Game Review 1 (written by Temacc) Added on: 01/31/2008
Tracon II lets you become an air traffic controller and puts you in charge of an airspace sector of your choice. Giving planes instructions on speed, direction, altitude allows being in charge of thousands of people and safely guiding each plane to its destination.
The graphics are just average for a PC game, but also give a realistic feel to actually being in the 'ATC' seat. Your radar screen displays the airports, waypoint sectors and the planes with full information allowing you to adjust the routes of the planes and avoid conflicts for arriving and departing aircraft. Commands are issued to each plane and pilot voice will respond to each of your commands as if you were talking over the actual FAA radio.
Spacing of the aircraft is key to accumulating a high score, keeping the planes 1,000 feet apart vertically and a 3 mile horizontal separation is key. Alarms will sound when a conflict is about to happen and a few separation conflicts can easily ruin a good score. When the planes get too close, more alarms will sound and allowing a mid-air crash will be game over. The player will receive points by completing a plane's flight path and the quicker you can get them there and with the least instructions, the higher the score you can accumulate. Points are deducted for every turn you force the aircraft to do, speed change or altitude adjustment.
Just when you think your getting the hang of the simulation, the game will throw in some emergencies making everything all of sudden become hectic and the skies can quickly become overcrowded giving the user the 'high stress' feeling the job has been know to do.
Tracon allows a few different ways to the play the game. A random game with a chosen sector will create a different scenario each time while allowing the user to adjust the time of the game and the amount of aircraft they'll handle. Another option is for the user to create their own scenario with a text editor allowing the user to create or download other player’s scenarios. One last option that the Tracon developers have added is the game can connect to Microsoft Flight simulator that is on another computer.
Tracon is an awesome and very realistic Air Traffic Control simulator giving the player a real life experience and is a great entertainment value for all aircraft enthusiasts.
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Game Review 2 (written by Tmac9496) Added on: 03/29/2007
I really enjoyed the challenge as well as the cool graphics of this simulation style game. This game is an air traffic simulation game, where you assume the job of a real life air traffic controller. The graphic board really gave me feeling of the seating at the place of an air traffic coordinator. Just like in the real job, there are icons that represent aircrafts along with other information, like height and speed. The idea of the game is to follow each aircraft and make sure that it maintains a certain space. The game selects random start and end points for each plane, as well as random altitudes and activation times.
Another interesting part of this wonderful game is the fact, that it includes such details as the fact that each kind of aircraft travels with different speeds, for example a commercial airliner will travel at much faster speed then any other. When learning the game at first, there is nice option in the game that can be chosen: "repeat the last simulation". This will allow you to practice with such things as the speed and direction of the plane. Another aspect of this game, is controlling take-offs as well as landings. You will receive what the game calls "point credits" for each successful flight plan.
All in all, if you like planes, you should try this one. You’ll find a lot of interesting in it.
Tracon II at Wikipedia
Tracon II at MobyGames
Comments
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Angusaitken (09/17/2007)
Very addictive for budding Air Traffic Controllers. |
