Wingnuts 2 is not your average arcade game. In fact, the label of "arcade game" is very misleading. The term is synonymous with games that are fun for a one-time play through or cheap thrills. Wingnuts 2: Raina's Revenge, on the other hand, is an immersive, lengthy, replay worthy, actually funny, and fairly layered game.
The plot is relatively simple and mostly irrelevant as the point of each mission is to destroy enemy aircrafts/ground units and finally the end-of-level boss. However, don't let this fool you. Inside each level, you'll have to swap out planes, keep a constant eye on your fuel-gauge, protect the carrier, and decide if ground units or air units pose the greater threat at the moment.
One of the most diabolical things Wingnuts 2 does is add a one-hit-kills element into the game-play. If you lose one of your planes during a level, there's no getting it back without restarting. This forces you to continually change planes during a level, and strategize rather than holding down the fire button and charging into enemies.
Also, the in-game rewards that include extra fuel, weapons and shield upgrades, and bonus points (called "goodies" inside the game) need to be divided between planes appropriately if you wish to succeed. A plane with weak firepower and only three upgrade slots for weapons will need the extra shield upgrade more than a heavily guarded plane with limited firepower. As you can tell, swapping out planes is something that's done plenty of times during levels.
Of course, Freeverse isn't going to make things that simple. The carrier in-turn needs to be protected. Losing it will automatically force a level restart. Since it's mostly a solo game, this serves as the needy ally who needs constant protection. Thankfully, this job doesn't become as annoying as it could since the carrier is heavily armored, and has fairly competent defenses of its own. Occasionally though, you'll find yourself circling back to protect it a bit more than you'd like.
To accommodate all this, the levels are expectedly large. Each contain a behemoth of bad guys including World War II-style aircrafts and bombers, to sleek modern jets, to ground units such as jeeps, boats, and anti-aircraft guns.
Article comments
1 - Ken Edwards
Interesting. I think you are way off base here. I don't see how they would implement saves in the middle of the battle. It is pretty standard to save the gave at the end of a level in an arcade shooter.
This isn't a game for the DS or PSP. It is for a computer. And to knock it for that is crazy. Games like this don't come out for the Mac every day, let alone every year. Simply put, there has not been a Mac game this good in a long time. 5/5 Stars.
2 - Cameron Graham
Ken, I can understand your enthusiasm for the game. Yes, games of this quality and design are rare for the Macintosh (Freeverse seems to be the new Bungie lately) and I found it great fun to play. That is, when I had an hour or more of free time to devote to playing it.
And while many arcade shooters allow saving only at the end of a level I think it's fair to say that Wingnuts 2 far exceeds most arcade shooters in terms of level size, objectives, and time required to play through a whole level.
I think an in-level save system could work nicely. You already stop playing for brief periods of time when you land on the carrier to switch planes before taking off right into the thick of battle again. Why not let the player save and when they come back take off from the carrier?