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Airport Mania – First Flight Review for iPhone and iPod Touch

Posted by Jason Coe on Sep 3, 2009 at 7:28 am | View Comments • Digg story
Filed Under: Games • News • Reviews • iPhone

AirportMania 006 Airports are one the busiest, most stressful places in the world. However Reflexive Entertainment turns it into a wonderful place to be. It’s still a bit stressful, as it wouldn’t be much of a time management game otherwise, but at least there are no angry passengers or snooty flight attendants in sight!

Review

The goal is to land planes, fix them if they are broken, fill them with fuel, fill them up with more people and launch them for take off. You can gain extra points by sending planes of the same colour to the gates, and by landing planes and taking them off on the same runway. You can upgrade your airport after each level but when you move on to another airport you lose everything you have bought and have to start again which is a little frustrating. There are 4 levels of scoring in each level – Goal, Expert, Master and Supreme. Its not easy to get supreme in every in every level. Im so glad that they have this scoring system as it makes the game a little tougher for time management addicts like me. There is also a trophy room for you to fill. The challenge is to co ordinate all the flights and make sure they leave earlier than scheduled when you can. The trick is to move quickly AND accurately and that’s not easy! It gets pretty hectic in the later levels.

Graphics are brilliant in this app. It stands out from the crowd by using pastel shades rather than bright deep colours. It helps keep you calm during the more stressful moments of the game! The movement of the planes as they move around the airport is very nicely smooth and fluent. The design of the planes is so cute too, they are like little cartoon planes and when they are left too long they get very cross wee faces! These elements combined make for a great atmosphere that is very enjoyable to be in.

The controls are very easy to pick up, just tap on the plane, then tap on the action you want it to take e.g. the runway or the fuel station. The only problem I found with the app is that when the airport gets crowded and you tap on a plane, it thinks you tapped on the thing next to it. Definitely fixable in future updates.

The background soundtrack creates a chirpy atmosphere (in a good way), the planes also natter away to themselves, which could be very annoying if it wasn’t so adorable. The sound effects are fantastic as well, it’s great hearing the plane take off. You get cheers from the crowd if you feed them or play them an onboard movie. You also know if the planes are mad at you, you hear the odd grumble if you aren’t quite quick enough!

Tips

1. When directing a plane to an gate, tap on the gate rather than the landing mark for the plane. You risk tapping the gate next to it otherwise.

2. Don’t buy the plane painting machine, as no plane ever wants to use it and it takes up valuable seconds of your time

3. The fan for clearing the fog is a very useful purchase

Recommendation

It’s funny and cute, but it’s tough and challenging at the same time. It’s the best time management I have seen in a long time. I recommend this game to all. Its on sale in the app store at the moment for $0.99 so get it now! It is normally $2.99

Photos