I enjoy a good bulletstorm shooter like the next person, but it is really hard for me to find a good one. The ones I often find are either too hard or not exciting enough, or they go the opposite route and are too easy and give you powers that are just way too powerful. Aces of the Lufftwaffe Squadron, however, finds that balance and is able to bring fast paced action in short bursts where you can play for hours on end, or just for five minutes if that is all the time you have for it.
What makes this game unique when the market is saturated with more copycat versions of these games than your screen is with bullets? Unique characters. By that I don’t mean that these are memorable well written characters, they are, but that is besides the point. What I mean is that each character has unique skills and a unique skill tree, along with a unique flaw that makes the mission that much harder. Such has having chronic illness so you need to move slowly, or being afraid of heights and leaving the squad until not as high anymore, or falling asleep while flying, or going berserk and not following the squad and can inflict friendly fire. Each member of your team has a difficulty or a flaw that makes working with them a challenge, the better you do, the more EXP you will get at the mission though.
The game itself is fairly short, with only about 5 hours of play time to finish the game and an additional 5 to finish the DLC, which is more of the same, except from the side of the Germans instead of the Americans. The value, however, comes in its replayability, it tracks your scores, to see if you can improve, and while not a true collectable in the strict sense, each mission has one enemy that has a free skill point, and it is fun trying to kill all the enemies to ensure you get that skill point, but if you miss that enemy, you have to play again. You can also play with three other friends so the squad can split up and take control of the skies.
This is, all in all, a fun experience for a fair price, with pop culture jokes, enough to at least make you groan or smile, depending on your reaction to puns and funny bad jokes, and a unique and interesting game mechanic I have not seen in these genre before. I give this an 4/5.
