Game Reviews

Any Landing

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iOS
| Any Landing
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Any Landing
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iOS
| Any Landing

The saying, "any landing you can walk away from is a good one" is an old aviation proverb with no attributed source.

Seriously, I spent a whole three minutes Googling it.

This ridiculously flippant sentiment has come to typify the daring, death-defying, and slightly crazy streak at the heart of even the most cautious of pilots. It's a spirit that Strange Flavour's appropriately named endless flier seeks to put across.

Plane and simple

At the start of each round of Any Landing, you take off in a ramshackle propeller-driven aeroplane that's very clearly on its last legs.

In fact, those 'legs' (by which I mean wheels) fall off immediately after take-off. If you want to bring your rust-bucket down again, it's going to be a controlled crash landing.

While this is the way you complete your trips and drop off your white-knuckled passengers, essentially earning yourself an extra run at the level you're on, the real art is keeping your craft airborne.

Keep her steady

Each game of Any Landing is a careful balancing act. Your engine is pretty much shot from the start, and any use of the throttle will inch it towards complete destruction.

If you want to increase air speed - which is necessary to prevent stalling, as indicated by a teetering gauge - you'll have to either dive or use what's left of the engine and hope to encounter a red repair balloon.

In addition to the latter, you'll encounter floating cargo containers (containing bonus equipment and coins), speed-boosting rocket packs, and coins for spending on upgrades.

Flying through run-down buildings will get you a healthy cash injection, while you can also receive bonuses by meeting your passenger's requests, such as picking up stranded kittens or collecting so many objects.

Any Landing's core gameplay is precariously satisfying. The only trouble is, you'll have to figure out a lot of it yourself.

In a bit of a spin

Most of what I explained above I discovered through trial-and-error and numerous untimely crashes. There's some introductory babble about the benefits of destroying buildings and the need to land safely, and a flight school section detailing the basics of flight.

But as for your ultimate purpose and the way to progress - well, that's all extremely vague.

It's also a little annoying that the base currency isn't perpetual, so each run is self-contained. The game would benefit if you knew that even the briefest run contributed to a steadily developing plane, allowing you to go slightly farther with every run.

As it is, you'll need to splash the cash if you want to buy better planes, or else be a ninja player in order to afford them through a single epic run.

Any Landing, then, has nailed the true spirit of aviation in its precarious flight mechanics. However, it's a little too scattershot for its own good, and is a good service away from truly taking flight.

Any Landing

Any Landing's fly-by-the-seat-of-its-pants gameplay is both fun and challenging, but structurally it's a bit of a mess
Score
Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.