[01.12.12] Review: Airport Mania 2: Wild Trips

Reflexive Entertainment

Reflexive Entertainment

Airport Mania 2: Wild Trips for Android

Rating:

5 Stars

Your eyes aren’t tricking you, Amazon really is offering two free apps today! In addition to the educational game What's Different?, you can also pick up Airport Mania 2: Wild Trips at no cost today only! This sequel to Airport Mania: First Flight aims to build on the wild success of its predecessor by taking you to crazy new locations and delivering the same solid gameplay that has made the series so popular. This time-management game is hoping to do the same thing Diner Dash accomplished, only using cute airplanes instead of restaurant patrons. With over 10 different airports to play on and 40 awards to collect, this game will absorb a large chunk of your time, and it’s worth it.

The Fun Stuff:

This game is really the complete package. The graphics are both cute and exceptional, featuring cartoon character like airplanes with faces and personalities. The planes will express the pain or delight of their passengers both with visible and audible cues. The sound effects in the game are also fantastic; the roar of planes flying overhead and landing blend nicely with the background music. The game runs smoothly and controlling things feels very natural and just simply makes sense.

Of course, the key to making you feel at home with a game’s controls is an excellent tutorial and Airport Mania 2has the perfect tutorial. Not only does it take you through the basics, but it also forces you to use advanced techniques such as combo multipliers and queuing things up. Once you’ve got the tutorial down, you even get your diploma and then you can hit the runways freely!

The Frustrating Stuff:

This doesn’t really count for anyone who hasn’t downloaded the app yet, but for those who had already been playing for a while, they were greeted by a horrible surprise when they installed the last update: everything was gone. Unfortunately, the developers made a mistake and anyone who updated lost all their data, but the mistake has since been corrected so don’t worry about updating or installing now. Other than that though, there really aren’t other gripes about this app.

Bottom Line:

Airport Mania 2: Wild Trips is one of the best games to grace the Android platform in quite some time. Even the loading screen is adorable with its little seatbelt progress bar! This is by all means an absolute rush-as-fast-as-you-can-and-grab-it-while-it’s-free app, but even if you aren’t lucky enough to grab it now, it’s definitely worth the 99 cents to pick it up any other time because this game is pretty much a guaranteed addiction. If you haven’t played any time management games before and you’re unsure whether or not you’d like them, there is the original game’s little brother, Airport Mania Free which will give you a light taste of the paid version. Now what are you waiting for, get out there and grab this while you can!

Airport Mania 2: Wild Trips was created by Reflexive Entertainment and is Amazon’s free app of the day for 1/12/12. It typically sells for $0.99