Pirate Wings

There are certain iconic sequences from the Star Wars films that, on the surface, seem like freeze-dried, prepackaged video games just waiting for someone to come along and add water.

Specifically, the trench flight scene from Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope, where Luke Skywalker braves the sinew-like troughs of the Death Star’s surface and of course, the pod race in Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace where a young Anakin Skywalker hurtles through a series of impossibly tight canyons at brain-liquifying speeds.

These scenes convey a potent sense of exhilaration that ought to be brilliant in the realm of gaming. The reality is, unless you possess a Jedi-like mastery of the Force these feats of piloting are simply beyond the average padawan.

Assuming this level of skill in its course design is the first of many mistakes in Pirate Wings. Which is a shame - there's a great game buried somewhere within Pirate Wings that’s fighting to get out.

The game is split into two halves: racing and story-driven action. The racing sections are straightforward scrambles to the finish line. Along with steering left and right, you can fly up and down too via smooth accelerometer controls.

Thwarting your opponents' attempts at victory is a matter of tapping the right side of the screen to fire lasers, missiles, and drop mines. Special praise is earned considering how intuitive it is to connect a shot, which has no business being so manageable for a game that demands so much concentration to simply navigate the tracks.

There are nine circuits and three distinct areas to conquer, plus 12 ships and four characters to unlock in three different race classes, which by itself is a generous checklist of challenges to beat.

The second half of the game, however - Story mode - is where Pirate Wings really shows off its breadth of content.

Side-lining racing in favour of a shoot-'em-up style, Story mode offers 19 unique missions chronicling the adventures of a monkey named Raoul. You’ll destroy reactors, chase down rogue ships, defend a mothership, and navigate labyrinthine caverns all in the name of defeating the evil space toad, Burp.

It’s all beautifully presented, with visuals that range from decent to arresting and characters that, though seldom used, boast PlayStation 2 levels of detail.

Sadly, Pirate Wings stalls as a result of its overly challenging course designs. The courses are just too narrow and too twisty for mere mortals to navigate smoothly. This is where the Star Wars comparisons are brought to bear.

Pirate Wings gifts the player with a speedy craft and responsive, full 3D controls, before snatching away any hope of exhilarating gameplay. It does this by forcing you to bash your craft through a network of spaghetti-thin tunnels and caverns that are just too difficult for those of us not packing weapons-grade Force powers.

This is made worse by an energy bar that’s only too eager to drain at the slightest whiff of a collision. It also seems as though the acceleration of vehicles is continually climbing no matter how often you brake, making the second pass of a course feel considerably trickier than the first.

The quiet innovation of an auto re-calibration of the accelerometer between each level (which is always relative to the iPhone’s current resting position) and the inclusion of a decent Ghost mode for improving your lap times help the game’s cause, even if they don’t forgive its more fundamental design flaws.

If the courses were just a bit wider and the corners just a little more forgiving, Pirate Wings might have been one the most compelling arguments for accelerometer-based flight yet. In it’s current state, no quantity of updates can fully address its deep-rooted problems. A sequel on the other hand...