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| | Genre: Simulation | | | Min OS X: Any Version |
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Modes of play There are two modes of play: campaign and mission mode. A campaign is a free game that really never ends until you get overcome by the boredom of getting so much money. In mission mode you play several short missions, which are a silly attempt to spice up the game, but it's the same thing over and over again. Most of the missions are simple things like being the first to get out of bankruptcy, the first to transport 1000 passengers or the first to get ten routes. While the missions may be slightly different, you will essentially be stuck doing the same repetitive tasks and running around assigning flights to your planes. BORING!Sabotage Of course there are other things to do. You may buy oil, have a drink at the bar, buy duty-free goods or hire someone to sabotage other airlines (simply give the violin case to the petrol air fellow). These things were obviously placed in the game to give you a small break from all the otherwise repetitive gameplay.Original? Some of you die-hard gamers now might be wondering, since this concept of running around picking schedules seems vaguely familiar, similar to, say, Mad TV. Indeed! This game is almost an airport version of this MS-DOS classic, where you manage a TV station and most of the time you are running around picking programs and movies and assigning them to the allowed slots. The reason is quite obvious: the main producer of both games is the same person, Armin Gessert.Cute graphics and cute European humor The screenshots give it away. The graphics are all pre-rendered and they aim to be cartoonish, fun, and cute rather than realistic. For example, the tycoon Igor Tuppolevsky has a set of Russian dolls on his desk and an open tin of caviar. Here and there I was able to find some typical elements of European humor, which surely must have passed the careless ESRB rating censorship, which gave this game an E for everyone. An example: in your office you have an attractive statue of a voluptuous naked woman. There are a couple of similar instances throughout the game; enough to keep any 13-year-old amused for a good long while, in any case.Mac port I had no problem in either installing or running this game. Airline Tycoon Deluxe was ported from Windows by Runesoft, another independent software house in Germany. They might be small, but they do have plenty of experience porting totally obscure and most likely low-budget games such as Barkanoid II and Jack's Crazy Cong. Airline Tycoon Deluxe being the biggest hit to reach their company, they definitely made sure to provide a flawless conversion...perhaps too flawless. Most Macs out there still don't have the second mouse button that certain elements of the game require (such as exiting the job applications files). You can always shift-click to emulate the second mouse button, but it would have been nice to have easier-to-use alternatives.Long-term appeal of the game You get money, money, and more money, but that's about it. Since there are no ways to drive your opponents to bankruptcy, you are just playing with your own fortunes. When you start playing it is somewhat challenging as you only have crappy airplanes and terrible flights, but as the game progresses things get much easier and everyone keeps getting richer and richer. Once you start making 50 million each day, the game totally loses its interest. I'm not trying to boost my geek pride, but the second time I played the game I was making 20 million every day, three hours after I started playing! Needless to say, the replay value is very low, and after a couple of hours of play you will get very tired and very bored of Airline Tycoon Deluxe. You may then curse yourself for wasting money on purchasing it.
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