Land It! Review by Yodz

From the developers over at Nemesys Games, Land It! brings plane landing simulation to Xbox one players, well not so really.

One of the first things I noticed about the game is that this looks like a game more suited for a tablet or smart phone and soon after playing the first few levels, it became more apparent that the game was made for a tablet and not console.

 

The game itself is not that challenging, the premise is to direct several planes to either a landing zone to pick up and transport passengers or direct a plane to its correct flight path all while avoiding other player controlled planes, NPC planes and obstacles such as a no flight zone or a mountain. There are 27 levels to test your skill on, along with 3 Endless Mode missions which involve landing as many planes as you can without failing. From the very start you go through 3 tutorial missions then progress through the other 24 levels, the goal is to perfect every lever with 3 stars, to get 3 star you must finish the level is a certain amount of time and land all planes somewhat perfectly. For every 9 levels you complete you unlock one of the Endless Mode missions, not much else is in the game besides leaderboards and the ability to see what achievements you unlocked so far. The gameplay is actually a bit fun and proves addictive to attempt to perfect the levels, even though it can also prove frustrating due to control problems.

What makes this game challenging on console is the touchy controls, you use the left stick to aim your plane and the triggers to control speed, the bumpers will switch between planes under your control and the right stick will switch to the closest plane to you. The problem is that the sticks are so touchy its hard to correctly direct your plane and using the right stick almost never gets you to the plane you intend to control. When you are on a level with 10 planes under your control this can prove incredibly frustrating. I can only imagine how much easier this game is on a touch screen tablet.

 

Next lets talk about visuals, Land It! doesn't provide next-gen graphics or anything and the visuals are very simple. A big problem I had through-out my gameplay was that on every level I couldn't see my score, my multiplier, planes left and often times I couldn't even see where exactly I was supposed to direct my planes. This is because the game lacks a screen resize feature, so many players will experience this problem as well depending on the TV they own. To fix this I had to play the entire game with either my achievements snapped or party chat, so on my TV I can actually see the full game screen and know what I'm supposed to do on a level.

On the audio side of thing the game has very simple and somewhat generic music, nothing that stands out and there really isn't much else I can say about the music.

 

Now lets talk about achievements,

There are a total of 25 achievements in the game, varying from flying a full circle in a plane to 3 stars on every level. In my 13 hours I played the game I managed to unlock 23 of the achievements. The two hardest ones in my opinion are getting 3 stars on all levels and landing 30 planes in one game. Both of which remain locked for me. Getting all stars is going to be challenging due to the touchy controls and will require perfect runs on each level. Land It! certainly isn't going to be a easy completion if that's what you are looking for. Although you can probably get a majority of the achievements in a few hours.

 

Overall Land It! provides addicting and fun gameplay but the lack in the control department and the lack of a screen resize feature almost makes the game unplayable for most players. The game is obviously suited for a tablet and honestly just doesn't play well on console. Due to this I wouldn't recommend the game to anyone on console. I tried to give the game a fair chance but all the issues I experienced left me with a bad taste.

 

Final Score - 5/10.

 

Written by,

John S. Aka Yodz

 

A code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review

 

You can purchase Land It on the Xbox Store Here

 

Release Date - Wednesday‎, ‎June‎ ‎22‎, ‎2016

Price - $13.99

Download Size - 359.86 MB

 

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