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December 6th, 2006, 00:20 Posted By: wraggster
Via IGN
The Wii has only been out for a few weeks, but the Wiimote has already been used as a baseball bat, a golf club, a steering wheel -- and, well, just about everything you can think of. With the Japanese launch, you can at last add biplane to the list. And not just any old biplane. Wing Island, from Hudson, shows just how capable Nintendo's new control device is at mimicking a biplane piloted by a man-sized bird.
Wing Island takes place on a chain of islands located in the world of man-sized, bipedal birds. You play as Sparrow Wing Jr., a young pilot who's decided to follow in his father's footsteps (the birds also have human limbs) and serve as a professional jack of all trades of sorts. Sparrow and his friends, Puffin Chirp, Crane Splendid, Swan Sweet, Hawk Old, and Owl Fatman take on jobs of all forms that require their expert abilities in a plane.
Bird-based background story aside, Wing Island hints at good things for future arcade-style flight games on the Wii. Your plane can be controlled exclusively with the Wiimote. You ascend and descend by tilting the controller in the corresponding direction. To turn, you rotate the remote left or right. The speed of your turning depends on how fast you rotate the controller. Acceleration and deceleration are handled with up and down on the d-pad.
You can also perform some acrobatic moves. Thrusting the controller forward gives your plane a burst of acceleration. Pulling the controller towards yourself results in a quick deceleration. Shake the Wiimote left or right, and your plane does a quick 180 turn.
If you have a nunchuck attached, you can make use of it as well. The analogue pad allows you to move the camera around, a useful feature for some of the missions. You can also use the nunchuck for the quick acceleration, deceleration and 180 degree turn as described above.
It took me just a couple of missions to get used to the control scheme (and for those who need additional help, the game includes a strictly optional step-by-step training mode). I'm not the biggest flight fan out there, but with this control scheme, even I was having fun. The gameplay is clearly on the arcade side of things, with sharp turns and no option for an in-the-cockpit view.
Wing Island makes use of this flight system for a mission-based story mode where you take on missions as (back to the birds) Sparrow and his friends. The game offers a variety of mission objectives set across separate islands. On the first island alone, I had to search for missing cows, fight a forest fire, drop crates off in specified locations, and destroy balloons on a flight path. You start off each island with a set of selectable missions, with new ones appearing once you've cleared these.
The biggest enemy in the missions, at least in the early ones that I played, was the time limit. While your plane incurs damage when striking walls and other obstacles, there's no threat of immediate destruction when flying haphazardly. The controls don't seem to include an option for firing, so dog fighting apparently won't be a part of this game.
Some missions have Sparrow flying all by himself. Others put you in control of a group of five planes. You have direct control over Sparrow, but the other planes follow your every move. You can change between three formations by tapping the A button.
There's lots of replay value in Wing Island's single player modes of play. Missions have some random elements -- random placement of cows or shipping targets, for instance. You can also replay missions for higher rank, resulting in more cash, which can be used to purchase new planes and parts for upgrading old planes. If you're tired of the story mode, the game includes a free flight mode, allowing you to fly through the islands free of mission objectives and time limits, and a trial mode, where you race against the computer or another opponent in split screen.
Wing Island won't do anything to convince you of the Wii's hidden visual powers, although it has a solid, glitch-free look, complete with the progressive output that's lacking in a few of the Japanese launch games. The game is also quick to get into thanks to minimal load times and minimalist presentation for the storyline. Most of the story sequences that precede missions are text based, with small still pictures. While this is a bit disappointing considering the curious background story and the hilarity that ensues when the birds do speak using their bird talk, it's good for those who just want to get into the skies.
Just as the early titles on certain next generation systems attempt to wow us with high tech visuals, the early titles on the Wii attempt to show off how the Wiimote can deliver new control schemes. Wing Island certainly does that, while delivering a fun, arcade-based flight game in the process.
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