Wing Island
Posted May 24, 2007
It’s always a shame when a game has just enough going for it that you can tell that it could have been quite a bit of fun with a little more work. Such is the case with Wing Island, a Wii title from Hudson and Konami that features nice controls, but little else.
Gameplay:
Wing Island contains only the barest elements of what could be called a story. The game’s characters are humanoid birds that fly around in planes and speak in a sort of Morse code of beeps. You control Junior, who has taken over his grandfather’s pilots-for-hire business while the old man is away. Whether looking at video games or any other media, there are plentiful examples of stories designed to appeal to children and adults alike. With Wing Island, it is hard to imagine anyone past the age of 8 getting much enjoyment from the story.
The one redeeming aspect of Wing Island is its controls. Gameplay rotates between flying solo missions and leading a formation of five planes. Tilting the Wii Remote causes your character to dive, pull up or bank to the left or right. A sudden thrust forward will activate a boost and a flick of the wrist will cause a smooth 180-degree turn. By holding down the A button while flicking the Wii Remote, you can alter the formation when controlling 5 planes. Other functions of the A and B buttons are situation-dependent, varying by mission. The controls are implemented very well, with a high level of responsiveness that initially pulls the player right into the game. Unfortunately, there is not much to maintain the interest.
Junior’s missions take place over two separate islands as he progresses. The objectives to these missions are painfully dull and repetitive. As you move through the game, you will put out fires, take pictures of plants and animals, drop crates in marked zones, compete in races and then put out more fires, take more pictures of plants and animals and so on and so forth. The difficulty of these missions ranges from extremely easy to pretty easy after a couple run-throughs to determine the right path or combination of actions.
While the missions themselves are easy enough for even the most casual gamer, getting high scores can prove extremely frustrating. Quite a few times, I completed a mission multiple times and felt like I performed exactly the same, but received widely varying scores. Without the money awarded for high scores, it is impossible to purchase new planes or upgrade existing ones. On its surface, this would seem to add some challenge and replay value to the game. Unfortunately, point distribution seems sporadic at best and different or upgraded planes fail to feel significantly different than the plane you start with at the beginning of the game. This feeling of irritation occurs throughout the game, as if the designers had some good ideas, but lacked the patience to implement them properly.
Graphics:
The majority of Wing Island fails to even look as good as a Gamecube game. Jagged edges persist both in the environment and on the planes themselves. Animations are very crude. Smoke effects look very bad. The water doesn’t seem to reflect anything and, if you get close enough to affect it, you’re treated to a host of white dots shooting up from its surface. The graphics could be overcome by a better game, but they only add to Wing Island’s problems.
Audio:
The background music to Wing Island mostly consists of soothing classically-styled pieces. It is not bad enough to be annoying, but does not impress on any level. The sound effects of the planes are fairly generic and also fail to add anything to the game. While it is infrequent for the birds to speak to one another, when they do, you will be reaching to hit the mute button. All in all, the audio is just another mediocre aspect to a subpar game.
Overall:
The best thing that can be said about Wing Island is that it made me hope for a properly executed flying game with similar controls. There were many times while playing that I wished a squadron of enemies would appear on the horizon and my plane would miraculously sprout guns. Instead, I would just take more pictures of cows and then slowly fly through some rings made of balloons. Unless you have a small child who is begging you for the game, it is best to skip Wing Island entirely.
Gameplay:
Wing Island contains only the barest elements of what could be called a story. The game’s characters are humanoid birds that fly around in planes and speak in a sort of Morse code of beeps. You control Junior, who has taken over his grandfather’s pilots-for-hire business while the old man is away. Whether looking at video games or any other media, there are plentiful examples of stories designed to appeal to children and adults alike. With Wing Island, it is hard to imagine anyone past the age of 8 getting much enjoyment from the story.
The one redeeming aspect of Wing Island is its controls. Gameplay rotates between flying solo missions and leading a formation of five planes. Tilting the Wii Remote causes your character to dive, pull up or bank to the left or right. A sudden thrust forward will activate a boost and a flick of the wrist will cause a smooth 180-degree turn. By holding down the A button while flicking the Wii Remote, you can alter the formation when controlling 5 planes. Other functions of the A and B buttons are situation-dependent, varying by mission. The controls are implemented very well, with a high level of responsiveness that initially pulls the player right into the game. Unfortunately, there is not much to maintain the interest.
Junior’s missions take place over two separate islands as he progresses. The objectives to these missions are painfully dull and repetitive. As you move through the game, you will put out fires, take pictures of plants and animals, drop crates in marked zones, compete in races and then put out more fires, take more pictures of plants and animals and so on and so forth. The difficulty of these missions ranges from extremely easy to pretty easy after a couple run-throughs to determine the right path or combination of actions.
While the missions themselves are easy enough for even the most casual gamer, getting high scores can prove extremely frustrating. Quite a few times, I completed a mission multiple times and felt like I performed exactly the same, but received widely varying scores. Without the money awarded for high scores, it is impossible to purchase new planes or upgrade existing ones. On its surface, this would seem to add some challenge and replay value to the game. Unfortunately, point distribution seems sporadic at best and different or upgraded planes fail to feel significantly different than the plane you start with at the beginning of the game. This feeling of irritation occurs throughout the game, as if the designers had some good ideas, but lacked the patience to implement them properly.
Graphics:
The majority of Wing Island fails to even look as good as a Gamecube game. Jagged edges persist both in the environment and on the planes themselves. Animations are very crude. Smoke effects look very bad. The water doesn’t seem to reflect anything and, if you get close enough to affect it, you’re treated to a host of white dots shooting up from its surface. The graphics could be overcome by a better game, but they only add to Wing Island’s problems.
Audio:
The background music to Wing Island mostly consists of soothing classically-styled pieces. It is not bad enough to be annoying, but does not impress on any level. The sound effects of the planes are fairly generic and also fail to add anything to the game. While it is infrequent for the birds to speak to one another, when they do, you will be reaching to hit the mute button. All in all, the audio is just another mediocre aspect to a subpar game.
Overall:
The best thing that can be said about Wing Island is that it made me hope for a properly executed flying game with similar controls. There were many times while playing that I wished a squadron of enemies would appear on the horizon and my plane would miraculously sprout guns. Instead, I would just take more pictures of cows and then slowly fly through some rings made of balloons. Unless you have a small child who is begging you for the game, it is best to skip Wing Island entirely.