Flight Control Review: The seed of proliferation

Permit's face it, all the cool Windows Phone gamer kids are playing Skulls of the Shogun right now, but we can't review that game until we've spent a little more time with it. Instead, we'll take a wait at a classic title. Some people felt left out with last calendar week's Flight Control: Rocket review since that fine game is a Nokia exclusive. As such, it'southward high time for our review of the original Flight Command, a game that all Windows Phone 7 and viii owners tin play. Flight Command comes from developer Firemint (now known as Firemonkeys) and Namco Bandai games.

A new genre takes off

Flight Control is (to my knowledge) the very showtime line-cartoon game. While the genre hasn't taken off to the same extent every bit Angry Birds-manner physics games, it is perfectly suited to touch screen devices. The game's entreatment comes from its marriage of concepts that everyone, gamers and non-gamer alike understands. Nosotros all know how to draw lines (some of us better than others), so that'due south a perfect mechanic. And the chore of air traffic controller probably doesn't sound too exciting on its own, but grounded concepts similar that often brand for mass appeal.

Radio controller

As the air traffic controller, information technology'southward your job to help incoming aircraft country safely. Each map has one or more than of three colored landing zones: blood-red and xanthous runways, and blue helicopter landing pads. Aircraft of those three colors arroyo from off-screen and must then exist guided to the same colored landing zone. Each landed shipping add together one point to the player's score. The game continues until a crash occurs, Denzel hopefully managing to save the 24-hour interval.

To direct an aircraft, tap and hold it and then describe a pathway for it to travel. Paths needn't be straight – it'due south oftentimes necessary to air current around another airplane'south trajectory or loop in circles as yous wait for a runway to clear. The actual line drawing engine in this version of Flying Control is slightly rough, equally the lines don't come out as smoothly as in other versions. They may bear witness upward a bit more angular than in the sequel, but nonetheless look much smoother than those of Harbor Principal for Windows Phone.

As the game progresses, aircrafts appear in greater numbers, increasing the difficulty. Planes come in unlike sizes and speeds, while helicopters always fly slowly. Much of the claiming in this version comes from the bodily color distribution of the planes. Red planes about always come in greater numbers than yellow, then the player ofttimes struggles to continue a horde of reds from crashing into each other while the yellow track goes unused. I would prefer a more even distribution, just information technology doesn't hurt the game as well badly.

Speed control

Flight Command is a much slower-paced game than its sequel. The get-go of the game can be somewhat boring as just a few planes slowly inch across the screen. In one case the crafts kickoff coming in college numbers, their speed becomes less annoying and perhaps even appreciable.

That said, players can increase the speed of the game at any fourth dimension using the Fast-Forward push at the bottom corner of the screen. Tapping information technology once causes the game to speed upwards temporarily before reverting to the standard crawl. Double-tap to lock in the higher speed, making the game faster simply also tougher. A slightly lower fast-forward speed (or slightly higher standard speed) would've been squeamish, every bit the game cries out for a happy medium. Harbor Master beats Flight Control there with its customizable fast-forward setting.

The Windows Phone version of Flight Control may let players fast-forwards at will, but it lacks an important characteristic of the iOS game: rewinding. On iOS, players can rewind after an accident in club to go on chasing afterwards higher scores. You only get a certain number of rewinds, so it's non a god fashion. To be fair though, the Steam version, while still superior to Windows Telephone in many ways, also lacks the rewind function.

A few fields short

This version of Flight Command's weakest aspect is probably the pocket-sized number of airfields – maps to play on. Information technology only offers six maps compared to the iOS and Steam version'southward nine, so we're talking 33 percent less content. Fifty-fifty Harbor Master has seven maps. So yeah, the gameplay in this one stretches a piddling sparse by comparison.

Still, the airfields on offering represent a decent amount of variety. One map includes AI-controlled emergency planes whose trajectories tin can't be changed by the player. You have to work around those bullish planes whenever they appear. It's an interesting dynamic that doesn't show up in FC Rocket.

I map has two sets of blood-red and xanthous runways and potent winds. Whenever the wind pattern changes, one set of runways becomes unavailable for new planes to state on. Finally, the airfield with a baseball stadium throws blimps into the mix. These airships slowly float from one side of the screen to the other rather than landing on a runway, and must just be avoided.

Turbulence

Aside from missing maps, this Flight Command has a few other problems – generally stemming from its age. FC Rocket fixes all of these concerns.

• Menus: The airfield option interface is super clunky.
• Stat tracking: Considering the only existent meta-goal is to land ten,000 shipping, it's frustrating that you lot can't view your total planes landed. Instead, players accept to clumsily switch betwixt airfields, view their stats, so add their scores together by mitt.
• Slow leaderboards: Players have to manually upload their scores instead of automatic uploads like pretty much every other Windows Phone game. Also, the leaderboards are slower to load than whatever other game I can call up of.
• No fast app switching: An update to add Fast App Switching and the missing airfields would've been perfect. It never happened, possibly due to Xbox Windows Phone'south Draconian certification policies.

Achievements

Harbor Principal zooms ahead of Flight Control every bit far as content goes, but I strongly favor Flight Control's easier Achievement listing. A few fun style-based Achievements: creating three divide collisions at in one case, keeping a single airplane on-screen for five minutes, landing no planes for two minutes, and keeping xv planes on-screen at one time. All of those require specific strategies from the histrion, but aught also tough.

The most elusive Achievement in this game is the amusingly named 'Over Ix Thousand!,' awarded for landing x chiliad planes. Because of Flight Control's slow pace, it takes quite a while to get – ten hours at minimum. It'southward non truly difficult, but the small number of maps and lack of other long-term goals makes those x hours feel like forever.

Overall Impression

While Flight Control invented the line-cartoon genre, it has since been surpassed by Harbor Primary and particularly Flight Control Rocket in the quality department. This version has only two goals to keep players going: chasing loftier scores, and grinding towards the 10,000 planes Accomplishment. The latter is certainly doable, but unquestionably deadening.

If you have a Nokia telephone, I'd say you can safely skip this first game in favor of Flight Command Rocket. Merely the original is a archetype and withal worth playing, especially for Achievement hunters. It'south but too bad that Firemint and Namco Bandai didn't encounter fit to update this port to go on step with other versions.

Flying Control costs $2.99 and works dandy on both Windows Phone vii and 8 devices. Become it here at the Windows Phone Store.

Oh Dear

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Keeping it affordable

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Starting at just $250, Microsoft'southward offset foray into affordable laptops for the pedagogy market is a winner. With a gorgeous design, excellent thermals, and a fantastic typing feel, Microsoft would practise correct to sell this directly to consumers also. Let's simply promise Intel can make a meliorate CPU.

Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/flight-control-wp-review

Posted by: rossantouch.blogspot.com

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