I've been away from a while, hectic schedule with the launch for the local radio station and too little time on my hands to sit here and prepare this one so after your eager anticipation *ahem* this issue of Networking comes out on a little ditty called Flight Control HD. The screen above is actually from the Ipad version but it works in exactly the same way so there's my little disclaimer out the way.
Flight Control is one of those simple short burst puzzle/strategy titles that before you know it you've been playing for hours and missed that meeting you had to attend. There's no way to particularly win it's just a score attack game, "land as many vehicles as you can". You simply guide colour coded planes and helicopters (slow and darn irritating...) to the alloted landing zones using the PSThreemote (C)lankygitwords 2011 or control pad and have to guide as many as you can without them crashing into each other. It's fiendishly simple but the random entry points and semi-random speeds they fly in can make it frustrating. Nothing like getting close to your record on a certain landing field and having a jumbo jet flying in just behind that helicopter that slowly crawls on.
Graphically the HD doesn't really improve matters from a non-HD tv, but I guess it's one of those things that people will expect of games now. In general though there's not much to complain about the planes are a basic block of the colour you need to land them on and slightly different sizes (generally seperated so red = commercial/military jets, yellow = small private craft) until you've routed them into their landing strip when they're white and you see the guide line based on your landing route. On some of the maps closer to the ground you do see the vapour trials behind planes which is a nice little touch.
The sound files add very little to the game, you've got a cheerful little airport muzak tune that plays when you start a new game and on the menu screens. If you last longer than the music file though you're left with very little except for warning beeps as planes begin to get close to each other and a fairly stock crash sound effect. If it weren't for the fact that the sound effect is the only real cue you may have a crash (there's a red circle that goes round each craft but I find myself missing this scanning a busy airspace) I'd probably just mute it as it's far from the finest composition even allowing for the straight forward programming.
I think ultimately this games got a fairly short shelf life. For those into that sort of thing I'd got all the trophies bar one (play 200 games) after booting it up for the first time for a tinker so Trophy Hunters might pick it up for the easy scores but ultimately despite the differing screens (aircraft carrier, cityscape, Aussie outback - complete with emergency flying doctors) and slightly different mechanisms on a few of them it's not something that can keep me hooked. Perhaps on the Ipad version things are different but I'd rather boot up something else if playing for a long time and a good run can take ages so not really that useful for a quick play to kill five minutes.
It's not bad and was quite enjoyable at first but it's running a little thin after a relatively short while. In the last week I've barely looked at it aside from to rush off the desktop before the damned muzak starts!
5/10
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