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---Length---
The game's main story is pretty short: On my first play-through as a Spotted Owl (weakest attack, but fastest flier) I clocked the main story in around 4 hours. On a subsequent play-through as a Horned Owl (higher attack) I cleared the last stage in a little under 3 hours.
---Difficulty---
For the most part, it's a fun slash n' dash through Bats, Crows, Pure Ones, and Hagsfiends that is thoroughly enjoyable and you'll rarely be defeated by enemy fliers if you stay alert. However, bosses and some missions are drastically more difficult than the rest of the game. The bosses are a welcome challenge, and all of them have special quirks or behaviors that demand an extra level of effort and strategy to defeat. The few escort missions are probably the most challenging in the game. One mission in particular in Tito forest has you escorting owlet carriers to a new base for the resistanceand I failed this mission many, many times on the first play-through, but beat it in the first go on the second play-through (the extra attack power of a different owl-type helped a lot). In short, the boss battles are fun and will give you a challenge, while the escort/rescue missions can be pretty demanding and intense.
---Combat---
The combat is great and engaging once you unlock all the different attackswhich is easily done. All the attacks have a good heft and versatility. You can fling enemies into terrain or obstacles, ram them out of the skies, chain together combosand my personal favoritethe "Fall From Grace" attack: you lock talons with an enemy and plummet towards the ground, releasing at the last moment to smash your foe into the ground and break-neck speed for insane damage. You can't do this move on bosses that I've found, but it pretty much kills anything else in one go. You also have wingmen that accompany you on missions, and you can send them after most foes and they are generally competent fighters you can rely on to take down what you point them at. A few enemies have armor or special traits that grant them resistance to certain types of attacksand they serve as a little bonus variety in enemies you fight. You have to ram armored owls or toss them into terrain to knock off their armor before you can damage their health, and trying to ram into hagsfiends knocks you back and stuns you temporarilyso it adds a welcome amount of tension and encourages you to pay attention to what you're attacking instead of blindly smashing buttons when you have a target in range. There's a lot of room for strategic combatusing terrain, your wingmen, altitude, and so onto seize the upper hand. Targeting is pretty forgiving, and there's some amount of auto-targeting, but I almost never found myself targeting something other than what I was trying to targetand I typically despise auto-targeting.
---Controls---
Responsive and functional. Personally, I found the barrel roll was a little too sensitive and sometimes found my owl doing a barrel roll when I'd rather notbut this was rare. Flying has a short learning curve for precision flying in particular, but it's easily manageable. The only true annoyance I ran into was that the "nearby target lock" can range from "pretty good, it looked at what I wanted to look at that was nearby" to "why the heck am I looking through this mountain at something far away instead of the enemy that's right behind me". Many times that button seems to ignore the 10 enemies flying around nearby besides and targets Fire Carriers or other mission goals instead. It can be next to useless in certain missions. That being said, it's pretty easy to just look at whatever you're after and get targeted, but I wish the nearby target button was a more reliable. Overall, excellent controls.
---Level Design---
You get a good variety of levels here. Most levels score a good mix between tight and wide-open areas. There's not a lot of variety in the weather conditions hereit's mostly clear skies. Some missions will have you winding through canyons and caves, others soaring above trees and mountains...there's a good variety here. It never gets so big you feel like there is no terrain, and it never gets so small that it runs against the fact that this is a flying game. The race out of the furnace at the end of the game is a breath-taking, white-knuckled ride through the collapsing cavernsand it is enjoyably intense.
---Graphics---
Hey, it's on Wii. They look good enough that they don't detract from the experience. I personally thought the motion blur from flying at top-speed was a little overdone, but it didn't really get on my nerves all that much either.
---Overall---
4/5It's a fun game with few annoyances and presents an enjoyable challenge. However, it's pretty short and I wouldn't pay 50$ for this. Let it come down a bit. The main story missions are well doneenough that I've played through them all twice, and probably will go on ahead and beat them with all 4 owl types.
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I picked up this game for Wii, because my kids LOVE the books and loved the movie. They think this game is a blast. However, I can't be in the same room when they play it. The flight/flying is so real, and the point of view so close, that I literally get motion sickness and have to leave the room. I honestly cannot watch them play this one (and we own at least 30 Wii titles, so this isn't my usual reaction to a video game--I rarely get motion sickness in real life).So while flying like an owl might be a blast for some, be aware that it might really throw off your vestibular senses and plan accordingly.
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