Flight Control
Flight Control - There is no greater joy than playing a simple game that knows and relishes the fact that it’s a simple game. Firemint has done just that with the release of their new title, Flight Control, a game that delivers an air traffic controller experience that is tailor made for the iPhone.
Your job in Flight Control is to guide a variety of airplanes and helicopters to one of three landing sites. When each airplane or helicopter lands safely, your “aircraft landed” count builds. When aircraft continually land, the frequency of planes and helicopters increases. The main goal in Flight Control is to prevent crashes — that’s the disaster which causes the game to end. There is only one map, but the goal of Flight Control is to constantly try to outdo your high score.
Flight Control’s mechanics are straight forward. To set the path of your aircraft, you tap on the plane/helicopter of choice and drag a line (representing approach) to its respective destination. To manage this aspect, aircraft and landing pads are color coded which makes it easy to identify where aircraft go. What keeps things interesting is that planes come out of nowhere causing you to adjust directions and paths quite frequently. When you get to a dozen different airplanes or helicopters all over the map, it gets challenging in a hurry trying to prevent a crash.
Flight Control has a ton of charm baked into its package. The art style and music in Flight Control has a retro look and feel that conjures images of poodle skirts and chocolate shakes. It’s very well done and it should put a smile on your face. If you don’t like the music (but you will!), Firemint was kind enough to build in support that allows you to play music from your iPod library in the background. More developers should take notice.
Granted Flight Control doesn’t have all the usual features we’d associate with depth (i.e. multiple maps, levels, multiplayer , etc.), it’s a fine game for the thrifty price of a buck. Flight Control comes through with providing an addictive pick up and play experience that is a prototypical example of an iPhone optimized experience. Well done!
Related Articles: ATC 4.0
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category: Action, Arcade, Editor's Picks, Games
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March 31st, 2009 at 12:28 pm
I’m curious how this compares to iATC and ATC 4.0. Anyone?
March 31st, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Haven’t had a chance to play iATC, but I do have some experience with ATC 4.0
In terms of what’s best, it depends on what you want to get out of your play experience. ATC 4.0 is a meaty campaign oriented game that takes a while to get through, while Flight Control is all about providing a super simple game best suited for 5 minute chunks.
If this is your kind of game, I’d recommend you get both as it’ll only cost you two bucks. Can’t go wrong with either one though.
April 4th, 2009 at 8:34 am
I agree with the appcraver review….with one exception. The planes come too fast too early. At about the 30-40 range of completion they come too fast. I had 7 big jets, 4 smaller jets 3 helicopters and 4 cessna type planes in the air at one time… Slow down the calculation for this and this game would rock. I am stuck in the 50-60 range…although I did have one stroke of brilliance and got to 90…once. This simple frustrating thing will kill this gamne quickly. Need some longer time playability and more maps.
April 5th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Here is my screenshot. As you can see I have some playtime on it. And my average overall is pretty low…or at least I think it is low. I would like to play it longer during one game time. Not have it end so quickly. Just need to slow down the muber of planes so early in the game.
http://www.mygreatstuff.com/atc/IMG_0106.JPG
April 7th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Very fun and addicting game; I’m hooked! That said, I don’t think even a real air traffic controller would get very far in this game because it’s absolute chaos! In real life, airplanes don’t pop up out of nowhere that quickly and generally use established routing. And they don’t bounce off the edge of the screen back into the game when ATC wants to get rid of you, LOL!
May 9th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
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