Those are just three of the locations you’ll be swapping missiles over in Ace Combat Joint Assault, the second game in the venerable flight combat series for the PSP. While the story seems rather light – players step into the role of an allied pilot, tasked with obliterating the enemy – the new Enhanced Combat View sounds intriguing, as does a new multi-strategic AI, which evolves mission flow based on player choices. Should keep things fresh, at the very least.

Whether you play the game for the story, the eight-player online versus mode, of the four-player co-op campaign, it looks like you’ll be treated to some of the best visuals the PSP can offer.

As long as Project Aces maintains the air superiority it’s built up over the past 15 years, Namco Bandai should be putting a winner in our hands this summer.

The other selling point for Sky Crawlers is its tie-in with a Japanese novel series of the same name. In this alternate-reality world where it’s permanently World War II, a group of young fighter pilots do what fighter pilots do best: dogfight. This is why it confuses me that the game is called “Innocent Aces.” To be an ace fighter pilot, you’ve got to shoot a lot of people down, right? How is that innocent?

What Is It?
Sky Crawlers is a flight simulation game for the Wii developed by Namco Bandai and Project Aces—the team behind the Ace Combat games. Players take the role of a rookie pilot, codenamed Lynx, and work their way up through the ranks of the Sky Crawler pilots.

What We Saw
I played through an early mission in the game where the main target was an enemy bomber plane. I set the control scheme to beginning and still managed to ram my plane into the target instead of successfully shooting it down.

How Far Along Is It?
The game is due out in the 2009 side of the holiday season.

What Needs Improvement?
There’s No Multiplayer: Ace Combat 6 proved the multiplayer modes can in fact work in flight simulators—so why don’t we get any in Sky Crawlers?

What Should Stay The Same?
Accessibility: Sky Crawlers’ difficulty settings range from Beginner to Expert and they aren’t kidding when they say “Expert.” The multiple layers of difficulty open up the game to newcomers and challenge old hat Ace Combat fans alike; and the way that Beginner mode mostly keeps you from pitching out of control opens up the joy of a big empty sky through which to crawl—or plummet, if you dare try Expert.

Special Manoeuvres: While flying a mission, a yellow circle appears on the mini-map. Keeping your plane within the circle fills a gauge that allows you to pull off special manoeuvres during combat by pushing the Nunchuck’s analogue stick in one direction and pressing A. These special manoeuvres will get you behind enemy planes for a perfect shot or get you out of trouble if you’ve got a bogey on your six – and they look pretty amazing.

It Felt Really, Really Good: Even on beginner mode, the flying controls in Sky Crawlers felt very intuitive and not at all like a Wii waggle fast. The Nunchuck (held in the right hand) functions as the actual plane joystick while the Wiimote acts as the throttle (tilt up to speed up and down to slow down). Overriding my natural inclination to button mash was a little difficult, but the Beginner controls were patient enough not to let me spiral out of control while I figured out how not to stall out. All in all, a very rewarding flight sim experience.

Final Thoughts
I’m not sure how much a gamer would be missing for not having seen the anime or read the books—but Sky Crawlers seems like a good fit for the Wii in terms of gameplay. Too bad about the multiplayer, though; flight sims aren’t really great games for an audience and there’s no other way anyone else could get into it while you’re at the controls – unless they’ve seen the anime or read the books.

To control an aeroplane in a Wii game, I have held the Wii Remote like a paper aeroplane.

I have held it like a flashlight, dipping and raising it to orient where my plane’s nose is pointing.

These schemes failed me when, unsupervised by representatives in attendance at publisher XSeed’s New York demo event last night, I took up Wii Remote and nunchuck and sent my World War II dogfighter into the drink.

The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces, this flight combat game from the developers of Ace Combat, is controlled differently.

Read this next part slowly, lest you be as flummoxed as I was.

The nunchuck controls plane movement. Tilt, twist, turn it and the plane does the same.

The Z-button on the nunchuck shoots the plane’s guns.

The C-button on the nunchuck switches weapons.

The Wii Remote controls the throttle, so it gets held vertically. Pulling it toward you speeds the plane up. Tilting it away slows the plane.

Tilting the nunchuck’s control stick lets the player pick from a batch of stunt maneuvers. Pressing A on the remote activates them.

Flying the plane into yellow circles on the game’s mini-map causes a meter to appear, a horizontal bar that slowly fills with colour. Pressing A as the meter fills makes the plane manoeuvre into position behind an enemy plane. The more that meter is filled, the better the resulting position is.

Once I got it, the controls worked well. Here’s to Project Aces for coming up with one of the stranger Wii control schemes yet.

A note about the story, which is its own brand of strange: I didn’t play more than a quick skirmish in the air, but the fact sheet reveals that the plot of this game involves a peaceful world that is nostalgic for the constant wars that used to befall it. To remedy the social unease caused by a lack of war, governments hire private companies and fliers, like the ones controlled in this game, to fight battles. The game’s hero is rookie pilot Lynx, who, according to the fact sheet, “becomes involved in a secret new military project with the goal of making pilots immortal.” This is a “somber story of a world that needs war to survive.”

The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces is a single-player Wii exclusive set for holiday release, published by XSeed and developed by Namco Bandai Games and Project Aces.