Review: Flight Control Rocket (Xbox Live)
Score:
68%
When the team behind the second James Bond film 'From Russia With Love' settled on a marketing message, they went for the simple idea of a 'bigger, better, Bond'. Firemint have gone for the same approach with their sequel to the genre defining line drawing game Flight Control. Released as an Xbox Live exclusive title by Nokia, Flight Control Rocket moves the action into space, and asks you, once more, to marshall the approaching craft into a safe landing.
Version Reviewed: 1.0.0.0
Buy Link | Download / Information Link
Even after spending some time with the game, I'm in two minds if this is a good idea or not. The best I can come up with is that if you didn't enjoy Flight Control, there's not going to be much to change your mind in this download. But if you did get on well with the original, the sequel doesn't just deliver the same adventure again with some new graphics, but all new challenges, new additions, and new tweaks and power ups to the game. Don't buy this blindly, do check out the demo, because the tweaks change the nature of Flight Control away from 'land a plane' to something a little bit more arcade-like with more random chances of dying.
I guess that's why I feel unsettled. In the original the only thing that would kill you is your complete cack-handedness at directing the aircraft. Every crash that ended a game was my fault, and if I had changed things it would have been different.
That's not the case with Flight Control Rocket. When playing there is a certain amount of error on my part, but the selection of rocket types coming into an approach feels decidedly evil, as if the game is trying to engineer a crash. This is offset by the 'lives' system so you can have three crashes in a single game (and purchase additional ones if you wish with the in-game currency). That's given the developers licence to crank up the difficulty because the player "gets another go".
Simply, the gaming balance of Flight Control Rocket feels wrong to me.
Right, what's been added. The obvious one are new types of rockets. Each colour (which as before corresponds to a specific landing area) has a number of rockets that come into play, and a few of them have special abilities. For example red has a rocket that will break into two when you first touch it, there is a green rocket that will release daughter ships that shoot out ahead of it when a path to the landing pad is selected, while the yellow rocket leaves a trail of drifting shuttles to bring on home. These are all in addition to the regular fast and slow rockets you would expect from each colour.
That's a lot to take in and remember, which increases the learning curve of Flight Control Rocket. You'll need to be completely comfortable with these rockets to score well in the game, and because of the infrequent appearance of some of them that's going to take time.
Flight Control Rocket also presents you with three styles of gameplay. The classic game, where you play until you die, is Infinity. You have a number of mother-ships, which relate to the airfield choice in the original. These are unlocked with a mixture of game time (land X number of ships to open up the new mother-ships), or buy purchasing a new mother-ship through the coins you collect while playing the game.
Odyssey is a level based approach where you have a set goal to reach before moving on to the next level (and you can start a new game at any completed level).
Finally in the playing stakes is Rescue. You still have to land all the spacecraft, but now you are also asked to fly over the stranded astronauts who are floating in space (and they need to be picked up by the same colour of craft as they are).
These are nice variants, and help lengthen the time you will play the game if you are going for a complete victory, but they don't add very much to the core gameplay and feel gimmicky, as if EA had demanded 'new things' of Firemint after acquiring the publisher.
Speaking of 'new things', you have the robots, a fancy way of describing the optional power-ups you can activate as you start a game. From a robot that helps land the craft and a score doubling bot, to a temporary shield or a resurrection bot, these again alter the gameplay of the title in a subtle, but almost unnecessary way.
Let's talk freemium. You see, Flight Control Rocket on Windows Phone is not a freemium title. It is on other mobile platforms, but Nokia and EA are going for a flat rate 'pay to purchase the game' traditional model. Which is all well and good, but they've not changed the purchasing values in the game. The only way to get coins now is to collect them as you play, rather than pay a few pounds for 100,000 coins (or whatever the rate is). That means unlocking all the levels is going to need a serious amount of successful gameplay, and even with my love of games that's too much for me.
And you'll need to unlock everything if you want all the achievements and their Xbox Live gamer points.
Well played, Nokia. And, by well played, I mean 'whoops, you got that wrong'.
If I hadn't seen the Flight Control name on it, I would be putting this down as an over-ambitious updating of a great game concept, that adds far too much and smothers the original beauty and minimalism that made Flight Control a killer game. This is something worse. This is the creators of the original knowing they can't catch lightning in a bottle again, and throwing the kitchen sink at the design, hoping the name is enough to carry it through.
Your view may differ, but I don't think the name is enough. This is a messy game, and while it will have appeal, I don't see it being anything like as popular as the original, nor does it deserve to.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at