Game Review: Flight Control

December 28, 2010 | By andrewbares

Flight Control is a popular title that many enjoy, and it is faithfully replicated on WP7 (Video Review).

Overall Score: 4/5

While Flight Control for WP7 is a great replica of the original iPhone game, it simply isn’t that interesting of a game to be enjoyable for a long time.

Gameplay: 5/5

The controls are perfect: Drawing a path for a plane to follow is accurate and smooth, and doesn’t require that much precision on your part. The gameplay works your mental skills, since you have to estimate the velocity of planes and predict their trajectories quickly in order to avoid crashing any airplanes or helicopters. The variation in airfields is also nice, since it adds different flying vehicles like helicopters or propeller planes.

Presentation: 4/5

The visuals are meant to be cartoonish and simple, and they work well like that. What really disappoints is the audio… they have some music that plays at the beginning of the game, but it only lasts for about 30 seconds and then just stops! So when you’re playing, there is no music unless you listen to your own! The sound effects were good, successfully hinting you as to when two planes are about to collide.

Lasting Value: 2/5

The game only has one gameplay mode: Get the highest score possible. You can play on different airfields which change the gameplay somewhat, and you can press the fast forward button if you are a speedy worker, but that gameplay gets boring after some time. There could be so many great modes they could include: “Land 20 planes in 2 minutes”, “Land 10 friendly planes while making the enemy planes crash into each other”, etc. Something to shake up the gameplay would be great.

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Title: Flight Control
Price: $2.99
Publisher: Namco Bandai Games

About Andrew Bares

As an avid gamer, I see the Windows Phone as a solid platform for mobile gaming. I will review almost every WP7 game and give you an idea if it is worth your money or not! In addition to gaming, I have been using Windows Mobile since 2005, and understand just about everything there is to know about the Windows Phone platform. Xbox Gamertag: DirtSurfer07 (add me!)

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Tagged game review, WP7 Game Reviews, xbox live

firetap

This was the first game I bought on WP7 because I loved the demo and wanted to play more. However, much like you stated in the review, once I played through the different stages a few times I wasn't really interested in playing anymore. Still missing that x planes in y seconds achievement though!
http://www.facebook.com/saadhashmi73 Saad Hashmi

I've played the game on Android before and while it seems boring, it is definitely one of those ultimate "I'm-just-gonna-play-a-quick-game-of-this" games. Whenever I had a couple of minutes on me, I would play it and it would be great. But if you sit down and try to force yourself to enjoy it, you'll probably be bored.
TriAxis

I like this game a lot. I still have 2 achievements to get. Landing over 9000 planes may take awhile. It also fun to compare your highscores to fellow Xbox Live friends. This is a feature that adds replay value to the game. My current highscore on one board is 444 planes. Gamer tag TriAxis22
George Shaw

The reviewer really needs to start thinking about a new career. It was so awful I couldn't listen to the end. Sounds like some really boring 12 year olds.

Game looks fine, reviewer gets 1/5
http://www.facebook.com/seifip Philip Seyfi

What??? Flight Control is one of the best casual games ever… And the graphics are simply perfect!
http://www.martinschmidler.com martinschmidler

First of all, the graphics are actually quite nice and with much attention to detail. But what you really missed is the fact that this version doesn´t have multiplayer, due to WP7´s limitations.

Playing Flight Control with say an iPhone and an iPad is really fun. I hope MS adds bluetooth multiplayer ASAP !!!

http://thewingster.com Andrew

Yeah I said the graphics worked well. It's the lack of music that brought the presentation down. I didn't know the iPhone version had multiplayer, thanks for that info! Some Xbox Live multiplayer would be great, but the best we have seen was the chess game, and that was a bit slow.