On the 18th of August, airplanes fanatics and everyone who loves to be up in the air were given a new lovely game: Microsoft Flight Simulator. This new edition developed by Asobo Studio is supposed to be another successful edition to the Flight Simulator series which started all the way back in 1982. But let’s not wait any longer, board the plane and let’s fly through the game and see if it is worth it or if it’s a flight that should be delayed.
What we liked!
- Graphics: There is simply no denying here and I’m sure everyone agrees with me. Microsoft Flight Simulator looks amazing. The graphics are absolutely amazing and everywhere you go, you will immediately know where you are (if you know the area of course). For example, when you are flying over Paris, you can easily tell where the Eifel tower is (you know, the big pointy thing) but also other landmarks, like the Sacré-Coeur, are beautifully done. And then we didn’t even talk about the planes and the environment yet. They really put a lot of work into this and it absolutely pays off. You’d almost say that only this aspect of the game makes it totally worth it already.
- Controls: Besides the graphics, there is another thing that is really extensive: the controls that you have to use. There are so many different options and buttons. It makes it really hard to remember them from the start but once you did a few flights, you will easily get the hang of it. Imagine that you are about to land and your plane and you don’t remember how to extract your landing gear. Then you can pause the game and easily find it in the controls menu. They even added a search bar for you so you find the key bindings you need quickly.
- Freedom: While flying your plane you can do different things. You can fly your plane straight to your selected arrival airport, or you can roam around and visit cities like New York or Paris and enjoy the lovely view. Eventually, you have to land your plane of course. Even with Covid-19, Flight Simulator allows you to visit your preferred destination and maybe enjoy it a little bit, and it’s completely safe. No, but all jokes aside, the total freedom that this game gives you is really nice. There is absolutely no pressure and the only thing that you have to worry about is that you don’t crash your plane.
Somewhere between
- Tutorial: The game offers you a tutorial where you can choose between different things that you want to learn. You can start with the basics like flying and turning or you can simply skip that and go for the harder things which are landing the plane safely. However, it is really simple since most of the time you are set up perfectly to complete your task. While in-game you can easily have been flying for over an hour and then everything is different when you have to land. In my opinion, they should have made it a bit harder so you will be a more experienced pilot which makes the game slightly easier. But on the other hand, a bit of a challenge is also fun.
- Loading times: It might be a bit weird to put this in the somewhere between section but hear me out and I then I think you will agree with me. One of the most annoying things about the game is slightly long loading times. When you selected your flight route, your plane, your weather, etc., it seems like you will have to wait forever for the game to load. It just sucks. What, in my opinion, makes it worth it is that in return you get a very detailed map of the world that you can explore, which like I already mentioned before looks absolutely stunning. To get the perfection and total freedom to explore everything, it all has to load so it isn’t that bad in the end. And what’s 5 minutes if your flight is going to take over an hour.
What we disliked
- Installer: When I tried to install Microsoft Flight Simulator, it turned out to be a really hard job. Also, at first it says it’s downloading like 600mb then everything bugged out, and then a download for 90gb starts which gave a few unknown errors but eventually worked. And with a quick look on the internet, I noticed that I’m not the only one who encountered a hard time while installing the game. It is such a shame since the game is almost perfect and then they give everyone a hard time before you are even airborne. Let’s hope they will fix this in a future update since I think this easily can and should be fixed.
- Lag: One of the most annoying things in the game is the number of lag spikes that you will encounter. On just a simple flight it’s like every 3 minutes one is happening. Or even when you are flying straight ahead and then turn slightly, everything starts lagging. Yes, the game is big and graphics-wise heavy but it shouldn’t happen every 3 minutes or so. Takes away a lot of the fun.
