I take a look at one of the Wii’s first quality flight simulators in a while, and it doesn’t cease to entertain.
[starreview]
Developer: Project Aces
Publisher: XSeed Games
Release Date: January 12th, 2010
ESRB Rating: T
“Let’s give them a fight they’ll never forget!” shouts Aozasa (one of your team mates), while having planes hunt you down in the midst of a dog fight. However, does Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces really give players an experience that they’ll “never forget”? If you take in the necessary factors to appreciate this game, then yes, it does. With the lack of quality Wii flight-simulator games, Innocent Aces [finally] arrives on North American shores to let us ‘Murricans give it a shot…but how does it fare out?
I haven’t seen the Sky Crawlers film, so I’m going to try and explain the story the best I can. Throughout the game, players take control of a character named Lynx, who is placed right in the middle of a war between companies. Unlike other games I’ve been playing recently, Innocent Aces makes a strong effort to provide players with a good storyline that deals with death, well-rounded characters, and even lets Lynx get his name changed to Cheetah later in the game. If this rough, vague outline doesn’t appeal to you, then you’ll be thankful to know that the game’s great story is presented nicely in anime cutscenes, which have decent English dubs and subtitles.
Moving along with the other characters gives you a sense of hospitality, and the other characters grow on you over the course of time. Some managed to scare me at points, and others made me laugh and smile. However, there weren’t many language options to choose from (as in, the original Japanese voiceovers, because there are already English subtitles…). It’s always a treat to finish a mission to find that there is a cutscene waiting for you at the end, and certainly made some parts more bearable than they should be. Unfortunately, this is probably my favorite part of the game, but the gameplay is almost on the same level as well.
What struck me most about the gameplay was the awkward position they have you hold the controls in: Wiimote left hand, nunchuck right. Naturally, I’ve held them the opposite way since I bought my Wii, so such a change was hard to adapt to at first. However, it’s now more of something I do automatically, because of how it all of the sudden feels correct. Throughout the gameplay, players will engage in dogfights, go on missions to bomb certain groups of enemies, and even spy on enemy bases with cameras. Going deeper into the controls, the game tries to be as realistic as possible, having players pull up on the Wiimote to speed up their plane, C to change weapon, Z to shoot, and tilting the nunchuck in multiple directions in order to turn left/right/up/down.
Another key component of the game’s controls that works well is the TMC system, which helps players dodge enemies and creep up from behind. When a player is within range to perform an attack on an enemy, their TMC gauge starts to fill up. After it passes a certain point, players can press the A button to activate it and cleverly maneuver around the enemy, and the game sets the players up for a clear shot. Seem easy enough, right? Not completely, as the CPU throughout the game grow as you do, and begin to use your own TMC attacks against you. This requires players to keep on their toes at all times, and makes the dog fights throughout the game all the more intense.
The gameplay and storytelling aspects of the game work rather well, and are very entertaining. The gameplay is rather short for a game of this caliber, but there are always different difficulties to play on, and there are other modes such as “Free Mission”, which lets players go back and replay missions whenever they want.
As for the graphics, they can be astounding from the air. When you look upon the ground, you see some of the best graphics I’ve seen on Wii. Being the perfectionist that I am, I wanted to get a glimpse at what the ground looks like, only to see that it was just a pixilated, mostly 2D environment that looked absolutely horrific. If there’s any way this game could improve, it’s got to be the graphics. To the contrary, the music is just fine, but nothing I would really call the game out on.
In the end, it all depends on what you’re looking for. What was marketed and seems to be a low-budget pile of shovel-ware actually turns out to be an engaging and fun game, although there are obvious reasons why it isn’t popular: the lack of multiplayer. For a game with this type of controls, it would only seem necessary to let people take their dog fighting skills online. Besides that, Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces is one of the best Wii games I’ve played in a while, and if you’re a fan of anime or flight simulators, they both go hand in hand for a great experience.
The review copy used for this review was furnished by XSeed Games.
