Travel guides. Calligraphy lessons. Realistic train simulators. There's a lot of amazing non-gaming software in Japan that, whether it appeals to too niche or too foreign an interest, traditionally never makes it out of the country -- and being a fan of both cultural exchange and quirky game titles, I've always thought that was a bit of a shame. That's the main reason I was excited to try Majesco's Air Traffic Chaos, a English localization of the latest in TechnoBrain's long running Air Traffic Controller series of airport simulations.
But that's only one of the reasons why I wound up disappointed.
Air Traffic Chaos is unfortunately nothing akin to a simulation or a trainer; it's more of a cutesy, fast-paced time management game like Diner Dash. But even if you take it as such, it's hard not to be frustrated by the game's incessant design flaws.
The basic premise of ATC sounds fairly complex: as an air traffic controller at one of five different Japanese airports, you manage four distinct control departments -- Approach, Tower, Ground and Delivery -- to insure that each and every arrival and departure goes quickly, smoothly and without any unfortunate mishaps. But when you're dealing with an individual aircraft, it's rather simple. On the DS touchscreen, you simply look out for the aircraft hailing you, tap their flashing flight tag, relay your instructions with a second tap, and they're on their merry way -- guided by a series of onscreen arrows that indicate preset flight paths and taxi lanes around the airport.
Arriving aircraft will automatically descend from high altitude along the blue paths; maintain a holding pattern by flying around the airport's green path; and when instructed to land, follow the red path towards the runway of your choice. After granting permission to land and hopefully watching the plane achieve a successful touchdown (dependent in some levels on the direction the wind is blowing), you designate a gate to which they taxi, and grant permission for them to cross potentially hazardous runways before they arrive.
Departures are even simpler; it's mostly a waiting game. After confirming the pilot's flight plans with one tap of the stylus, you then assign a runway from which they can depart, wait for the airport tugs to provide a pushback, grant the aircraft permission to taxi to the runway, and finally allow them to take off.
But of course, you're not usually dealing with a single plane -- at any given time, you can have up to eight requiring your constant attention.
There are three ways to lose in ATC. First, there's the obvious collision. If two aircraft collide, whether in the air or on the ground, it's an instant game over. Second, there's the clock. If you don't rack up a certain number of points during your shift -- usually 15-30 minutes, depending on difficulty -- it's game over. Lastly, there's the stress bar.
For every successful order you issue to a plane, you collect a small number of points (default: 10), and when a plane successfully arrives or departs under your control, you get a large payoff (default: 200). But if you leave your pilots hanging, their passengers will begin to get anxious -- and their stress levels will go up. This makes each of their planes worth fewer points, making it that much harder to beat the clock, but also simultaneously adds to your stress bar as well. Fill this last up, as one unfortunate player apparently did for the screencap at left, and it's another instant game over.
In order to help you juggle eight planes at once, the game does provides some tools. In the air, planes are necessarily moving to stay aloft, but you can queue up arrivals along the green path that circles around the airport, only instructing them to land when a slot frees up. You do have to maintain separation between the planes in the air -- if one happens to be flying faster than the others, you're in for trouble. On the ground, there are several points at which an aircraft will await further instruction and (hopefully) not pose a collision hazard in the meanwhile. There's a wealth of information included on the display, should you figure out a way to quickly read it: the bottom screen shows the status of each plane (descending, airborne, grounded) and their current action, as well as their assigned gate or runway and which control group they're currently speaking to. And of course, there's the fact that all the planes themselves are automated beyond your very, very basic orders. The only choices required from the player are which runway/gate to select, and whether, at any given moment, a plane should make an action (generally keeping pilot stress low and the risk of collision high) or hold steady (vice versa).
But ironically, it is this very lack of control that is the game's downfall.
ATC's first fun-killing flaw is that your pilots are basically glorified Lemmings; though they seem to communicate with you via the touchscreen, the flashing light indicating their 'hail' will actually go on any time they can been controlled, even if you've just issued an order (thereby making its signaling value useless) -- and worse, they will blindly follow any orders you give without question. Tell them to taxi to an occupied gate, and they'll gladly do so, running smack into the existing aircraft and garnering an instant game over. This is particularly frustrating in situations where pilots' visual acuity would come in handy -- in several levels, planes that have been pushed back leave enough room for allow another to enter the gate they've just vacated, but in others that's not the case, and the isometric perspective of the display makes no real differentiation between the two.
ATC's second disasterous design choice is that once you make a bad decision, it's final. Remember our hypothetical pilot and his occupied gate? Well, once you tap on that gate, no matter how far in advance you can see the collision coming and no matter that you supposedly have a radio link to every plane in the sky, it's all over. It's as if pilots turn off their radios the moment they've been given an order. There is one exception to this rule -- until a plane makes its final approach for a landing, you can tell it to go around and re-enter the holding queue -- but for planes on the ground, I can't count the number of times I've realized that I had twenty seconds until a game over message and not a blasted thing I could do about it.
Finally, there are the inevitable mid-air collisions. One additional, albeit fairly realistic item that enhances the game's difficulty is your inability to communicate with every plane at once. Each department -- Approach, Tower, Ground and Delivery -- has their own radio, and each can only be connected to one plane at a time. Similarly, each brainless pilot only has one radio, and can only be connected to one department of control at a time. The problem is that each department also has their own unique commands, and the one department responsible for separation between queued aircraft -- Approach -- is also the one that automatically spends ages chatting up the pilots of incoming airplanes, starting almost as soon as they arrive in monitored airspace, and up to the exact point they enter the airport's holding queue.
If the incoming plane on the blue path happens to be on a collision course with a plane on the green path, and you don't catch this instantly upon the new plane's arrival on the scene, you are completely and utterly screwed. You might as well turn off the DS. Since Approach is busy talking to the incoming plane, they can't issue commands to planes in the existing queue to open a slot for the new arrival; and since the incoming plane is talking to Approach, none of the other departments can reach it either, even should they have the requisite commands to prevent the crash. (They don't.) You'd think that being responsible for seperating airborne craft, Approach could, perhaps, just drop in a word or three about IMPENDING DOOM into their existing conversation with the offending pilot, but no such luck.
With all these flaws -- and the fact that air traffic is exactly the same every time you play -- mastering the game's fifteen levels (five airports @ three difficulties each) is mostly a matter of rote memorization through trial and error. Assuming you could divert attention from the screen fast enough to type, you could actually construct a play-by-play walkthrough for the entire game. Here's a sample.
All this said, Air Traffic Chaos does have its moments, and there's quite the feeling of accomplishment when you manage string together a chain of rapid-fire takeoffs and landings despite, or perhaps even because of all these issues. But when, several minutes later, you run into one of the game-killing flaws, the frustration of having unfairly lost more than a quarter of an hour in the blink of an eye really wears on the fun factor.
Even at $20, I'd have a hard time recommending Air Traffic Chaos to any but those who thrive on vexation.
October 20th, 2008 at 10:23 am
You can't talk to the pilots because some inconsiderate passenger left his portable electronic device turned on, and it's ruining the communications.
That's right -- in a stunning display of irony, Air Traffic Chaos is impossible to play because a simulated passenger is playing Air Traffic Chaos.
One more reason not to play, I suppose!
October 20th, 2008 at 11:00 am
Hold the phone -- Jesse's onto something. Perhaps this is an accurate simulation after all.
Electronic interference can explain the radios, the stressed ATCs are hopped up on so much caffeine they become incredibly chatty, and the pilots are, well...
Hijackers. Gotta be hijackers.
Best. Airplane Sim. Ever.