Airplane Road

Airplanes have been around for a century now, and they have evolved from wooden constructions barely able to fly for a few hundred yards, to huge machines made of aluminium capable of flying basically forever, as long as they have fuel. Not only that, but modern technology allows for incredible speeds as well, which might sound unreal to the Wright brothers if they were to hear about it.

Airplane Road is not a very complicated game and it doesn’t try to be either, although it might have been possible to achieve similar results and try to make the experience a tad more mature at the same time. In essence, although this is clearly an arcade racing game featuring planes instead of vehicles, the entire thing is very unpolished and generally lacking any kind of believable element.

The name is quite suggestive of what actually goes on during the gameplay, because although you pilot a plane, the races take place a few feet above the ground, on what appear to be enclosed circuits. Hence, you don’t actually get to fly freely around the clouds, nor drift across the asphalt on four wheels. In essence, you get the worst of the two worlds and it’s all sprinkled with bad gameplay mechanics on top anyway.

As far as the gameplay is concerned, all you have to do is to keep the throttle button pressed and try to take a corner or two every now and again. There are green circles you can go fly through in order to gain a speed boost, and it is vital that you do so, otherwise you have absolutely no chance of catching up with the AI opponents.

Speaking of which, the AI is a perfectionist and it leaves you behind at the slightest mistake, considering the fact that the CPU-controlled planes never make any. Not only that, but you can just bump into every wall until you reach the finish line without suffering any damage or slowing down too much. This, coupled with the awful graphics and the lack of proper levels make the game a tad difficult to recommend.

In the end, Airplane Road may have a good idea at its core, but it was put horribly into practice. In essence, nothing works as it should and there is not enough content to keep one busy anyway, given the fact that the career mode is just a succession of quick races around the same track, more or less.