Do I really want to be ‘that guy’ here? Maybe a little…
This is a terrible review. It does little more than say ‘my nephew likes it and I don’t know nearly enough about flying to know if it’s any good or not, but the promotional materials say it’s good.’
The game is getting a lot of these reviews that just gloss over the fact that many aircraft do not have functioning avionics, ATC is completely useless, and the title is riddled with bugs that seem to get worse with each update. Yes the visuals are impressive – very much so – but this is essentially a Google Earth explorer with Unreal Engine quality models and lighting. The real meat of the simulator is the simulation, which is sub par compared even to FSX. ATC fails to give vectors, autopilot fails to properly load and execute an approach without doing a 360 degree turn, GA aircraft mixture settings act in no way like in real life, a thin 1/8 cloud layers at 2000’ spew thunder and lightning like a 65k top CB… I could go on…
Perhaps it’s marketing trying to get the everyman into the game, but I’ve been hard pressed to find a reviewer who criticises the game for its shortcomings. Perhaps it’s not supposed to be “As real as it gets” anymore. Perhaps people with subject matter knowledge aren’t the target demographic, but there’s a breadth of knowledge and expertise from the community that was seemingly ignored in alpha and on release.
Maybe I’m too hard on the game, but my passion lies within aviation and while I believe this is a great platform, it’s far from earning the generalized praise it gets from the review outlets.