Aero Porter

"Airport luggage sorter" probably wouldn't be the first concept most people would think about when they pondered ideas for a video game. And yet that's exactly what you get to be in Aero Porter on the 3DS. Sorting through luggage and sending it off to it's assigned destination is the name of the game, succeed and you get more luggage. Fail and you get a talking-to, and more luggage to sort.

There isn't much more to the game than the luggage sorting. When you begin you only have a few luggage turnstiles to work with as the game gives you the gist of how you're expected to filter through this mess. As you progress through your workdays you get more turnstiles to work with, and other on-the-job hazards present themselves. Fuel management becomes a problem, as you're forced to mange your supply properly in order to avoid completely running out and seeing the game grind to a halt. Special VIP passengers arrive and force you to bend to their demands in order to make them happy. Sometimes someone will even attack the airport with a bomb and force you to take the initiative to make sure they don't hurt anyone.

These are all nice features, and it's hard to complain about any of them individually, but the main problem with this game is that it's just too difficult. It's really almost impossible to keep seven whole turnstiles straight while you avoid flying someone's suitcase halfway across the globe and tend to some picky local politicians. Adding in the fuel feature makes things feel hopeless at times. Once the gas runs out the game really does grind to a halt, and refueling costs an arm and a leg, not to mention that it takes forever to pull off. Now eventually you will learn to cut corners and make things happen with some practice (screw that guy, his luggage is going to Australia so this flight can take off on time), but things still never feel completely manageable.

Maybe the game would feel simpler if there were fewer, say, maybe four turnstiles instead of six. Or maybe if the fuel mechanic was more forgiving so that some of the features that make the game feel easier and faster didn't disappear on you if you use them too much. It would be easy to call the game "too complicated" and leave it at that, but the biggest problem really is that staying fueled up is too expensive and things come to an almost complete halt when you fail at this. Practice really does make things easier, and the game doesn't penalize you from just cutting out of work early, so you can bail if you're about to incur a huge fine when you don't get anything onto the pink flight because the President has get all five pieces of his luggage onto Air Force One and that's more important than some chump on a commuter flight.

Aero Porter really is fun, in that old Game & Watch sort of way. People who really love those games are the first people that this game should be recommended to. Just bare in mind that it's a really tough game to learn, but with some practice and a little bit of patience you should be able to make things work smoothly. With enough attention to it's weird mechanics, it becomes the sort of game that you can play in short bursts and have a lot of fun with. The StreetPass features feel tacked on, though it is fun to see a customized plane pull into the hangar from time to time. A concept this odd really is commendable, and the game does manage to pull it off in a way that's fun to come back to and not just something you can gawk at for five minutes and then regret spending the download fee on.