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Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 review: a wonky career mode gives meaning to the formless flight simCrazy taxi
Crazy taxi
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Xbox Game Studios
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Xbox Game Studios
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024captures Gatwick’s brown perfectly. Next to the stupefying natural beauty of Yosemite, the imposing imperial skyscrapers of the Manhattan skyline and the surging majesty of the Alpine peaks, this local rot-tinged patch of West Sussex is the most impressively realistic depiction of a place I have seen in a game.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Xbox Game Studios
This fantastic bit of technical trickery was the foundational feature ofMicrosoft Flight Simulator 2020, but it’s worth reiterating what a singular spectacle Asobo has created. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 improves on the sightseeing simulation with way more detail, better performance and improved flying physics, and where the previous edition offered nothing much to actually do in the world besides gawp, the updated release features plenty to keep you busy. There are more challenges, more activities, a full suite of photography missions, and a career mode that’s somehow jankier than the ones I’ve seen in Stone Quarry Simulator, Garbage Truck Simulator, and The Guy Whose Job It Is To Separate Non-Recyclable Materials On The Conveyor Belt At The Recycling Centre Simulator.
Career mode has you working your way up from a wet-eared rookie pilot at an achingly realistic pace. Your first dozen jobs come from other pilots who’ve flown their plane somewhere and left it behind – whether for maintenance or because they partied too hard at one of those infamous pilot galas and had to get the train home – before you eventually graduate to skydiving missions and short passenger runs. Scrape together enough currency and you can take a stab at getting certification for more powerful and more interesting planes and helicopters, which unlock more specialisations and new mission types.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Xbox Game Studios
Focus your training on the helicopter skill tree and you’ll become certified in search and rescue operations and hoisting, the biggest and most dramatic departure from the classic flight simulator fare. These missions have you roving remote areas of the wilderness in search of injured hikers, or holding a steady hovering position 30ft above a sinking boat in stormy conditions as you pluck desperate sailors from the surging waves. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 now simulates rolling 3D waves rather than the flat surfaces of the previous edition, giving these ocean missions a nauseatingly realistic edge.
The result is a simulation that feels immensely richer and more rewarding, at least for casual pilots like me, and all of it somehow in spite of incredible wonkiness.Launch issuesplagued Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024, with players facing endless loading screens, mid-flight disconnections and overheating Microsoft Azure servers reducing detailed vistas to muddy JPEG blobs.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Xbox Game Studios
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Xbox Game Studios
Then there are the even less entertaining bugs. Career mode and certain other activities let you skip time to the next interesting part of the flight, reducing eight hour long hauls to 20 minute jobs, but the transition will sometimes send your plane lurching into a stall or plant it deep underground. Helicopters are essentially off limits if you’re playing on an Xbox controller, the complexities of mapping everything to a couple of analogue sticks and buttons proving too much for even Asobo, who’ve otherwise done a remarkable job of cramming various control surfaces onto the pad’s limited inputs. And passengers will sometimes slide out of their seats and get wedged in the fuselage, which is bad news for them but somehow harmless to your reputation as a pilot.
But these issues are just uncommon enough that Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 manages to weather them over and over again, and it’s never too long before the simulation begs your forgiveness with a relentless series of the most astonishing postcard views you’ve ever pointed your eyes at. Whether you’re breaking cloud cover over Mount Rainier, flying low over the gin-clear seas of Saint Lucia, or making your final descent into the greasy miasma of Gatwick, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 is an endless parade of giddy spectacle.
