The last thing we’ll look at in the Nintendo Labo Vehicle Kit is the controller for the airplane, which is just a cardboard flight stick.  There are also a bunch of little small odds and ends that you can build, too, which we’ll briefly go over as well.  Prepare for take off!

The flight stick works like the other controllers in this set.  It houses a dark area with reflective stickers, and when you put the key in with the JoyCon controller, the IR camera inside reads the stickers and tells the game what to do.  You build a little cardboard spring device to move the stick in all directions, and there a trigger button for locking on and firing missiles.  Here is a bigger shot of the flight stick.

In Adventure Mode, when you put the JoyCon key into the flight stick, your vehicle transforms into an airplane.  Steer it like how you normally would with a flight stick controller.  Use the gas pedal to accelerate.  You can also fire missiles for missions when you need to pop balloons in the air.  While the flight controls are fun and responsive, they’re certainly not realistic.  When you slow down, you don’t lose much altitude, for instance.  But really the only problem that I had with the airplane is that it eats up fuel twice as fast as the other vehicles, making it only useful for travelling around the island quickly.  Which is a shame since it’s fun to just fly around.

There are a couple of other little things you can build with the Vehicle Kit.  One is an extra JoyCon key.  Then you can put another JoyCon with the IR camera into one of the other controllers while player one is driving, and the second one will ride with them and can do things like fire bombs and such.  So that’s kind of neat.  I forgot to mention in the car article that there is another two player mode where you can battle with two cars, but that requires another steering wheel and gas pedal to build!

But I think my favorite extra thing you can build is a spray can.  You can customize the look of your vehicles’ and riders’ colors, and you use the spray can to do it.  Just point it with the JoyCon inside at the screen to start painting!  You can even use the IR camera and put things in front of it, like your hand, and paint like you’re using stencils!  To reset the camera, you just shake the can. You even build a cardboard ball to put inside the can so it makes a noise when you shake it, just like a real spray can!  The game even explains why real spray cans need that, so yeah, definitely educational.  Here’s a bigger shot of the spray can you build.

And that’s all for the Vehicle Kit. At the end of this week, I’ll post a wrap-up article with links to all my Labo reviews as well as my opinions on whether or not this set is good for kids!  –Cary

Tags: Game Reviews