Wing Island Review - Wii

The Wii isn't a brand-new console any more. If the launch window was the machine's infancy we're now entering pre-adolescence. Now's the time for growing pains – when game makers grapple with motion controls, trying to figure out what works and what doesn't. Wing Island is this painfully extended metaphor's equivalent of learning to ride a bike. Some knees get skinned. But eventually the training wheels come off and this family-friendly aerial affair is able to stay balanced long enough to get somewhere.

Better Than Drumstick Archipelago

Strangely enough the characters in Wing Island are a bunch of anthropomorphic birds. Why birds would need airplanes in the first place is never addressed. Players step into the jumpsuit of Junior, a wet-behind-the-ears hatchling who just inherited his nutty grandfather's aviation business. The gig entails running errands between islands – jobs like delivering goods, dousing fires and spotting lost cows. There are also tons of balloon-popping time trials to race. Every accomplished mission earns cash that can be used to buy new airplanes or repair and upgrade your old ride. The setting is refreshingly violence-free, but some of the missions are unnecessarily complicated by arbitrary time limits. Why do you only get three minutes to dive-bomb a bunch of rocks? It's not like they're going anywhere.

Flail to Launch

At times it feels like Wing Island really piles on the tilt controls. Rotating and tilting the remote are great for adjusting the pitch and yaw of your barnstorming bi-plane. But some of the other moves start to seem excessive. There are three different gestures that switch formations when you've got more than one plane to control. And then there are boost and braking moves which require players to thrust the controller and pull it back. In almost every game these kind of movements prove problematic. Wing Island is no exception. There are still more gesture-based controls – so many that it's easy to inadvertently trigger the wrong one.

No More Parachutes!

Somewhere buried beneath the game's bird-brained plot and overly-complicated controls are a pile of flying missions that are reasonably engaging. There's just a whole lot of unnecessary junk to wade through, like mission intros where the characters' dialog is written in over-the-top sailor accents or, in one unfortunate circumstance, annoying baby talk. Wing Island isn't the stopgap for the honest-to-God Pilotwings sequel that Nintendo fans have hoping for. Its barely a fill-in for Freaky Flyers.

Article by: Gus Mastrapa
Video produced by: Jonathan Solin