World Traffic – Review

Frantic fun gets a greenlight 

World Traffic takes Flight Control‘s fun collision avoidence mechanic, swaps planes for cars, and tacks on an uneccessary and underused storyline involving terrorist attacks on three major cities-  New York, Beijing, and Dubai. But rather than having you take the John McClane route and go in all guns blazing, World Traffic is all about keeping the body count to a minimum.
In order to foil the terrorist plot you must man the traffic control systems and guide carloads of panicked evacuees to safety, averting accidents and saving lives.
Sounds exciting, right? But in reality boils down to tapping traffic lights to change them from red to green at the appropriate times. From a bird’s eye perspective you control the flow of traffic, ensuring that vehicles coming from opposite directions don’t collide.

This simplistic mechanic works well and offers up some surprisingly thrilling gameplay the first few times you load up the game, but fails to maintain the fun-factor on repeat plays due to a disappointing lack of diversity.

World Traffic contains 3 stages, each progressively more difficult than the last and with more lanes of traffic to manage, but honestly the repetitive core gameplay soon saps the title of any sense achievement or excitement (the explosions when accidents happen are pretty though!).

And it’s a crying shame Atinco didn’t make more of the terrorism plot, as this could have injected some much needed action into the proceedings, imagine, certain cars wired with timed explosives, police road-blocks to defend, or perhaps even some helicopters whirling overhead. Would’ve made for a more interesting game I reckon.

All in all, the game is, albeit briefly, entertaining and if you’re a Flight Control fanatic seeking a fresh spin on the game’s mechanic, World Traffic comes recommended at its current 50% off price-tag.

iFanzine Verdict:  An enjoyable and addictive little distraction that unfortunately fails to realise its full potential. Could do with a few more cities and should have done more with that intriguing terrorism storyline.

Score: 5 out of 10