Be Excellent To Each Other

Anyone else LOVING this yet? If not, please try it, it's absolutely brilliant.

It's the same concept as Flight Control on the iPhone (which DrG kindly demonstrated to me)... several types of vehicles arrive and you have to draw a path to guide them to their destination, avoiding collisions.

In this case, it's a small chain of islands. There's three docks - a luxury hotel that shares its island with a container dock, and a smaller island home to a Marlon Brando-esque retreat. Ships arrive from all edges of the screen and need to be directed to the appropriate dock. Sailboats want to go to the private island, cruise liners want to go to the hotel's dock, and container ships want the container dock.

To draw, you simply place the cursor over the ship, then hold down A and sweep your cursor along the route you wish it to follow. Release A or pass the cursor over a dock and the ship will follow your directions. Ships without directions will just sail blindly forwards, making it vital that you give them directions as soon as they enter the screen lest they plow into other ships or the islands themselves.

Matters are complicated further by the varying speeds of the ships - the sailboats creep along painfully slowly and arrive in huge numbers while the cruise liners are surprisingly fast and need to be pointed in the right direction quickly.

If even one ship hits anything, it's game over.

Things get extremely hectic extremely quickly, and it becomes a matter of when - not if - something goes wrong. Simply managing the ships you HAVE pathed into the docks is a job in itself, never mind controlling those which are arriving off the edges of the screen and all angles and threatening to cross what was previously a carefully arranged queue of liners going into the hotel docks. And you panic, and using the accelerated cursor speed (hold down a trigger) you accidentally give a ship a path THROUGH an island and don't notice and while you're often dealing with somethign else it duly beaches itself and you lose.

Go and give it a bash, I just stumbled across it by accident while poking around the new releases and haven't seen anyone else here mention it. I bought the full version within five minutes of trying it.

Is it better than Flight Control? Yes and no. The islands add an extra obstacle that Flight Control lacked, there's none of those damned annoying fast-movers to worry about, and your own finger won't block your view of the screen every few seconds.

My best score so far is 57.

I really like Flight Control, so I'll check this out.

I, too, shall have a look.

Is it multiplayer? Tell me it's multiplayer!

I wish it were. An extra set of hands (one player could deal with the ships coming in off the edges of the screen and direct them to a holding point, another could then collect them from there and direct them into their docks) would be very welcome.

It's pretty bare bones. But it's excellent enough to deserve a sequel... possibly with some soft lilting island music instead of just the 'CLANG CLANG!' 'TOOT TOOT!' 'BRRAAAAAAAAH!' '*incredibly annoying proximity beeping*'

What is this, XBLAH? XNA? I think drawing paths out with the stick can't be as fun as the immediacy of touch controls on the iPhone, but it does sound nifty. I'll try this. Online co-op would be ace! Although in practice probably no easier because you'd have to work really hard to co-ordinate.

It does work really well, you'll see.

My chief gripes with Flight Control were the inaccuracy of the control (it didn't always recognize my tapping an aircraft, nor drawing a line onto the runway) and the fact that your own finger will be blocking your own view of the action much of the time.

Wise use of the 'speed up cursor' button compensates pretty well.

Indeed. Using sticks doesn't sound particularly friendly, but I can't knock it without trying it.

Oh, I dunno, I'm happy to go through life without having tried incest, buggery, or cannibalism.

Well, I'm not!

I was into necrophilia, S&M and bestiality for bit.



On to Flight Control but with ships though - I will give it a try later as I only downloaded Flight Control yesterday and since then I've had terrible difficulty not playing it.

Indeed. We were rather late having dinner last night as I was busy swearing at idiot captains who just sail straight into the sides of islands. And the one cruise ship who sailed into the tidebreak right next to his dock. You blind clots!

I get the feeling I'm going to shout 'FUUUUCK' when I get the answer, but...
Why would you want to tap an aircraft?

I only played Flight Control on the way back from Casa del MyoptiAnge and seem to recall I had to tap the plane once to select it and THEN draw its route.

Naw. Just swipe it to where you want it.

Unless the screensaver kicked in and the screen was dim.

Ah. Well, it still wasn't recognizing swipes to the runway either, which was a more crucial flaw.

I really like Flight Control as well so this sounds quite good, I might check it out later on.

Man, thank fuck. I thought tapping them made them do tight circles or something.

you need even more tighter circles at flight control?

FC now support friendslist, i'm romanista natch,. myppie who are you?

myoptika.

ah, bput as beex tag also now on my name, to make for easy searching