Author Topic: Kid Adventures: Sky Captain Review  (Read 1440 times)

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Offline NWR_Neal

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Kid Adventures: Sky Captain Review
« on: July 08, 2010, 01:56:52 PM »

If they wanted to be sneaky, they could have called it Kid Pilot: Wings.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/23629

It's hard to qualify Kid Adventures: Sky Captain. On the one hand, it's clearly meant for a younger age demographic by its very name. On the other, it's a competent PilotWings-esque game that uses motion controls to good effect. While it might lack the mission variety and polish of Nintendo's celebrated flight simulation franchise, there's no denying that it is a decent game with fleeting moments of greatness.

The controls for this Torus Games title are quite simple. By holding the Wii Remote on its side, you can tilt left and right to steer your plane, speed up or slow down with the 2 and 1 buttons, and take pictures or shoot water balloons with the A button. It's very natural, and the only downfall is that you might wish you could make tighter turns.

This solid foundation makes the game's various missions fun to play, for the most part. When the game allows you to explore the environment, much like in the airplane segment in Wii Sports Resort, it is excellent. It is genuinely fun to fly around the three distinct islands, finding hidden rings to fly through and completing missions that make you look at the environments in a slightly different light. These types of missions range from races that give you courses that bob and weave through each area, to target shooting contests that force you to find targets in hidden nooks.

However, there are other mission types that aren't as good as the others, and even the ones that are good seem to repeat a lot. Anything that involves extinguishing fires is usually bad, because you have to miraculously get the plane to stay in one spot while you launch water. It gets frustrating when you have to continuously loop back, especially when the command for making a U-turn isn't as simple as it was in, say, Star Fox games.

Luckily the abundant exploration makes up for the lacking mission quality. There are plenty of achievements to earn and things to do in the three locations, such as find hidden objects and fly through tight quarters. It isn't an experience that will last you tons of hours, but it's a rewarding and fun one.

While there are a number of unlockables, the only non-cosmetic one is different planes. For the most part, each successive plane appears to simply be a faster version than the one before, but each plane also has a distinct shape and size, which makes certain planes better for different missions. The final unlockable plane, the UFO, is the only one that feels drastically different. Unfortunately, you get this once you complete everything in the game, so there isn't too much to do with it except abduct cows.

The entire game can be played cooperatively with a second player, which is good for any tricky parts.  It is more likely to be used such that an adult and a kid can play together.

Kid Adventures: Sky Captain doesn't have the look of a game that's supposed to appeal to anyone outside of its specific demographic.  Regardless, it is a good game that fans of PilotWings should consider checking out, especially because of its reduced price.

Neal Ronaghan
Director, NWR

"Fungah! Foiled again!"