There are some games that are good, some games that are bad and others that you become absolutely addicted to. Not too long ago we reviewed Flight Control and it spent quite a bit of time at the #1 spot in the App Store. Here over the past few days I have been playing Airport Mania: First Flight and have been addicted. This is a game that I expect to be #1 in the application store very soon, it's great.Airport Mania is a game kind of like Flight Control, but then again not really. Your objective is to basically play Air Traffic Control at an airport and land, take off, refuel, and even repair airplanes. While the air traffic control and the landing parts are the same basic principle as Flight Control, that is where the similarities end. Airport Mania takes the idea and adds a lot to it. The graphics in the game are great and the controls are super-easy and the gameplay itself will have you opening the application every chance you get to play.
As I said before the entire objective behind Airport Mania is to be air traffic control at an airport. When you first begin you will have the option to go through a very detailed and interactive tutorial. Afterwards you begin your journey across 8 different airports. Each airport has a certain number of stages. Each stage becomes more complicated as more and more planes arrive. In each level different colored planes will land and need to unload their passengers, reload and take off. Some planes may even need refueled or repaired inbetween loading and unloading. Each plane is different colored and you can build combos by having the same colored planes use the same gate, each time will build a multiplier up to 4x. Also if you land or take off planes close enough together it will build up combos as well, no color requirement for this but there is a certain time limit.
Each plane is worth a set amount of points based on size, but be careful the larger they are the more impatient they become. Your objective is to keep planes happy by landing them, loading them, and helping them take off as fast as possible. Four green bars above a plane means it's happy and it will be a early take-off giving you much more points. The fewer bars the worse the score you will obtain for their landing or take-off. Every movement for a plane is done by simply tapping them and then tapping what you would like the plane to do. Tap a plane in the air and tap the runway and then tap a gate and they will land and roll right in and start unloading. You can set a queue for each plane so it will perform multiple actions automatically which really helps when you have a lot of planes to handle at once.
After each round you will be given the option to spend any money you may have earned the previous round on things such as extra runways or gates, VIP runways and layover areas, painting layover areas (to help building up color combos), new planes, de-foggers, and much much more. There are also a lot of trophies to be won from points to breaking world record's for landing/taking off planes.
Airport Mania is the first game I have been seriously addicted to in a long time. I played it for probably 4 hours yesterday every chance I got. My only real complaint about the entire game is the planes are kind of hard to control when the area gets full. If all of your gates are full and there are planes being repaired and re-fueled it's kind of difficult to tap the correct plane. A lot of time you think you are tapping one and are in fact tapping another one. Situations like that mean a plane takes off later and you lose points. It isn't a huge issue but it does take a lot of getting used to. I would like to see some sort of "challenge" mode where you have to land a certain number of planes within a certain time limit or build up a combo with a certain color or who knows what else. Also, an "endless" mode would be nice for after you beat all of the airports. Stipulations could be something like once you have 5 late departures or 5 lost planes then it's game over. Maybe just add a high scores list to the endless mode or something.
Overall I love Airport Mania. The controls are a bit difficult if the airport is cluttered but it's nothing unmanigable. The graphics are great and I have already bragged about how addicting the gameplay is. At only $0.99 Airport Mania is a great buy and will easily keep you entertained a lot longer than most other games. Considering it is still a young version I would expect (and am seriously looking forward to) at least a few updates. Recommended? Very much so. Go buy it!
Functionality: 8/10
Appearance: 10/10
Value: 10/10
iGadgetJunkie Rating: 9/10
Overall: 9.3/10
Reviewer: Bret
iPhone Firmware: 2.2.1
Application Version: 1.0.1
Price: $0.99
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