Project Wingman is a game made by fans of Ace Combat, that does a good amount to set itself apart. I wouldn't say it's a competitor to Ace Combat 7, but it does stand alongside them.

If you've played an Ace Combat game you'll have a fairly good idea of how to pilot your planes, as the flight controls are the same as AC's Expert controls. Instead of having your regular missiles and a single subweapon you're mostly locked in to, you can carry up to 3 different subweapon types, from nonstandard missiles, to bombs, laser guns, and mounted guns. You can either stack the same weapon multiple times to increase your ammo capacity and firing rate, or have multiple unique types to give an edge in multiple roles. I think this kind of system is great, and hope Ace Combat can bring something similar.

You also have defensive and evasive options, with an infinite supply of Flares on a cooldown, to help throw missiles off your aim, as well as a Angle of Attack module to help you spin around and quickly change your flight angle. Finally, your standard machine guns feel fairly powerful, I've used them fairly often to help close out kills on enemies.

The plot is based on a post-disaster Earth, still attempting to come back from the Calamity that happened years ago. As Monarch of the Sicario Mercenary Corps, you get brought into a war of independence. Cascadia (based in the real world U.S. west coast) is full of natural resources as a result of the Calamity in the past, and they're trying to free themselves from the Pacific Federation. It's up to you to show them your best as you and Hitman team become one of the main aerial forces of the Cascadian liberation force.

I can really feel the sense of camaraderie Hitman team has, usually your wingmen Diplomat and Comic are giving a quip or an analysis on the current battle situation. When you fly a 2 person plane, even your weapons system operator Prez chimes in, which I'm surprised Ace Combat never did. Rounding out the vocal cast of people you'll regularly interact with is other elements of Sicario, such as your airborne warning and control system operator Galaxy, and elements of the Cascadian army such as Stardust, as well as the occasional enemy radio feed from people such as Crimson 1.

When you finish the campaign of the game there's also a rogue like Conquest mode to keep the fun going. Finally, the game has VR for all the missions on Steam, as well as ps vr2 support for the Frontline 59 portion of the game.

It's clear that this game is made as a labor of love, with the main group only consisting of 3 people. If you enjoy Ace Combat, you'd be doing yourself a disservice skipping on this.