Flight Control Review

When you walk into a dollar store you don't expect to get hours of entertainment from what you leave with. But every once in a while, that crapilly made 99-cent plastic dart gun you find is the best thing you've bought since your iPhone. The $0.99 apps and games on iTunes are no different, if you dig deep enough you could find something really enjoyable for your hard earned buck -- Flight Control is one of these super value games.

Flight Control, released in February 2009 by Firemint, is an extremely easy, yet fun to play, game that will keep you entertained for endless hours. In Flight Control you act as air traffic controller in charge of landing passenger jets, propeller planes, helicopters and eventually jumbo jets onto a simple airport with 2 runways and a helipad. As they enter your airspace you simply touch and drag their flight path to the appropriate runway. Each time you successfully land one of the aircraft you're rewarded with a clever British pat on the back like: "Jolly Good" and "Good Show". As the game progresses, more and more aircraft enter your airspace at a time, each moving at a different speed.

The game is extremely easy to learn and once you pick it up, it's hard to put it down. Every time you crash 2 planes and get the "Game Over" screen, you're ready to play again and beat your last best score. It's clearly not an elaborate game, but its simplicity works in its favor. Many games that try to do too much with the touchscreen end up falling short in creating a good control scheme. For only $0.99 you definitely get what you pay for, although I would be excited to see and update that offered different airport layouts and possibly other types of planes. Lucky for me, the Flight Control website notes that a future, upcoming update will include different airports and aircraft along with online leaderboards and rankings. However, it also notes that the $0.99 price is currently a discount that will eventually go up to $2.99, so get it while it's cheap.

Functionality: 8/10
Appearance: 9/10
Value: 10/10
iGadgetJunkie Rating: 9/10
Overall: 9/10

Reviewer: Angelo
iPhone Firmware: 2.2.1
Application Version: 1.0
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Screenshots: (click to enlarge)