Planes Control | Android Mobile Review

Full disclosure, I am not a connoisseur of mobile games. My upcoming love of Planes Control might be due to lack of experience. I stick with games that I convince myself are brain-health games like Sudoku and Nonograms. Another mobile category that I created for myself is “Porcelain-Seat-Games.” Those games include Farm Mania and Burger Shop which are played on my tablet. What I’m getting at here is I do not have a lot to compare to for this review of the fantastic Planes Control! The depth of options, the challenge to improve, the solid controls & game dynamics. Seriously, you MUST try this game out!

No Story, Just Game

I suppose you could say that you, the player, are an air traffic controller trying to organize an onslaught of aircraft that must land without running into each other. Multiple levels give you a different challenge. From the “Holiday” level which is the absolute basic level that only requires strategically landing the planes and helicopters on two runways to twenty one other options that add different layers of difficulty, like avoiding tornadoes to shooting down enemy aircraft before landing. Granted, most of those twenty one levels are hidden behind a paywall. But, the price is cheap and the gaming time can be endless.

Back to the story, don’t let the planes collide and land as many as you can while also taking into account the unique challenge of the level you chose.

For note: I played Planes Control on my Android phone (Samsung Galaxy S24).

Controls and Gameplay

Playing Planes Control is quite simple. The plane or helicopter arrives from the edge of your screen, you tap/hold on the plane and drag the desired path to a color coded runway; a red plane goes to the red runway, yellow to yellow, etc. Some planes are faster than others, the player has the challenge of making sure that the paths don’t cross at the wrong time or that the faster plane doesn’t catch up to the slower plane. Thankfully, you can drag a new path if you believe the planes are destined for destruction. 

Each level adds a wrinkle. The second most difficult level adds rock formations that you must direct the planes around. There’s a level that includes an aircraft carrier. Not only does this make landing the planes in a tighter area, the carrier also drifts in the ocean in a slow circle with the current. That means that where you thought you are landing the plane might be in a slightly different spot by the time the plane gets there. Another level includes the need to shoot down enemy aircraft before landing the plane. These levels are distinctly difficult because you must organize attacking, not colliding with the enemy aircraft, not colliding with other planes that you are using to attack, AND not crashing when trying to land those planes. 

My review copy included a special category called “Time Machine.” This includes several different eras of importance in air travel from a World War I environment in France with bi-planes, a ridiculously busy airport in Tokyo in 2000, all the way to space travel on the moon in the future.  Planes Control is loaded with hours of fun!

Each level has three difficulty settings: Easy, Hard, and Extreme. Since each level has its own difficulty rating, choosing the most difficult level on the Extreme difficulty setting is a likely path to a 90 second run. 

Sound and Music

The sound effects and the music are fine. A few years ago, I played a similar game called Airport Madness which included the calls from the air traffic controller booth. Announcements like “Flight 567 cleared to land on runway A2” became repetitive and annoying especially when the number of planes increased. Planes Control doesn’t have these voice bits. Fine by me!

There is one song that plays regardless of which level you select. For me, it’s reminiscent of a montage sequence from an 80s action/war movie or an episode of The A-Team. 

Extra sound effects arise when rain is falling, but otherwise the gameplay is pretty quiet. The attack levels include sounds when the aircraft are firing at each other. There is also an alert sound that tells you when planes are in proximity of each other. 

I am grateful for the lack of excess. I prefer to concentrate on the planes on the screen.

Planes Control Final Verdict

Planes Control from RarePixels has soaked up way more than 10 hours of my time and I still haven’t played every level. I’ve enjoyed playing so much that I purposefully agreed to an unnecessary stop at my wife’s favorite clothing store so that I could sit in my comfortable air conditioned car in the parking lot and play more. I set a high score on a level and I want to immediately retry to see if I can beat it. Then I’m inspired to try the same level on the “Hard” setting to see how close I can get to my “Easy” results. I can’t wait to dig further into the more difficult levels where you are tasked with putting out fires or trying to shoot down the enemy. Those are challenging with emphasis. 

I believe that you can get the same levels that I played for less than $10. Considering that I will likely get hundreds of hours of enjoyment out of this game, that’s a miniscule price to pay. 

Planes Control gets my highest recommendation. Perhaps I’m misled by that lack of experience that I mentioned in the beginning. For a mobile style game, I couldn’t have asked for anything more than hundreds of hours of enjoyment at a very reasonable price.

To hear me talk more about Planes Control, be sure to listen to the September 5th 2024 episode of The Gaming Outsider Podcast around the 2:00:37 time stamp.

This review is based on an Android copy of Planes Control provided by Keymailer for coverage purposes. It is also available on iOS.