Windows Phone Game Review - Flight Commander, better then the iPhone version? Review (karenw)

karenw | Nov 23, 2009 |

0 Comments | Rating: 0

Pin It

This module has no text yet.

Pros

You can enjoy this game for a long time
Great graphics
Good gameplay
Can play with finger or stylus

Cons

Can be a little bit hard when you first start the game

Full Review

Ever heard about Flight Control for iPhone? On this device the game is a big hit and is sold many times. It is indeed a great and fun game for iPhone where you master an airport and have to land planes on unique zones. The WVGA Game for Windows Mobile feels a lot like this game and appears like a copy of the iPhone version. Though, is it exactly as good as the iPhone game? If you read this review you will find out.

Flight Commander for Windows Mobile phones was built by the same people that gave us the great game Tower Defense, Tower Defense which was valued as a great game with the smooth and addictive game play and great graphics. On a first look Flight Commander appears just as user-friendly and fast. The colors and artwork look like a cartoon and it suits the game well. The menu and other option screen shows some voluptuous female flight assistants. We all know sex sells but it doesn't seem really needed for a game like this. Though the graphics do look nice it really feels out of place when compared to the rest of the game.

The option to view your highscore is a great incentive in the game to keep trying to improve it. The choice to preserve your game after pausing it earlier is a great feature. It proves that the people behind Colorstone really understand modern day mobile gamers. You don't constantly have enough time to complete a game and being able to continue it later really helps.

In this Windows Mobile game you have to land choppers and planes on landing strips. Water plane airstrips, normal strips and helicopter pads are part of the landing district. As the game starts planes and choppers will enter your game world from several angles. You will receive a little warning when a new craft is entering your airspace by a blinking alert on the side. In this Windows Mobile WVGA/VGA game you land the crafts on the strips to 'get rid of them'. . You can land the planes by drawing them to the landing strips or helicopter pads. As you down a plane your score goes up until you get a crash and the game ends. By default you can only have one crash before the game ends, but for newcomers you can set this to 4 and make some faults before finishing the game. After testing it appears actually preferred to use the stylus instead of controlling the game with your finger. The stylus can really offer better speed an accuracy and you don't hear this often but as precision goes capacitive screens actually can't beat resistive ones.

In Closing

Because the game uses OpenGL ES for graphical acceleration the newer mobile phones can make use of this and it shows in the games looks. The use of OpenGL ES makes the game silky smooth, enjoyable and it offers serious game play. The price for the game seems a little steep comparing to the iPhone version. As Microsoft does not offer proper support for their platform development it's really their fault. Flight Commander Game for Windows Mobile is all in all a truly great experience on your Windows Mobile smartphone. All we can say is: Hats of to Colorstone Ltd. for another great game.