It’s hard to start an objective review of Airline Ticoon 2 and remain unbiased, considering that it’s a well-known fact that this game is one of the lowest rated on Steam. Ignoring the thousands of dissatisfied players and finding the good parts in this game sounded like a challenging task that I was reluctant to take but I still gave it a try. Most of the hate that this game took was because of the inevitable comparison with its predecessor, Airline Tycoon 1, which was a classic of the genre, widely-appreciated and highly-acclaimed. By comparison, Airline Tycoon 2 got right on the opposing end.
Unfortunately, I could see why this happened right from the first minutes. The tutorial is slow-paced and creates no excitement. Having to move the character around between different offices and locations to access various features of the game was rather tedious and annoying. That’s not exactly how a tycoon-like type of game is expected to be. Furthermore, though Airline Tycoon 2 is a business simulation / economy management game, it comes with cartoonish graphics that aren’t exactly what one would expect. It also attempts to provide funny dialogs, but many of them end up being just awkward or plain annoying.
The gameplay also left me hanging. Any action takes quite a while to complete, and an overall feeling of slowness dominates this game aspect.
To make a long story short, now I know why this game has the low ratings. I like playing a “tycoon-like” business simulation game every now and then, but I won’t spend any more minutes trying to have fun with Airline Tycoon 2, as it’s, simply put, mission impossible.
v1.27 [Jan 13, 2012]
Features:
- Trading of shares
- If you’re looking a quick buck, you’re in exactly the right place. Sell shares of your airline at a high price, invest in profitable competitors, or try to drive them out of business through a hostile takeover. But be careful: the market is in a constant state of flux! If you get too greedy and miscalculate, you could be operating in the red ... or even worse!
-- Trading of shares is available via the banker in the airport bank as well as the laptop in your office.
-- In the trading interface you will find information about the value of each airline, the distribution of shares and projections regarding the future of the company.
-- The Bad Bank acts as an additional participant. It buys the Tycoons’ shares and makes them freely available for all other participants.
-- If you own shares in airlines yourself or if some are available from the Bad Bank, then you can adjust the amount of shares to be traded using the arrow buttons.
-- The transaction is only carried out and made active with confirmation via the green arrow button.
-- Shareholders are entitled to dividends dependant upon the company’s daily profit and the amount of shares owned.
-- If a Tycoon possesses at least 75% of an enemy airline, then he can dissolve the company by using the red X button.
-- During liquidation, either all airplanes can be sold and the staff fired, or they can be added to your own company.
-- The trading of shares is only available in free play.
-Hotkey added for the cabin editor (J)
Bug Fixes:
- Various errors with chartered flights have been corrected.
-- Contracts no longer disappear from the flight plan.
-- Information in the travel agency now always corresponds with that in the route planning.
-- Contracts requiring ranges of 100,000 km no longer appear.
-- Contracts with a delay can still be successfully completed.
-- Error with fulfilled contracts that could not be completed corrected.
- Various errors in route planning corrected.
-- You can’t assign flights or contracts to planes without a crew.
-- Flight plan replays now also display the plan for upcoming weeks.
-- It had been possible in rare circumstances for unnecessary auto-flights to be generated.
- Competition
-- Computer opponents will now also use larger airplanes when possible.
-- Computer opponents organize personnel more skillfully.
-- Computer opponents better manage credit.
- The lower limit for startup capital has been raised.
- You can exit any location by right-clicking.
- Players are no longer automatically brought to the world map when they have previously watched an airplane.
- An error when designing the Afro DJ has been corrected.
- Job descriptions of the advisers can now be read in every resolution.
- Message texts are now always correctly pictured.
- Crash during intro video corrected.
- Passengers no longer wait too long in the public airport area.
- Passenger behavior in the lounge improved.
- The saboteur’s mini-gun now makes a sound.
- Copied airplanes now receive the correct texture / painting.
- The maximum number of airplanes (50) can no longer be exceeded.
- Various spelling errors corrected.
