The Wii might be flying high, but many of its games aren’t. For a console so easy to love, it’s awful hard to like titles like Wing Island; this cutesy flight game commits the worst crime of all: it's just plain boring.
Wing Island straps you into the cockpit as Sparrow Wing, Jr., an energetic young bird who takes the reigns of his grandfather’s airplane business. Away on vacation, Junior’s grandfather has instructed him to keep his customers happy by fulfilling their requests. Individuals from the surrounding islands come to Junior with lucrative missions ranging from firefighting to delivering packages to locating lost items.
Starting off on one island with a handful of available missions, you quickly open up two additional islands and more challenging tasks. There aren’t a ton of missions, just over 20 in total. This wouldn’t be so much of an issue if there was more variety; instead, you revisit the same four mission types over and over again. For example, one early customer pleads with you to locate her lost cows—easy enough. Later on, you are be tasked with finding oddly-colored trees hidden in a forest. It’s the same mission, just slightly more difficult. This works well enough for kids, but you won’t find Wing Island engaging if you’ve hit puberty.
The game is non-violent, making it safe for children; however, the arbitrary ranking system following each mission may have you committing violent acts against Wing Island. Successfully finishing a mission, you are scored based on your performance as related to the given objectives. The game calculates both a rating out of 100 points and another from three stars. Exactly what determines your score is never explained, as the game, for some bizarre reason, randomly rewards values. For example, you can earn a whopping zero points even after flawlessly completing an objective within the allotted time. Since mission rankings directly relate to cash earnings, it’s frustrating when you earn nothing for completing the objectives given to you.
The best thing Wing Island has going for it is its spot-on controls. Movements of the Wii Remote, which is held vertically while playing, enable you to fly your plane. Twisting the controller left or right allows you to turn accordingly, whereas tipping it up or down affects your altitude. Quickly jerking forward lets you boost, while the opposite results in a hasty brake. Unlike so many Wii games, Wing Island nails motion-control sensitivity. You never struggle to navigate your plane since the game appropriately responds to your movements on screen.
While it’s pretty simple to fly a single plane, it's difficult keeping tabs on several of them. Wing Island tries mixing things up in a select few missions by adding more planes for use in formations. In these missions, you control five planes at once with movements of the controller just as you would when flying solo. There are some differences though, such as slower turning and slower speed when flying in a group.
You can switch formations by holding down the A button and thrusting the Wii Remote forward. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t always interpret this motion correctly, meaning you occasionally have to thrust the controller forward multiple times before getting a formation change to occur. There are three formations (line, cross, and V), each suited for specific situations. For example, one early mission requires dousing a forest fire, which is best done in a V formation. A different mission plays best in a line formation since you have to bomb a rock outcropping. Formations are a novel idea, but honestly don’t add much to the game. Since few missions involve multiple aircraft, it simply isn’t a compelling gameplay mechanic.
