Good games, bad games
Just finished playing Super Mario Sunshine a GameCube title from 2002. There are few great games you can play with a 4 year old watching. This is one of them. Sunshine got good reviews at release and holds up well. The game progresses from easy to difficult. You learn new moves throughout the early parts of the game and have to apply those moves to win battles later in the game. There are different approaches to the levels, so you can play to your strengths. The end of the game is challenging and satisfying.
Rather than review a 5 year old title, I only mention Sunshine to highlight one battle with a centipede creature running around on the beach. You water the flowers to trip the centipede, then have to butt-thwomp the centipede in the right place 3 times to defeat the level. It's not a particularly hard or interesting level. The key is that once you've tripped the centipede, the game provides a large, throbbing arrow showing you where to attack the centipede.
Compare that to Wing Island for the Wii. This wretched dreck fails of its essential purpose -- for exactly the reason why Sunshine succeeds.
The initial Wing Island missions about dropping off supplies are incredibly easy. Finding cows is somewhat more difficult, because at altitude, the cows don't look much different than the other critters. The cows moo if you get close enough, but there's no way to tell which direction the moo is coming from. Very frustrating.
The bombing mission is where this title fails most miserably. The first bombing mission requires you to hit a three legged rock with repeated bomb runs. There's no clear indicator of the precise target point. The rock is big -- do you want to hit the top of the bottom? Even if the target was painted brightly, it would be impossible to know whether you've hit the target. The bombs (unsurprisingly) fall. The plane continues to fly. Looking forward from the plane means you can't see where your bombs land. The game reports how much damage you've caused, but doesn't give any clue as to which bombs hit or missed.
In all, it's like playing pool in the dark on a randomly shaped table. You don't know where the balls are and you don't know what you're aiming for. Occasionally you hear the sound of a ball being pocketed, but that only increases the urge to wrap your cue around Hudson Soft's neck.
Wing Island is a complete waste of a rental.
