Airport Mania: First Flight Review - Amazon does good with their first Android game

Move over Angry Birds! There is a new easy, hard, addicting, time waster, love ones crying, school work delayed, job firing, game on Android and it is every bit as fun as AB! Airport Mania was released last week and was available for free on Amazon’s Appstore. Today the price is $0.99 cents and there is NO reason to not pick this game up.

Title: Airport Mania: First Flight | Developer: Amazon Digital Services Inc | Genre: Sim | Players: 1 Player | Version: 1.1.3 | Size: 2.1MB | Price: $0.99

It is fun in an amazing sorta simple way. Your object is to land planes just like a normal airport. Simple enough and it is. But they throw some extra little items in there to mix it up, but it still remains fairly simple. Simple... wait... what?? Yes simple. So with the thrash of detailed awesome 3D games hitting Android why should I pick up a simple little game? Well Angry Birds got it right with simple repetitive game play and it is a smash hit. Airport Mania does the same. I highly recommend the game for great 10-15 min game play sessions. There is lots going on and it can get frustrating, wait I said simple right.... Well it is and isn’t. But one thing it is is super fun and lots of it. Go get it now, you wont be disappointed.

Gameplay: Game play is simple, just land the planes unload the passengers and get the plan back into the sky and make money doing it. So simple a monkey can do it. Is it a puzzle game?? nope.. is it a strategy game?? nope... It is simply a fun and crazy little game that will take your mind off of whatever it was you were doing. Ok on to the Game Play...

You are running an airport in which you need to land planes, unload the passengers and get them back into the air. You have to do all this as quickly as possible to keep everyone happy and the happier the more money you make for extras. The game play is super simple, but these little extras is what will make things interesting. Not only do you have to land the plane unload the passengers, load passengers, then get it to take off again, you may have to repair or refuel a plane or both.

At times there seemed to be so much going on in the game that it gets really confusing, but in the end you always clear every plane, it’s just how you do it and manage things that earns you money. There are layover spots for when all your terminals are full, and there are upgrades for that as well, and keeping one terminal one color will earn you bonus cash. These help in alleviating traffic and keeping those terminals the same color. But you will not alwaysbe able to keep the same colors, so you can add more terminals and upgrade existing ones to make the loading process faster. You can even add in flight movies to cheer up planes that you neglected on the ground. Remember happier planes are the key. All I can say is it is super simple and yet amazingly hard at time but it is always fun. So if you love Angry Birds and are patiently waiting for more levels I suggest picking up this game.

Multiplayer: None.

Graphics: The Graphics are well done and very cute. Sometimes so cute you wanna just... well you get the idea. But the graphics work and work well. Planes are smiling and happy, and you want them to stay that way, but if you mess up then they will start to frown and eventually be really mad. All the artwork is even steven, nothing looks out of place and it all blends perfectly. The only real issues I had was it is sometimes hard to click on a plane when another one is moving around, and cancelling a planes orders can be rather difficult because there is so much on the screen.

Sound: The sound is good, not great but good. The music sets and ambiance that doesn’t distract from game play, but it is there and you will notice it. All the planes make sounds, be it funny at times or more realistic, but it all just works but none of it rings in my head after the game stops.

Controls: Tap, tap, tap, tap..... tap... be prepared to really give your screen a workout. And I highly recommend not eating any greasy foods so as to not muck up your screen, because you are going to be all over the place. Also eating a banana will help with the finger cramping. Oh yea this is a very finger oriented game and it works perfectly! You select planes by tapping on them, then tapping on where they should go. You can create sequences like tapping the plane then the runway then the terminal or layover spot. Then once they are on-loading passengers(blue moving marker) you can tap on the plane then the runway in order so they can take off without any further interaction. The only time I had issues was when I tapped on the wrong plane because it moved in-front of the plane I intended to tap on. Over all the game is perfect and it always registers my taps.

Gameplay: 4/5
Graphics: 4/5
Sound: 3/5
Mechanics: 4/5
Overall: 4/5

Amazon App Store: Airport Mania: First Flight

Android Market Link: Airport Mania: First Flight