Wings

"Cue "Flight of the Valkyrie" and have a blast."

Wings puts you behind the cockpit of a WWI fighter plane. This remake of an Amiga classic has finally arrived on the GBA, and I’m happy to report that it’s earned it’s stripes. Wings is one of the most unique games I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing because it pretty much gives you three games in one due to the three main gameplay styles. As either a German or British pilot, you’ll be taken to your limits in dog fighting missions (which take place from a first-person viewpoint), strafing missions (which take place from a ¾ isometric perspective, like EA’s Desert Strike, Urban Strike, etc.), and bombing missions (which take place from a top-down overhead perspective. No matter what path you choose to take, you will be treated to over 200 missions of high-flying mayhem. Since the game is essentially three totally separate games, I’ll review it as such.

The strafing missions are my favorite part of the game, as a fan of the Strike games, I felt right at home in these areas. The key difference between this gameplay style in Wings and the Strike games is the diverse selection of copters. While this might not seem like much of a change, it is. The copters enabled the player to do more in the game, they gave the player more freedom. However, the biplane in Wings is pretty limiting. You can shoot and move, and not much else. The objectives for these missions are the most complex of the bunch. You get a pretty strict guide of dos and don’ts before the mission, and if you fail to meet those requirements, you will be reprimanded. The graphics in these missions are pretty decent, certainly far better than I would expect from a remake, and they compliment the gameplay pretty well. There are some nice shadow effects for the biplane, and the locales and vehicles beneath the plane are bathed in detail. These details make spotting your targets just a little bit easier, but in this game, a little bit of detail goes a long way, especially since the GBA’s screen can tend to cause details to get lost.

The dog fighting missions are my least favorite, and here’s why. The gameplay, while smooth as silk, simply doesn’t translate well to the GBA’s small screen. I found that too many things would be happening at once for the GBA’s screen to handle. It doesn’t help matters much due to about half of the screen being taken up by your character model, and the plane. Heaven help you if you want to use the HUD in the game, because that takes up even more screen space.

Now there is a solution to this problem, but it requires the game to lose much of the feel you get by being behind the controls of a biplane. You can simply toggle the character and biplane models on and off, however, this causes you to lose the view behind the cockpit, which adds quite a bit of atmosphere to the game. This also makes looking to the left and right a bit confusing as well because, since you can’t use the direction of the wings as guides, you’ve left to looking on your own and hoping that you don’t get confused. Given the fast-paced nature of the dogfighting, and given that you don’t have any visual guide to help you out (the wings on the plane, for example) it’s easy to not know which way is right, and which way is left. This is definitely one aspect of the game that would be improved tenfold if it was played out on a larger screen. Here’s to hoping the GC GBA Player can help remedy this problem. Sadly, these problems really hamper the gameplay. This is definitely one part of the game that was simply not meant to be played on a portable system.

The bombing missions are the simplest of the three, and they’re also some of the most fun. That is, until you come upon a mission in which you aren’t shown all of your targets before the flight. Now this is simply an inexcusable flaw, and it really hurts the flow of the missions. It causes needless death of a character (and since you only get one life, that’s kind of a bad thing.) Thankfully, these tainted missions are few and far between, but they simply shouldn’t exist in the first place. Excluding the screwy missions, these sections of the game are a blast. They’re simple, but effective. You can just fly around for a bit, observe the area, take in the sights and sounds, and drop bombs until your heart’s content. The simple graphics in these sections match the simple gameplay. You’re not going to be dazzled by the graphics, as they’re the most basic of the bunch in the game. But the graphics do get the job done, and they certainly aren’t the worst graphics on the GBA.

Throughout your 200+ missions, and in the menus, you will be treated to some nice sound that really adds to the war-time vibe in the game. The most notable music in the game is “Flight of the Valkyrie”, which should get you into a war-ish mood if anything will. The sound effects mainly consist of bullets from your plane, or the screams from soldiers that you have just killed via the bullets fired from your plane. Other than that, there isn’t too much in the sound effect department. The music, on the other hand, has a noble sound to it, that adds a bit of charm to the game. Each side (the British and the Germans) get their own specific menu music, which helps to add a bit of realism to the mix.

All in all, Wings is a good game, and it’s certainly worth your time. Two-thirds of the gameplay styles come across well on the GBA, although I would advise that you wait until the GC GBA Player comes out to seriously play through the dogfighting missions. If you are a fan of WWI games, you will have a blast with this game. If you’re not, just take a chance on it. Odds are, you’ll have fun, and if you can look past the problems that plague the dog fighting missions, you’ll get a game that can probably be played for years without getting old.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/04/03, Updated 03/04/03