iPad App Review: Flight Control 1.01

Early last week a co-worker noticed I had the iPad and had asked if I had tried out the Flight Control game. At first I thought it was some flight simulator and was not that interested however he told me that it is nothing like a simulator so I just had to try it out. I came back to my desk and bought the application which is priced at $4.99. Seeing a price like that for a game I did not think twice on whether or not I should buy it. It seemed cheap enough and it was a highly recommended game. Once it was downloaded I played one game and was instantly hooked on it. I have been playing it as much as possible in my down time and just love the game. The game play is very smooth and very engaging for the user, once you try it I am sure you will be hooked as well.

The game play seems very basic and at first look you wonder why people are raving over a game that seems so easy. After playing a few rounds I quickly noticed that it is not that easy of a game to play. Once you have several aircraft on the screen with some directed towards a runway and others not it becomes seemingly difficult to keep your attention on all of the planes to make sure there are no collisions at the runways or in transit. I did not notice until today that the game actually takes advantage of the multi-touch feature that the iPad offers. You can use multiple fingers to tap different planes and hold them all in the holding pattern while using other fingers to direct planes where you wish for them to go. This is a very nice feature but after trying it for the first time I have come to the conclusion that it will take some getting used to before you can master that trick.

I have heard people gripe about the price difference between the iPad and iPhone versions of this game when the only difference is a larger screen and higher resolution images. Personally I cannot complain at all because I do not have an iPhone and did not have to pay twice for the application. I also do not think that $4.99 is that much to pay for a game anyway. What are your thoughts on the pricing of this game?

The screen shots above really depict the quality of the graphics in the game. You can see that on the main screen it details information such as average planes landed, total planes landed, high score, etc. This is a very nice page with very useful information. As well as keeping a local record of your high score you can also opt to submit your scores to CloudCell so that you can see just how well you are doing against other players. I have noticed when you look at the leader board it seems to only show people which are “close” to your current location. I have not yet found a way to see your placement on a global level.

As well as being a very addictive single player game you can also play multi-player with a friend in either co-op or vs mode. In the vs mode you are playing on a split screen so it can become a bit tedious to work with when you are used to playing on a full screen iPad. The developers did not stop there either, they have added another twist which could make the game even more addictive. You can play multi-player mode with a friend who also has an iPad. I could see that being a lot of fun and need to find someone local to try it out with but I do not know anyone in my area yet that has an iPad (though I am sure there are many that do).

The last feature that I will talk about is the bonus 3D map that came with the iPad version. Supposedly you can put on a pair of those red and blue 3D glasses and play the game in 3D mode which I have not yet tried. I will be giving this a shot this evening though because I just remembered Dylan has 4 pairs of those that came with his Polar Express 3D movie. I will update this once I have played the game a few times in 3D mode.

Overall I would give this game a 4 out of 5 due to it only having a couple of different maps. for $4.99 I would have thought that it would have come with about 8-10 HD maps but it only comes with 3HD maps, 1 3D map and 5 iPhone quality maps. With the bump in price from the iPhone version all you are really getting is 3 HD maps and a bonus 3D map. Here’s to hoping they offer more maps for free in a future update.