iPhone App Review: Flight Control

Hello Captain! Have a seat and welcome to command! Flight Control was developed by Firemint, which is also the company that brings you Real Racing. This fun and addictive game will only put you back 99 cents, but let me tell you why it is worth every penny. If you’ve ever wished for a simple yet entertaining game which you can spend hours playing and not get bored, then this is the app for you.

To start, you are air traffic control and the goal is to land each aircraft on its designated landing strip. There are three different types of aircraft: passenger plane, helicopter, and small-cabin/crop plane. For greater emphasis, each type of aircraft has its own specific landing strip. To land a plane, you just tap the craft with your finger, then draw a path for it to land. Sounds easy, right? Not so fast: as time goes on, more and more aircraft will need to be landed at one time, so it’s important to be as efficient and as quick as possible about the paths you draw and what aircraft you land first. All aircraft have different sizes, speeds, shapes, and turning agilities. Strategy becomes important with an increased amount of planes on the map.

Design

Flight Control is very simple, clean, and cute. Firemint is known for its hard work and detail, and this application shows it off very well. Upon launching the game, I was presented with the option to play game sounds. The in-game music is part of what makes this game so cute: it’s classic without giving off a negatively “olden-golden” vibe. By selecting “no” for in-game sounds, I was able to resume playing music from the iPod app.

The main menu consists of:

• Play! – puts you right into the game
• Airfields - lets you choose your map
• Stats - the place to go to check out detailed statistics of your game play, including a connection to online boards
• More… takes you to a page telling you about Firemint’s other great products
• A red button on the top right, which will take you to the multiplayer section of the game. This is really cool: in multiplayer mode, you are able to take advantage of the new features in iPhone OS 3.0 by connecting peer-to-peer with another iPhone or iPod Touch. Both players play on the same airfield and each can pass planes off his/her screen for the other player to land. Multiplayer mode connects quickly and smoothly and makes for great game play with a friend or relative!

Starting your quest as air traffic control, you’ll see your airfield and an approaching aircraft. The graphics are in a cartoonish style that appeal to all ages and are very pleasing to look at. There is no learning curve to the game’s play and you should be able to begin landing your craft in no time.

Quality/Use

As I mentioned earlier, this game is smooth and stable. It has been tested on OS 3.0 and it works great. No crashes for me so far, just lots of fun and lots of landing! To get your street cred, you have the ability to create an account in order to save your stats onto an online leader board. The game uses the phone’s GPS to find nearby players with scores similar to yours. Traveling around the app is fast and you’ll find no hiccups.

Wrapping Up

Firemint (great name, by the way) has done an outstanding job with smooth game play, great graphics, a very simple interface, and a fun multiplayer system. It’s affordable, fun, and tempts you to come back and get a higher score. Mine was 88 planes landed, what will yours be?

It’s available in the App Store here. Happy landing!

Posted in App Store, Review, iPhone, iPod Touch