Crawling the Skies

At $29.99, you should run out at buy Sky Crawlers right now. For those of you still skeptical, I will dispense my own sage (and concise) opinion about the game for your reading pleasure.

For those unaware, it is a flight simulator/combat game. I'll post some gameplay below.

The animation, both in-game and hand-drawn (in style; in production, I do not know) is beautiful and fluid. The environments look just fine and any blemishes are mostly unnoticed because of the speed the games moves. The combat is both frantic and calculated and wonderfully balanced between the two.

The controls are refreshing. The Wii remote is tilted up and down to control the throttle, and the motion for the nunchuk steers the plane. It is the best executed and most responsive nunchuk motion controls in any Wii game I have encountered. Firing bullets and special weapon are handled by a button press.

The game recommends holding the Wii remote in your left hand, but I found that keeping it in my right and steering with my left worked out better for me. It did not hinder or even change the intuitive controls either way-good news for those leftys out there.

Combat is very satisfying whether you position yourself behind a target and open fire or tail the target long enough to execute a special maneuver, which is almost definitely a guaranteed kill. The special maneuver requires you to maintain a close proximity to the target for a few seconds and then positions you in prime killing position.

The intuitive controls and satisfying combat make Sky Crawlers an incredible experience. Even at full price, it is a great buy. The budget price tag make this game a tremendous value.

My wife hase a healthy interest in Japanese Amine, so a we rented The Sky Crawlers movie when it came out on DVD months back. I never got a chance to see it from start to finish, but she could not make heads or tails of it. It may require more attention than she is usually willing to put into a film, but to each his (or her) own. I did enjoy the small part I saw of it, so I would like to see it in full to supplement the game.