SimAirport Review (Xbox One)

STAFF REVIEW of SimAirport (Xbox One)

Thursday, March 30, 2023.
by Adam Dileva

Developed by small indie studio LVGameDev, SimAirport was originally released back in 2017 for Early Access then had its full release in 2020. With decent reviews, the time had come for it to be ported to console for other gamers to enjoy, which Ultimate Games handled. Now available on Xbox One and Series consoles, SimAirport is exactly as you’d expect from its self-explanatory title, running an airport from the ground up. That’s a far too simplistic explanation though, as you’ll not just be designing how to build the airport, its walls and scheduling a few flights, but coordinating down to every minute detail you could think of. If you were the type of SimCity player that enjoyed getting super deep into the management and statistical aspects of city building, you’ll have more than enough here to keep you busy.

While there’s no real story aside from creating a successful and profitable airport, you can do this in one of two modes: Career or Sandbox. Career Mode essentially challenges you with creating a profitable airport but with extremely limited resources. This mode is quite challenging, as even the smallest mistake in the early game can be quite disastrous. I suggest playing in Sandbox Mode initially until you feel much more comfortable in the early to mid-game, as you can turn off any limitations, have unlimited money, instantly build and more. The lack of any restrictions is a much smoother experience when struggling with learning the confusing controls, but more on that shortly.

Don’t let the simplistic 2D visuals fool you, SimAirport is probably one of the most complex and in depth management sims out there. You might think that there’s not all that much to plan for an airport, but you’d be wrong. Played in a top-down view, you’ll begin with a number of tutorials that show you the core principles and basics of the game. Broken into a handful of separate tutorials, you’ll be shown how to get your basic airport setup, eventually teaching the more in-depth portions like scheduling flights, negotiating with airlines, heat maps, creating runways and more.

This is where your initial frustrations will start to surface. The tutorials themselves are perfectly fine and explain what you need to do, but keep in mind SimAirport was initially a PC game now being ported to console, so all of the keyboard and mouse controls had to be mapped to a controller. Some sim games have figured out how to do this wonderfully, Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition for example, but sadly the same can’t be said here.

To the point, the controls are absolutely terrible. Sure you get used to it after some time of struggling constantly, but it never feels natural. Being a sim management game, you’ll be neck deep in menus almost constantly. Some menus require you to press ‘A’ while others ‘Right Trigger’. How are you supposed to know which? Good luck; it’ll either just work or won’t. The same goes for even navigating the menus, as you need to use the D-Pad on some and the Left Stick on others. Even hours in I was constantly pressing wrong buttons or going to the wrong menus. I’m sure the same frustrations weren’t the same on PC, but on console it’s a serious hindrance that needs to be seriously looked at.

If you’re the type of sim player that enjoys analyzing data and looking at graphs to determine the best course of action, SimAirport has you covered. You’re given so much information, to the point of being completely overwhelming. And I’ll be honest, much of it went over my head. There’s so much you need to do and concentrate on simultaneously that I sometimes didn’t know where to start. I simply followed the order my tutorials showed me but constantly felt like I wasn’t being efficient enough and forgetting something when designing my airport.

An airport is much more than simply a building where you go to get on a plane. You need to think of customer service, walkways, restrooms, garbage bins, staffing, baggage claim, line queues, order purchasing, security, sales, executives and a handful of other things that seems to be escaping me at the moment. That’s exactly what I’m talking about when you have to constantly be aware of what you need and how to even go about doing so without trying to become overwhelmed or confused.

You’re able to choose to start with a basic airport already constructed which you can build and expand to, or start completely from scratch, regardless of which mode you play. I do suggest playing with the basic airport already built to learn how to best get early game setup, as you’ll be struggling early on with how to place proper zones, walls and expand areas. Constructing new areas, walls and placing objects requires workers, which in turn goes into your payroll. You’ll also need ticketing staff, security, chefs, retail workers and more. All of these aspects need to be weighed and factored into your decisions, as even over hiring can cause you money issues early on if you have workers standing around doing nothing but getting paid. Construction takes materials and has costs, and finances plays a large part of running a successful airport, so it’s almost always top of mind. You’ll need to watch your cash flow, as you’re going to have to budget to hire the staff, build runways, gates, retail stores, vehicles, purchase fuel and much more.

Again, I highly suggest starting out your first few airports in Sandbox Mode with unlimited money just so you can get a feel for how to best layout the airport of your dreams without having to worry about running out of cash. Getting the basics setup isn’t too difficult aside from struggling with the controls, but once you need to start ordering fuel, adding separate runways, scheduling staff, fuel lines and adding a baggage handling system that runs underground, then it’s a whole other level of confusion. There’s plenty here for those that want an incredibly deep simulator, but casual fans will surely feel lost much of the time.

As you start to slowly expand your airport, you’ll probably be excited to see passengers start to flow in for your first few flights, but as demand goes up, so do customer expectations. Having enough facilities for your airport to handle a hundred travelers isn’t too big of a deal, but soon as you start getting into many more thousands, it’s a whole different struggle trying to keep them all satisfied. Do you have enough waiting areas? Are the line queues getting out of hand? Are customers tired and upset because of the long walk from one gate to another? Are there even enough snack machines, retail options and garbage bins around? Are the big spenders happy with a first class lounge? You need to think of all the questions and frustrations you had if you’ve ever gone through a major airport before and ask yourself the same.

As you expand and learn how to play better, the map doesn’t just expand when you purchase land to extend your borders, but you’ll once again feel that overwhelming frustration when you want to start building up onto higher levels. This of course adds completely new challenge and logistical nightmares, and don’t even get me started on the baggage handling lines. I highly suggest when you start to expand to do so slowly. Learn how adding one more shop or room will affect the bigger picture before making a rookie mistake I did by adding 4 more runways and a bunch more gates, only to realize there’s a lot of steps required to make each work with one another, not even factoring in the astronomical costs associated.

After you’ve figured out how to best have your airport operations, you’ll then need to tweak and optimize to make it the most efficient and profitable it can be. This is easier said than done, and sometimes a small change can turn into a large ordeal. Even something as simple as watching fuel prices and deciding to sell excess when prices are high can be a way to earn some cash flow if needed. Even luring new airlines to use your airport might be a challenge, as they’ll have requirements before signing a contract, but you can of course try to negotiate more on your terms.

Visually, SimAirport isn’t too much to look at. The top down perspective makes sense given it’s more of a planning and management game, but all the objects and people are quite simplistic looking, done in 2D. There was no slowdown, even when I had thousands of people all around my airport, but there’s really not all that much to look at. As for the audio, there’s practically nothing to mention. I expected some light elevator music or something to play in the background, but there’s just... nothing. There’s some light sound effects when workers are doing some construction and some minor things, but the lack of any music really made the airport feel dead. Put on some of your best Spotify playlists in the background as you won’t be missing a single thing since there’s essentially no audio.

SimAirport isn’t easy by any means. The learning curve is almost a sheer cliff, though that’s more due to the terrible controls of porting from its PC origins. With better controls I probably wouldn’t have had as many frustrations, but even hours in I was still struggling and constantly having to remind myself which buttons to use in different menus. The $25.99 CAD price point may deter some if you were judging solely based on its screenshots, but there’s an immensely deep management sim underneath if you can spend the time to figure it out how to best develop your dream airport, down to the smallest details, just be aware of the frustrating controls.

**SimAirport was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**

Overall: 5.0 / 10
Gameplay: 7.0 / 10
Visuals: 3.0 / 10
Sound: 1.0 / 10

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STAFF REVIEW of SimAirport (Xbox One)

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