issue I truly have is clouds. While they look awesome in the distance, once you fly into them it loses so much visual clarity they become random particle dots that look horrible.
Flying elsewhere is breathtaking though. Seeing enemies in the sky, explosions, the way jets move, it’s all really pretty while you are dog-fighting enemies. You can see trails off wings, different weapon bursts, and the limited jets are insanely well detailed. The cockpit alone is something worth taking in every time you get sent on a mission.
Playing in VR is pretty great, and I keep saying this because what little is offered was thrilling to me, but I really enjoyed every second of it, but playing outside of VR the visuals are substantially improved. Again it’s an odd choice considering we are talking about the powerful PSVR2 here, not the original PSVR which needed these downgrades.
My favorite thing about this game overall, if you haven’t played it already on PC, is it isn’t a true flight simulator style game. Instead it’s more action oriented and arcade style flying. It’s rather hard to stall your jet out, you can make incredibly impossible maneuvers while chasing enemies, and you can fly upside down without much problem. I managed to stall my jet one time, but recovering from it wasn’t hard at all. So if you’re into flight-sim games, it probably isn’t for you, but if you just enjoy straight air combat it’s extremely fun to play.
Outside of that the game offers multiple campaigns, but they were mostly meaningless to me. A majority of the story is told through comms, and I just want to fly my jet around. Instead I got stuck in long winded “in between” segments where you fly rather slowly until enemies attack or something happens to start a new fight. It’s an air combat game, what do you expect?
But more importantly these long winded moments make the missions feel lengthy with no checkpoint system. Once you strap the headset on and start a mission, you’re pretty much playing it for 30-45 minutes straight until the mission ends. Luckily with how the cockpit is set up you can position yourself to not get dizzy thanks to the stationary view you have, but with the poor rendering on the ground and clouds there were a few times where I needed to look down. But that’s also part of the experience, what new pilot doesn’t feel the need to throw up? Slow down rookie!
