Wild Blue Skies
Developer: Balor Games
Publisher: Chuhai Labs
Platforms: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PC, Xbox Series X (Reviewed)
Price: $14.99 USD – Available Here
Overview
There is unfortunate timing and then there is announcing your indie project to the delight of many starving fans of the genre, with the potential talent to back it up, only to have the game that your indie project is an “homage” to be announced and released before your own indie game is even released. That happens to be the case with Wild Blue Skies, a game that sought to give fans of the on-rail shooter genre, especially those of a certain anthropomorphized crew of pilots on the Nintendo 64, something new after a long drought. Instead, now Wild Blue Skies is releasing on the heels of a platform exclusive and while this may make the game far more accessible to a wider fan-base, it also leaves a lot to be desired even compared to the original all while sticking so close to it at parts it basically is retreading old ground.
Story
Many years before the start of the game, the decorated chief engineer of the army Grimclaw decided to take control of the world for himself. In an effort to prevent that from happening General Harding called upon the Blue Bombers to defeat Grimclaw and his forces, sending him into exile. Peace reigned for many years until suddenly a robotic army started swarming down from the volcanic regions to the Northern side of the planet, bearing Grimclaw’s insignia. With Grimclaw returned and General Harding’s forces unprepared, he calls upon the latest generation of the Blue Bombers to one again repel the invading robotic army and put a stop to Grimclaw for good.
Players will take control of Bowie Stray, an ace german shepherd and leader of the rest of the team consisting of Chuck Varbacoa, a veteran Ox that may have flown with the previous crew, Roe WhiteTail, a deer that is the sharpshooter of the group, and Thorne, a lizard whose skills aren’t quite up to snuff but does his best. Taking to their Cloudcutter planes it will be up to this four person squad with their kangaroo mechanic Jill Pockets serving to repair the ships between the six mission journey they’ll need to take to track down Grimclaw and put an end to his schemes once and for all, depending on which path they end up going through.
Wild Blue Skies is unfortunately as bare-bones as they come when it comes to storytelling and while that may be alright for an on-rails shooter, even the level here is still far below the standard. Every stage will have the general introduce the player to it and Bowie will respond with a generic answer and occasionally during a flight through a stage your partners will chime up about conditions in a level or ask for help if they have an enemy on their tail. Even the few times that the Prowlers, an enemy team of four ace pilots, appear to dogfight with the player’s squad there is barely any dialogue except for when they show up. There are hints that some members of the Prowlers have history with members of the Blue Bombers but it is never elaborated on or even described. Even the confident and unique looking bosses that appear at the end of every stage aren’t given names, with every single one generically called Boss.
In fact, the Blue Bombers themselves are given so little actual story, development, or dialogue with one another that the only way that we know that the team even has last names is through the game’s credits. That being said, similar to a certain 64 game, players will find that there are a few different routes through the game and endings as a result, though these differences are minimal at best and feel barely worth the effort outside of the extra challenge required. There is no way to actually choose to aim down the hardest route possible without completing specific challenges in a level or gaining a high enough score and one failure will send players down to another route, forcing them to sacrifice a precious life to replay the previous level or just continue as is.
Gameplay
Wild Blue Skies plays as anyone who has touched any of the original games it pays homage to would expect. In the role of Bowie, players will travel through six levels that all start at the same place and will branch off depending on how players did in the previous level. If they accomplished the hidden goal, if there was one, reached a high score, collected the WILD coins, etc., then they may unlock the option to head towards a harder stage to the top of the map or down towards an easier stage at the bottom. If players unlock a branching path for that playthrough they can choose to select between whichever they want, though it is worth noting that they will need to unlock a branch every single playthrough, nothing carries over between runs.
The player’s cloudcutter airplane is a decent enough plane with somewhat sluggish controls compared to what one would expect in the genre and it features blaster power-ups players can pick-up to strengthen their normal shots, a charged “homing” shot on its own button, and the ability to send out a bomb that can be detonated into a circle radius for heavy damage. The caveat here is that almost none of these weapons feel as good as one would hope and even the cloudcutter lacks some of the maneuvers players would think of, especially in the “all-range” levels here and there. The normal blaster shots feel underpowered as many enemies take multiple shots to destroy and upgraded blasters will be stripped away from the player if they take a “certain” level of damage that is entirely random. These upgrades are also not retained should players crash and restart from a checkpoint, even if they were maxed out when going through the checkpoint. Similarly, while players can carry up to nine bombs at a time, they are slow moving and have a small damage radius, making them a far cry from as powerful and risky to grab.
It is also worth noting that while players can pick up bombs as well as the aforementioned blaster upgrades, there are various 1UP extra lives, healing rings, and the WILD coins. Extra lives are always in set-places while healing rings are extremely rare from defeated foes and heal a shockingly small level of damage while the WILD coins are scattered throughout a stage, usually hidden inside of a sparkly enemy or location players will need to risk taking damage to snag. In “all-range” stages these are usually found within various objects in the environment that players will need to destroy. Sadly, while obtaining WILD coins does reward players with a badge for the level and bonus points, it does not offer anything such as healing or even a way to boost the cloudcutter’s total health. In fact, there are no upgrades to the cloudcutter at all throughout the game outside of the blaster pick-ups.
At the end of every stage the player’s allies will “check-in” with various statements regarding their current durability and refill a bit of their health at the same time, but not much. Should an ally be downed during a level, either because players failed to save them or in “all-range” level that seems to almost always kill them if players aren’t babysitting them, they will be down and out for the entire next level while they are under repair. Though given that they rarely provide any useful fire-support it doesn’t change much.
Now we’ve mentioned the “all-range” levels a few times now and this is because compared to the on-rails segments these give players complete control over where they want to move on a small square of map. Usually this means targeting enemies to defend a location, holding out long-enough to detonate a bomb, or destroying something else. Now while the cloudcutter can perform the classic “barrel roll” to deflect most incoming attacks the all-range levels point out one key element that is missing. The ability to perform a Somersault or U-turn means players must awkwardly boost or hard-brake to let an enemy on their tail pass by or gain the advantage on them instead. This is made all the more complicated by the fact that all enemies, including The Prowlers, can fly straight through buildings and obstacles without taking any damage, even blocking the player’s locked-on shots or bombs as a result.
It is also troublesome to note that the game is incredibly inconsistent with displaying the proper health, if not at all, of the enemy Prowler ships. It does not indicate which Prowler the player might currently be targeting or is targeting an ally and even when they do chime in over the radio it may often show them at full health only for the very next charge-shot to send them screaming into the desert sand below. That is of course if the player themselves doesn’t end up getting stuck literally in the ground somehow at the same time. On more than one occasion my Cloudcutter found itself knocking into an obstacle, which will send it ping-ponging disastrously any time an obstacle is hit, only to end up trapped beneath the level, taking continuous damage until exploding and losing a life with no chance to circumvent the glitch.
Audio & Visuals
The one place where Wild Blue Skies does happen to shine is in its entire bright presentation. The game features some gorgeous looking character designs with their CG representations, the few that there are, and the Cloudcutters are just unique enough to look like a proper homage than a rip-off. The stages, which are also hauntingly similar, are unique enough feeling to go through and have their fair share of differences to warrant multiple runs through for players to master and the various enemy designs, especially the bosses, are quite unique, especially when they have unique weak-points to target that change depending on the phase of the fight.
The other thing that really stands out is the game’s voice work, what little of it there is. The voice acting in the game is phenomenal and it really makes the player wonder why there wasn’t more of it, like more variation or lines that change depending on who the player is flying with in any given mission. Unfortunately the dialogue does have a habit of glitching on the Xbox Series X at least a few times where the game will literally not play any dialogue or show the player’s allies health in any way until the game is restarted completely.
Overall
Wild Blue Skies is an adequate on-rails shooter that might look pretty and try to harken back to the classics of yesteryear but it only barely manages to do that. With the barest bones of a storyline and so many elements that are lesser than its peers along with a number of glitches, Wild Blue Skies might aim for great heights but barely manages to stay in the air, even at its indie game price.
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