You might recall my utter disappointment that Flight Control did not make a successful conversion from iOS to Symbian and I was still looking for a good strategy/action game. I think I've found it in Now Boarding.
Two things first of all, this title is available on iOS (but I hadn't come across it before this review), and the second is that it's not a line drawing game, but the fact that it has planes and you have to move things around without getting into a horrible pickle means I'm going to call it a spiritual cousin to Flight Control.
The goal here is less to micro-manage the flight path of the planes (a simple tap to "go to that airport" will suffice), but more to move passengers from their departure airport onto their destination as quickly as possible. Naturally, you don't have enough planes at your disposal to do direct routing - you can build up a fleet but it costs a lot of money - so you'll need to do some route planning to get passengers at Airport A to Airport D by flying through Airports B and C, while picking up passengers for airports C and D at Airport B.
Do this with three aircraft, passengers at each airport wanting to go to different destinations, and you'll need to keep calm and sort through everything, giving priority to those who have been waiting the longest. Wait too long though and they'll get angry and you'll loose custom and risk failing that level.
Rather than go for an "infinite" game where you keep playing, Now Boarding goes for a level based approach, although the goal in each level is simply "fly more passengers to their destination". As you do, you earn money to buy improvements to your fleet (bigger fuel tanks, cabin crew to earn more money, bigger planes with more seats), and to open up new airports in the level. Starting with four or five open on a level, you'll quickly reach eleven or twelve destinations, filling up with angry passengers.
This makes Now Boarding very much a bite sized game (each level takes around five minutes) but you need to keep playing, to open up other maps of the world (East and West of America, Europe and Asia). If you can finish a level with a certain amount of cash and all the airports purchased, then the next map will be unlocked.
But the great thing about Now Boarding, in the same way as Flight Control and other classic smartphone games, is that you can always play it again, because of the random nature of the game. It's an easy matter to restart a map with the two-aircraft fleet and build up the empire again (the other maps stay unlocked) so you can keep coming back again and again to the same game, with a new and different challenge.
So we have a game that has variety in each level, with different maps, and changing game play. You have the chance to build up your own mental rules in how to handle passengers, you can improve the equipment you have, and it's a slick UI that you just need to tap to steer everything around the screen. The options screen takes care of auto-zooming of the maps (I turned it off after the first game), and everything stays clear and understandable, even when you're panicking.
Now Boarding has grown on me, and has become a better game over the last few days. It's addictive, it looks good, it's suited to a smaller gaming device and is wonderful on the move. Not only would I recommend it, I need to decide whether it's a "90" (mega-game) score or not. The problem is that there's going to be a lot of people who just don't 'get' the game, it's lacking a tiny final step to become something that has universal reach. But it's very close. So "89" it is then, and everyone should consider this title.
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