Review: Flight Control
Score:
55%
It's rare that you trace the rise of a new genre of game to a single title, but that's what Firemint's "Flight Control" managed when it was released on the iPhone. It stayed in the iOS family for a long time, but it's now working through the conversions and onto other platforms, including Symbian. I was hoping for the Concorde of line-drawing games, but instead I feel like I'm the last person to board a Ryanair flight to London Prestwick.
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Yes, the Symbian version is a huge disappointment. Why? Because the care that Firemint put into the iOS versions is just not present here. The licence was issued to Namco for other mobile phone versions, and it looks like they've then passed the coding and publishing duties over to Electronic Arts for the Symbian version.
We've seen what Symbian can do when the hardware is given the chance to really get to work, but EA have simply failed to make the best use of the OS here. Many people will simply put that down to coding in Java, but I'd suggest that EA's approach to coding - go for the lowest common denominator approach to build the basic game engine before upscaling various graphics and interfaces depending on the handset - has crippled the chances of the full Flight Control experience making the jump, because they also wanted to have some basic Java versions for feature phones.
In case you've not come across this game, your goal is to guide every single aircraft that enters the screen to its respective runway or helipad. You do this by drawing their course from the plane (or helicopter) to where they want to go. You essentially control their flight path. With aircraft travelling at different speeds, you need to ensure they all reach the runways without crashing into each other. It starts relatively easy, gets to a frantic pace in short order, and gets busier as you go on.
Summing up the problems with Flight Control is simple. There is no precision. And in a game that can depend on pixel perfect flight paths, where a little wiggle in a line changes the arrival time of an aircraft, or even avoids crashing while keeping on the most direct route possible to landing, this is a huge failure.
For example, if two aircraft are bearing down on a runway, I've always just dragged one aircraft to a reciprocal course, and then back on approach. With this version there simply isn't the accuracy in the code to pick this up on the touch screen (either that or it's compensating and ignoring the portion of the flight that is "doubling back"). The end result is that nothing happens, and a crash occurs.
If this is game is meant to be Flight Control, surely it should act and behave in the same way as other versions of the same game?
Add in anything more than five aircraft on the screen and you can see the aircraft jumping from pixel to pixel. There is no smoothness on display as they fly, and this lack of grace and speed takes you out of the 'zone' - the almost mythical space that a good game can take you into and keep you there. Flight Control on Symbian is a disappointing mess of slow Java code, jumpy graphics, and an annoying interface.
There has been no Tender Loving Care put into Flight Control that I can see. For example, when I move my hold of the N8 from landscape to portrait, Flight Control picks this up and re-orientates the screen. Why? The orientation of the runway doesn't change, the gameplay area doesn't change, all you do is have a half second flash of black as you redraw the same screen. Just switch off any changes due to orientation!
My disappointment is almost physical in nature. There still isn't a decent Flight Control game on Symbian. Not even Flight Control itself. It might be the best of the genre so far, but I'd much rather this have stayed in the hangar, rather than emerge and do a pretty good impression of an Avro Manchester.
I'm still waiting for the Lancaster to arrive.
-- Ewan Spence, May 2011.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at