Flight Control HD First Look

Flight Control has been making a slow but steady approach to climbing the gaming food chain. After making a splash on the iPhone and receiving a graphical overhaul for Apple’s larger screen mobile tablet device, the iPad, Australian developer Firemint has traded finger controls for glowing fists. For those unfamiliar with the game, you take control of a top-down map of airspace filled with planes requiring a place to land. Your job is to guide them to safety by matching them with their corresponding coloured lanes (blue planes go to blue landing strips and so on) while avoiding midair collisions.

Launching alongside Sony’s PlayStation Move motion-sensing hardware next week as a downloadable PlayStation Network title, the game mimics the experience it introduced on other platforms but brings with it a few new tricks. The first is support for 3D televisions, and when viewed on a compatible TV screen, it gives the game an additional level of visual depth as planes navigate to their homes. Vehicle models appear to decrease in altitude, zooming away from you as they touch down and disappear. It’s a subtle change, but because you won’t spend long looking at any one spot, the feature doesn’t add much in the way of additional complexity to the gameplay. Other new additions include a handful of new maps, day and night cycles, and level-specific weather effects, like wind that closes airfields at a moment’s notice, forcing you to adapt quickly.

For those after a challenge, two speed settings are available by tapping the circle button, doubling the rate at which planes enter from the side of the screen. Doubling the speed often means doubling the crash, but by tapping once, you can enable the safety of having the game slow to normal speed if it detects an accident in the making.

Those who have played the game previously should make a seamless transition to this version, replacing the need to draw using fingers with an onscreen cursor, which is used to select planes and draw their paths. Pressing the trigger on the underside of the Move controller locks onto a target, and generous automatic snapping makes it simple to get a hold of the right plane, even with a few rudderless jets located in a confined area. Even with tight and responsive controls, you'll still need a steady hand to rack up the big points. Luckily, if you don’t plan to jump on the Move bandwagon, or you’re a bit shaky, you can still play with a standard DualShock 3 gamepad. This is particularly handy for the new four-player multiplayer mode, as it doesn't necessitate the need to own several Move devices.

Flight Control HD is out on September 15 on the PlayStation 3, so keep an eye out for our full review soon.