I think it’s been almost a month since we’ve gotten anything on Wii VC. Finally, there’s something today and unfortunately, it really wasn’t worth the wait.

Wii’s VC has gotten no love lately. Instead, Nintendo’s releases are more focused on WiiWare and DSiWare games. We’re lucky to get one title, so I guess I should be happy. It’s just too bad that Aero isn’t all that fun.

Classic platforming action with a twist. Aero is a bat, thus the Acro-bat. And being an Acro-Bat, everything is Circus themed. Everything. The music is up-beat tones, but it’s past the point of happiness for me. It’s sooo up-beat, it gets downright creepy.

The creepiest part? You guessed it, the clowns. What’s a circus without clowns? A darn’d good one IMHO.

These guys just creep me out and it doesn’t help that they’re all the gray-ish, goth dressed, demented, creepy clowns. Some of them fly and other have big boots to which to kick your butt with.

Poor Aero doesn’t have much of an arsenal. He can screw-dive up and down in four upper/lower, left/right directions. It takes some skill to get the move just right. Miss and you’ll lose a life meter.

But it’s not just the clowns that are out to get you. There’s flaming rings and all other kinds of bad circus related nastiness. Like spikes sticking out of the ground. Yup. How many times have you been spiked at a circus? All the time.

Baddies aside, the game is a mix of platform adventure and puzzle solving. You’ll hunt for stars, platforms, and other goodies to clear a level and have to navigate the various obstacles through trapeeze-ary, cannon firing, ladders, chutes, unicycles, and a whole lot more.

I have to admit, the game is fun. Beyond your screw attack, you’ve got little stars you collect that offer some projectile power. They’re strewn throughout the levels, but far and few.

Lots of colors and varied levels that are downright humongous, round out the game.

There are a few issues holding this game back though. The controls for one are a bit wonky. They’ll take some time to get used to as the jumps and double jumps you usually perform are little hops and screw-attacks. It gets annoying as you try to hop up a platform and you touch a baddy and get knocked down to your death. Aero is fluid enough, but lacks polish in his controls. You’ll get frustrated early with the heavy spike placements that will ultimately kill you.

Battling enemies here is just non-standard fare and you may like that. You have to screw-attack them or get ‘em with a star ninja style. No stomping with feet or butt, else you lose a “A” from your life gauge. The issue here for me is that a simple regular baddie kill should be easy. Too often, the simple fights, turn into mini-boss style battles and there are a ton of hazards around.

Put them together and it’s classic platform frustration that just feels cheap. The issue here is cheap deaths are far too frequent for my liking.

Finally, there are the clowns. The whole evil clown thing and there are some clowns who can “boot” you to death and you can’t do anything to them, annoys and frightens me to no end. Throw in the music and it’s a game I just can’t enjoy for more than 15 minutes.

If you have no fear of clowns and can get over the cheap deaths and a few control issues, there’s a lot here to enjoy. If you can’t, it’ll just give you the heebie-jeebies for a while.

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