Microsoft Flight Simulator was one of the best games of 2020. We praise the technology behind the product and the ambition, and in this long-awaited sequel everything seems to raise the bar, and that's usually a big improvement. There is no doubt about the potential and that if everything works as it should, it will be one of the most attractive titles of the year. The problem is that this is often not the case and many of the technical glitches can sabotage the experience. That's also why it's one of the hardest titles of the year to review, because when it works, it really entertains, just like its predecessor.
The most impressive thing is that, just like its predecessor, you have the option to choose a location on Earth and start flying. All you have to do is select location, time and plane and then click “Start”. Loading into the game world is now easier and faster than ever before. If we want to visit the Gobi Desert in a glider or glide over the Grand Canyon in our helicopter, we can do that. This is the title's greatest strength. This time the simulator has also been equipped with gamified elements and more vehicles, which means that in this version you can start a career mode and perform tasks that pilots do in real life, including transporting passengers, putting out fires and include saving people. Completing missions rewards you with stars and money that you can use to fly new types of missions and purchase more vehicles.
The career mode is a welcome addition and something we missed from its predecessor. We no longer need to modify people or pretend to control them to different locations on Earth. While the AI-recorded voices in this version provide some laugh-out-loud moments, we can't help but think the gameplay is a great feature. One of the reasons we like the mode is how diverse the missions can be in terms of duration, time of day, weather, location and vehicle category. The system also penalizes you quite heavily for mistakes, meaning you can quickly lose skill levels you've acquired. We really appreciate the challenge it offers.
Advertising:
One criticism we could make about the penalties for operations is that they are often unclear. For example, you can be penalized for going too fast while taxiing your plane, but there is no explanation of what the speed should be in numbers. It also takes time to understand why you are being judged and the difference between 80% and 95% in each category. Although the systems are deep and complex, information needs to be better communicated.
A solution to the information problem would be a good encyclopedia, more complex training tasks for the career mode and with video clips. Currently, you have to find the information on third-party websites, which is time-consuming and unnecessary. While there are pretty solid manuals for some aircraft on the title's website, we would have liked to see them integrated into the game. A title that might inspire this is Civilization, which does an excellent job of explaining the complexities in a good format. This is something we think Asobo should investigate since the simulation is so complex and targets so many different groups of people. It could also lead to more people daring to dive into the simulator and become a bigger part of the community.
We're following some pilots on social media as they delve deeper into this sequel. They helped us get off to a good start with the predecessor, because it's not easy to program the flight computers, the autopilot or just fly. If you want to turn off auxiliary systems, you often have to search for information on the Internet and it is difficult to learn many aspects of the simulation simply by trial and error. We hope that the developers will invite their dedicated community and develop more and better training modes, as we believe that many players will be a bit confused because sometimes information is missing.
Advertising:
Despite some issues with the way information is explained to the player, we think Career Mode is a fantastic addition, and that's because we've been asking for something like this for over ten years. A plus point is that you get a lot of instructions for piloting. For example, you can activate icons that guide you through traffic patterns to land correctly, as well as have pre-planned routes on your pad that you can also use to search and note information. These routes are displayed with icons in the world during your flight in case you need assistance. We like these features and it shows that Asobo has tried to offer help to newbies. You can also adjust how easy or difficult the flight should be directly in the menus. It can be as easy as flying in Grand Theft Auto V or as difficult as a normal flight simulator.
In addition to the ability to customize your experience, this is also one of the most exciting games of the year. This is thanks to the better rendered flora and fauna than in its predecessor and makes the world look more realistic than ever. Thanks to more biomes, there is also more diversity in nature than before. There is a game mode that puts you close to some of the most beautiful places on earth. So it's also good that there's a great built-in photo mode that makes the experience better than ever. We loved exploring the world in the previous version, and in this version it's even more interesting thanks to better lighting, graphics, photo mode and higher performance.
Although the game runs better and the graphics have been improved, there are problems on the technical side. Some of the helicopter training modes lock up and prevent you from completing missions, and career mode creates situations where passengers are sitting outside the plane. Still, we've found that aircraft tend to be spared from the worst of the problems and that other types of vehicles tend to be more affected. Many of the problems are so severe that you will have to restart the game…
Although the technology is poor, the sound is truly impressive. In fact, during our time with the title, we had no problems in this category. Planes, helicopters and gliders sound the way we imagine them to, and it's powerful to hear the roar of the engine in the cabin as you head into a storm. The weather also sounds fantastic in this simulation. The only criticism we can make is that the voices could have used more lines of text to read aloud for a change and that Asobo should have worked on improving the quality of the voices as part of their efforts – they often invite laughter.
Our conclusion is that despite the many game-breaking bugs, there's a lot to like about this ambitious sequel. Almost all systems are better than its predecessor, the background simulation is more advanced and complex, helicopters, planes and gliders behave better in the air and we would say that this last category is the best simulation ever in a game The weather is more varied and complex than before, which makes travel more interesting, and this is because wind and storms affect the behavior of aircraft in the air. They may be unwieldy and annoying, but storms are also beautiful to look at, which often led us to pause the game and photograph them.
We were flying over Zambia and had an engine failure which forced us to make an emergency landing in South Luangwa National Park. The vegetation was thick, with trees, grass and giraffes wandering around the various watering holes, and we were really impressed by the graphic elevation of the site. We climbed out of our battered Cessna Skyhawk and set off around the world. Unfortunately, nothing is perfect and some places look miserable, but in nature there can be scenes that are at least as beautiful as those in the air, which is quite unusual for a simulator of this type. We were able to get our plane back in order and eventually complete the mission, but the memories of the trip lingered long after I turned off the game. That's why our impressions are generally positive, partly because it works most of the time, partly because it creates great gaming memories, and partly because it improves on many of its predecessor's gameplay systems. It is the numerous technical problems that prevent it from reaching greater heights than its predecessor.
