Red Bull Air Race World Championship (iPhone)

Fear of flying can make a bit of turbulence on a smooth flight seem life threatening. It's worse when you've never flown before, of course, and the more you do the less concerned you get. Familiarity washes away the fear.

It's a principle that applies to Red Bull Air Race World Championship, too. Imperfect controls can be a source of aggravation, but spend enough time with this fully featured game and you can find your wings.

Red Bull Air Race World Championship has you tilting your handset to fly a prop plane through intricate stunt courses. The goal is to make it through each course in as little time as possible, though loops, tight turns, and angled manoeuvres make that task easier said than done.

A navigator vocally guides you through each course, informing you of what stunt to perform through the next set of pylons.

A pair of red pylons requires a simple fly through, while special blue pylons may have you flipping your plane sideways to knife through the checkpoint. You carry out special actions, such as knifing and executing a full loop, by pressing buttons on the screen in conjunction with tips of your device to steer.

As much as there's a decent sense of speed, it's the twitchy handling that makes you feel as if you've downed one too many cans of Red Bull. Slight turns are extremely difficult since all turns begin at the same angle. The degree at which you tilt your handset yields a proportionate turn only when you've exceeded the base turning angle.

Minor course corrections, however, aren't possible because the plane snaps to the default minimum turning angle. Options for tuning both the accelerometer's sensitivity and calibrating the neutral position are generously offered, though neither resolves the issue.

The precision required by the game's challenging courses causes this oversight to reverberate through the rest of the game. You're constantly trying to predict how far to tilt your handset, not knowing for certain if your plane will turn at just the right angle or react unexpectedly. When knifing, steering becomes even more problematic since you have to position your plane sideways while moving forward.

It's a shame that the controls don't have the wings to carry Red Bull Air Race World Championship, because it packs a ton of gameplay.

A simulated Season mode puts you through a full competitive year of racing across eight courses. Alternatively, you can opt for a shortened season or Quick Flight mode to get into the action. Upgrades and decorations unlock as you work through the season. There's even an editor that lets you tweak the prepackaged courses or create your own from scratch.

Unfortunately, enjoying all this content is made difficult by the controls. Difficult, but not impossible: you can acclimate to the mechanics with time, and frustration over twitchy controls eventually fades. You may not want to persist that long, but do youself a favour: don't let the problems scare you away before you even take off.