The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces
Developer: XSeed
Rating: T
Released: October 2008
The Sky Crawlers was designed to be a fully animated story with some solid dogfighting in between. I have never truly gotten into flight sims before this game came out, but I knew this one was special. It was a gem on the Wii, which meant that it would appeal to a whole different audience.
What makes Sky Crawlers so unique is the fact that it doesn't pretend to know military history or proper procedure for flight combat. It focuses on the Anime story of a bunch of good looking teenager pilots who can't wait to fly around and shoot down rival military companies. Along the way they gain relationships with each other, question the purpose of war, and explain with poetry how beautiful it is to fly. It is a Japanese soap opera with flight missions jammed in.
The dialog during missions is very different than other flight shooters. None of that military jargon, this is poetic teenagers on a joy ride. Basically what you have is stereotype boys and girls giving you corny pep talks or doing Anime girl gasps whenever someone gets shot. It separates the game from other flight shooters adding a melodramatic and colorful flair.
The shooting and navigation is done with the Wii-mote and Nunchuk. You treat your mote like an accelerator switch and the chuk moves the plane. Aiming is tricky and involves controlling speed, making hairpin turns, and using the maneuver system. The maneuver system is an auto-aim function that puts you directly in the cross hairs of your enemy if you let the maneuver meter build up. It is quite helpful and I find myself using it as missions get harder. Controlling the ships with motion controls can be frustrating because it feels like you need to have the arms of Mr. Fantastic to make it register. You can also use a Wii controller, but I have to admit it is very cool to pretend to use my mote as a flight stick.
The Sky Crawlers is decent flight missions and arcade war fun with a lot of beautiful Anime storytelling. Anyone who can get their hands on this gem can pretend to be a pilot for a weekend.
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