Airport Mania: First Flight

Posted on April 10th, 2009. Written by James.

Time management games are nothing new to the iPhone’s App Store, although there aren’t many of them around. The App Store has seen many great time management titles such as ‘Sally’s Salon’ [App Store] and ‘Chocolate Shop Frenzy’ [App Store] to name just two. But what if being in a shop cutting hair or severing chocolate isn’t for you?! Call in Airport Mania.

Originally a Mac and Windows game, Reflexive Entertainment ported ‘Airport Mania’ over to the iPhone and iPod Touch platform. It’s a perfect port of a great title, the gameplay experience is exactly the as it is on Mac and Windows expect with the iPhone and iPod Touch your using touch screen controls, of course! Having had a short play with the Mac port, I actually found the experience of this game to be much more enjoyable on my iPhone.

In ‘Airport Mania’ you take the job of controlling the airports incoming and outgoing traffic, ensuring the planes are landing and taking off on time. If your familiar with other time management games you’ll find this breeze! For those of you that aren’t so familiar with time management games, your in control of the entire airport, its up to you to make choices such as which plane lands where and what gate it unloads too. You job is to get planes in and out of the airport as fast as possible while ensuring everyone is happy and looked after. In time management games, the key is think logically and fast, one slip up could loose you a plane costing you score points.

When you load up ‘Airport Mania’ you can jump straight into the games in-depth tutorial. It’s a fantastic tutorial which contains many tricks and tips which will help you through the game, it’s well worth taking a few minutes to take the tutorial. The tutorial is written very well and is easy to understand for both younger and older players.

One of the things that lead me to continue playing this game was its use of stages. You have eight stages in the game across the map, all the stages have serveral levels to complete before you can more onto the next stage. This is bound to keep you playing for hours. Your able to see your progress on the in-game map and trophies are placed on the map are each level you complete so you can see how well you done on particular stages.

Every time you start a new stage in the game, you start with a fresh airport ready for you too take over and run. For each plane you deal with at your airport you will receive a certain amount of cash, this amount depends on how well you have dealt with the plane, you will receive bonus’s for getting planes in and out of the airport on time! Over the levels you’ll begin to build up a stash of cash which you can then use in the games store to purchase upgrades and add-ons for your airport. These add-ons include better terminals, holding spaces and in-flight movies.

The awards and achievements in this game really keep you glued and wanting to play more, they also add to the game play making sure you don’t get fed up! You’ll receive awards for consecutive landings and keeping the planes happy. Also ‘Airport Mania’ contains achievements along the way such as congratulating you on landing a new plane.

Usually in reviews its important to balance out the positives with a few negatives or issues you’ve found with the game but there really isn’t anything negative to say about ‘Airport Mania’. While time management games aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, ‘Airport Mania’ is certainly a very enjoyable title. With its quirky cartoon graphics, fun sounds, addictive and polished game play this is certainly a great title to be enjoyed by people of all ages! Overall this is a great title from ‘Reflexive Entertainment’ with a great amount game for you money.

Current Status: Recommended

Reviewed at: v1.0.1
Reviewed on Firmware: 2.2.1
Download size: 9.8MB
Released on: 25th Feb 2009
Retails for: £0.59 / $0.99
Compatible with: iPod touch Gen 1 & 2 / iPhone Classic / iPhone 3G