Flight Control HD Released, Is Maddening

Who remembers Pushing Tin, eh? Mel Gibson's finest role. That long hair, that bit where he threw that big sword at a guy. "You can take our land, but you can never take... our freedom!" Great, great movie.

Well, with the release of Flight Control HD on Steam you can push a bit of tin-- wait, that was Braveheart. Nevermind. So, Flight Control HD is a game that tasks you with landing all sorts of planes and helicopters, sketching out little flight paths for them and trying to get them all to their colour-coded landing strips before an inevitable mid-air collision ends your game. I've had a play, and it's pretty good.

It's also pretty frustrating. Four times out of five the crash that ends your fun will come from an area you weren't even looking at, leaving you to let out an impotent cry of "What!" and then seethe at the high score screen.

You know, I suspect this game isn't for me for the extremely anal reason that you can land planes by flying them the wrong way towards a runway's entrance point. They just immediately pivot 180 degrees and descend.

In fact, the aircraft are all a bit too responsive to your orders, perhaps as a result of this game being birthed for iOS touchpads. With a mouse, it's all too easy to flick them out of harm's way.

Still, with an asking price of £2.99 you can't go too wrong, plus the PC version has a Steam exclusive "stunt" map that has you guiding planes through narrow gaps. Bonus!