Playing Air Wings is like sitting down at dinner and finding only dessert on your plate. It’s initially surprising, and seems cool at first, but after you’ve eaten it for a little while you’re still wondering when the real meal is going to start. In short, the game concept, as interesting as it is, doesn’t hold up when the only way to experience it is through a simple multiplayer mode with not even a meek single-player campaign to back it up.
That’s too bad because as an idea, Air Wings is childhood fun in app form. Like the scenes in the Toy Story movies where Andy re-enacts wars with his toy soldiers, Air Wings lets the player pilot things like paper planes across bedrooms and other “real life” environments in an attempt to win a dogfight against other human foes. You have to look out to avoid bookshelves in the room environment and cinder block walls in the outdoor environments, all while trying to shoot down your crafty enemy.
Controlling your plane doesn’t take too long to get used to, and the buttons to fire weapons and speed up are easy to figure out once you’ve gone through the game’s training course. The dogfights against other human opponents are fun enough, and luckily, each combatant gets a few lives a piece before a true winner is declared. But once you’ve played a few anonymous humans, it’s easy to look around wondering, “What’s next?”
The game has no single-player mode at all outside of the training mission. Even a flimsy series of missions with a lazy narrative placed between each battle would be preferable to nothing at all, but that’s what players who are more single-player minded are left wishing for. It’s not unforgivable, but it makes Air Wings feel like half a game rather than the whole package.
If you want a fun multiplayer-only game, Air Wings is up to the challenge. But I wish it offered a bit more as a game than it currently does.
