I have nearly 500 games in my Steam account, and the vast majority of them are still unplayed. So now I'm dedicating an hour to each of these games and writing a series of One Hour Reviews.

One Hour Reviews - Game 5
Airline Tycoon 2
Purchase Date: 9/11/2014

Like a number of games in my Steam library, I came across Airline Tycoon 2 as part of a Humble Bundle. I really like Humble Bundle because not only do I get to donate to a good cause, but sometimes in that bundle I'll come across a really good game that I never would have bought otherwise.

Sadly, Airline Tycoon 2 is not one of those games.

Right off the bat the game scored a negative when I realized I'd have to login to play this game. Given that this is a completely single player game with no internet component whatsoever, I really don't see the point in forcing me to login. The only thing that kept this from being more annoying is apparently I've played some other game from Kalypso, so it remembered my login from that. So at least I didn't have to make another account.

Airline Tycoon 2 tries to inject some humor by presenting you with various cariactures of people like Albert Einstein, who is exactly the person that comes to mind when I need an airline mechanic. You know, cause he's smart. This is the kind of humor you get to look forward to in Airline Tycoon 2.

I played through the tutorial, which does a decent enough job of introducing you to the game concepts. It sent me around the airport to talk to various people, so I could meet all of the goofy characters the game has to offer. It doesn't sound so bad when I say it, but eventually you get tired of running around the airport to visit the mechanic or go to the personnel office to hire a pilot, or hightail it back to your office to plan an airline route.

Imagine playing a city builder except every time you wanted to build a new building, you had to run over to the mayors office and talk to a caricature of the Godfather so you could tell him you want to zone a new block of houses.

So once I talk to Albert Einstein to get my plane decked out, and talk to someone else to get my pilot and crew hired, and someone else to actually tell my crew which plane they are working on, after all that then I can find the manager, so I can rent a route to fly my plane on. They should have put out a version of this game for the Wii that is compatible with the Wii Fit balance board.

After all that, I can head back to my office to plan my flights for the week. It's a bit like setting up meetings in outlook where each route takes up a chunk of time for the day, so the idea is you slot in as many round trips as you can, with some occasional maintenance inbetween flights. You can also set the ticket price on your flights. As the day progresses you can check on your flights and get statistics on things like how satisfied your passengers were and how much money your flight made.

The tutorial did fine at showing me around and introducing me to people I'd rather not talk to, but it doesn't really explain much about the actual strategy in the game. For instance, there are a ton of different planes you can buy, and lots of ways to tailor how the plane looks, both exterior and interior. But I have no idea if it's purely cosmetic or if these choices somehow impact customer satisfaction.

That's really where I ended up at the end of my first hour, wondering how and if my choices affected anything. In the end, I realized that there's really only one choice that matters, and that is the choice not to play this anymore.

Overall Recommendation: Pass