Flight Control Rocket Review: I think it's gonna be a long long time...

The original Flight Control from Australian programmer Firemint created the line drawing genre. It plays to smartphones' strengths, allowing players to craft flight paths for incoming aircraft past drawing smooth lines on the impact screen. But the gameplay boils downwards to endless score runs, limiting its entreatment to goal-oriented gamers.

Thankfully Firemint and EA took that consideration to centre when developing their sequel Flight Control Rocket (aka FC Rocket). It improves on the original game in pretty much every mode, although the new focus on grinding goes a lilliputian also far. Still, FC Rocket is my pick for the nigh addictive Nokia exclusive Xbox Windows Phone game yet.

The final frontier

FC Rocket trades the original's Earth-based drome setting for the far reaches of infinite. The basic gameplay remains the same: players accept three colored runways and must send incoming ships to runways of the same color by drawing pathways, all while trying to avert collisions. Vying for high scores still plays a big part, but new goals and modes seriously increment FC Rocket's fun factor.

Ane of those goals is collecting coins, the new in-game currency. These often bladder by during gameplay, merely certain ships also have coins attached. Send those ships to the appropriate runway without another ship hitting their coins and you lot'll get their money. Coins serve iv main purposes: unlocking new motherships (runway configurations), unlocking robots helpers, purchasing items for said robots, and buying continues.

Robot ringlet call

The new robot helpers definitely add a degree of personality and customization to the gameplay feel. After purchasing enough robots and slots, players can select up to iii robots at the outset of a game. Each provides a unique do good such as increases coins collected (vital), increasing score, and granting an extra life. Whenever a robot's power gets used during gameplay, the footling guy pops upward at the bottom of the screen and tells you so.

On top of unlocking all the robots (which will take forever), they must also be leveled up. See, each robot has a battery that depletes with use. Afterwards that bombardment runs down, it can't be used over again for most an hour of real-time. That encourages utilise of other robots as well as returning to the game throughout the day. But robots also can experience through apply, causing them to level upwardly over time. Higher levels provide longer charges. Leveling upward robots and swapping them out will keeps gamers busy while calculation a hint of variety.

New ships

Since FC Rocket isn't bound past a realistic premise, the ships can get more artistic than plain erstwhile planes and helicopters. On superlative of various sizes and speeds of rockets, each of the three colors gets at to the lowest degree one truly unique ship type.

Red has a craft that can't be controlled until you lot touch it, splitting it into two directable ships. Light-green brings a ship that fires smaller ships ahead of information technology once the player has set its grade. Yellow goes the most off-kilter, with one rocket that drops pocket-sized stationary ships after its course has been ready, plus squadrons of ships that follow a leader. As you'd expect, all of these can brand the game more than hectic, especially when they announced simultaneously.

Journey to the End of Infinity

After completing the new tutorial, players initially have access to ane of three game modes; the other 2 unlock after reaching certain ship landing milestones. Infinity is the vanilla style and plays closest to the original game, with a few twists.

One new characteristic is the color-coded combo system. Each send of the same color that lands in a row adds to the philharmonic counter and is worth more points. Land a send of a different color and the combo resets, switching to the new color. If you want to take advantage of the system to chase high scores, you'll have to skillfully keep off-colored ships at bay while focusing on the color of your choice.

Infinity besides introduces the occasional huge carrier send that holds lots of modest ships of the same colour. The role player must manually unload the ships i at a fourth dimension while also preventing them from wrecking. They all behave coins so information technology'due south certainly worth the effort.

Interplanetary Rescue

Rescue uses the same color combo organisation as Infinity. It mixes things up by throwing in the new variable of astronauts. These petty guys float around helplessly. If they bump into each other or differently colored ships, they only bounce off without harm. To help an astronaut, have a ship of the aforementioned color pick him up and then land on its rails. Astronauts definitely give Rescue a dissimilar feeling than the other game modes, only the extra mechanic just makes things harder without providing whatever real benefit other than diverseness.

Intergalactic Odyssey

The main game mode Odyssey does away with color coded combos. Instead, ships of any colour contribute towards the philharmonic count every bit long every bit they country before the counter resets. The counter but goes upwardly to 5X, unlike the other style's unlimited combos. Since combos reset so apace, you have to carefully time send landings in order to gain score bonuses.

Odyssey is the about structured style since it has discreet levels to play through. Survive long enough and you'll advance to the adjacent level. Between levels, a bonus game lets players land new purple ships for coins. Advanced levels take much longer to complete than earlier ones, and their bonus levels pay out far more coins every bit well. Afterward an Odyssey game ends, players can choose to restart on whatever level they've reached.

Economic science

FC Rocket's just real faults stalk from its economic system. On iOS, the game is free-to-play. Players can earn coins in-game or cull to buy them with existent money. Equally y'all'd expect, the costs of robots, motherships, items, and even continuing are set high in order to encourage coin purchases.  The Penny Arcade Report says the iOS version "embodies every bad almost 'pay to win' schemes."

The Windows Phone game costs $2.99 upward-front and completely lacks the microtransaction element. That'd be cool, except the coin costs of everything haven't been reduced. A actor might earn around  coins in a single game, but some robots toll l,000 and the final mothership sells for a whopping 100,000! All of the robots need to be bought for a couple of Achievements, which will surely have upwards of fifty hours of grinding. Spending coins on anything as well robots would exist foolish as a event.

Achievements

Every bit I just lamented, information technology will take true dedication to buy all xi robots and and so max out their levels. Across that, FC Rocket'due south only real challenging Achievement requires players to articulate the first nine levels of Odyssey manner without dying. I fabricated information technology every bit far as viii on ane life, but I should get there eventually. The Accomplishment for getting 20 ships on-screen simultaneously seems hard at first, only the guides on TrueAchievements reveal an easy strategy.

Overall Impression

Flight Control Rocket's one large mistake is making everything toll mode too much and forcing tons of grinding on players who've already bought the game. Unlocking everything will seem like an unattainable goal to many players as a result. If Nokia and EA went  back and cut all the costs by 50%, Windows Telephone would have the perfect line cartoon game.

Withal, if nosotros just look past the mile-high coin costs and focus purely on gameplay, FC Rocket truly delivers. Iii varied gameplay modes, actual discreet levels, new transport types, two combo systems, and the robot leveling system all brand for a larger and deeper experience than the start game. If you liked Flight Control and aren't hung upward on Accomplishment completion times, don't hesitate to set foot in this rocket.

Flight Control Rocket costs $ii.99 and works great on Windows Telephone vii and eight. You can view its Windows Phone Store page here, but the game must be purchased from a Nokia Lumia phone.

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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/flight-control-rocket-review

Posted by: johnsonrigh1962.blogspot.com

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