Flight games are not lacking on the app store, with many different types available from strategy to shoot em’ up. aPilotsQuest is more of the dogfight kind, where you’re faced with enemy planes and tanks which you have to bomb and shoot down, and above all avoid being shot yourself. However it boasts a unique feature called ‘voice in’ which allows you to customize the in-game sounds, making this very different from the other games in its category.
Layout and Functionality
The layout of the game is pretty standard. In addition to the normal options, the main menu offers the Voice In, Store and News buttons.
The first of these does exactly what it says. It allows you to input custom sounds that you can record via the microphone, so if you want to find some AK-47 shooting sounds on YouTube to replace the ones in the game, you can. In theory this is a pretty good idea, but in practice you have to say/play whatever sound you want to record really loudly, if you speak normally, it won’t come out great. Nevertheless, it remains an original and unique feature. All the game sounds are customisable bar one – the game’s theme tune, which does start to get on your nerves after a while.
The store allows you to buy more planes with the in-game currency, which you can either buy with real money or earn when going through the levels. The news button allows you to subscribe to the game’s newsletter, but it would have been nicer to be able to see the news within the game and not give away any of your personal details.
Gameplay
In terms of the experience, this is the biggest let down of the game. You are meant to be able to control your plane by tilting your iPhone up or down, but it’s really unresponsive. The aeroplane does not dive up and down, as you would expect in a dogfight game, instead it glides up and down, meaning that as the levels get harder, it’s really hard to avoid getting hit.
What’s more sometimes the game doesn’t even respond or does the opposite to what you’re doing. So tilting up would mean that it flies down and vice versa. At times, it’s a challenge just to keep the plane in the air let alone shoot at enemy planes.
The gameplay does improve with the shooting and bombing functions as these always work, and with the custom sounds you can attribute to each, they can really sound pretty awesome.
However I would also criticize the gameplay for being too robotic. The planes all fly in a line and at the same speed, which is not what would happen in real life. You would have planes all around you, not just in a column. Other very irrealistic feature are the arrow buttons, which makes the plane accelerate at a ridiculous speed, so if you want to, you can catch up to the enemy in seconds. Again, not like in real life.
To end this section on a high note, the game has hundreds of levels with many different settings, so you’ll never get bored of it. You won’t be repeating the same levels over and over again, as there will always be more to levels to complete, rather like Angry Birds.
Verdict
aPilotsQuest is a unique flying game, both for good and bad reasons. The ‘voice in’ feature works very well, and is one of first games you can actually feature in, but at the same time, the gameplay is slow and not worthy of a plane dogfight game. It should be way more dynamic, and the ability to do barrel rolls would also be awesome.
The game can also be unresponsive, and the real challenge at times can be keeping the plane in the air instead of shooting down the enemy. Put simply, I wouldn’t recommend buying this game as there are better alternatives out there of the same category, however if you want to experiment with the ‘voice in’ function, it’s definitely worth it.
Price: Free, App Store Link
Rating: 2.5/5
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