So, Kotaku just published its “review” of Microsoft Flight Simulator. It’s pretty much the worst trainwreck I ever saw in a review short of some exceptions like plagiarized ones and such.
The author wrote a giant wall of text reviewing the concept of games as a service and cloud, with a smattering of politics for good measure, and didn’t spend a single word actually reviewing the game.
In order to appear smarter than everyone else (the other “journalists and YouTubers” as he says) he starts with a convoluted premise about a mine in Indonesia (Grasberg MIne) allegedly being absent in the game. He even posts a screenshots of what he thinks is the location of the mine.
So, what is the big deal, you ask? besides the fact that he didn’t review the game at all in the review of the game?
Well, anyone who knows how the game’s map is generated, would immediately find his claim suspicious, because unless the mine is very recent, it’s basically impossible that such a large feature is completely absent from the game. So I fired up the sim, and five minutes after, lo and behold…
The mine is indeed there. Not only, it actually looks awesome, and it’s MASSIVE.
I guess for someone who has absolutely no intention to actually review the game in the game’s review, doing the tutorial to learn to fly VFR (which incidentally is the only form of navigation the MSFS’ direly sparse tutorial teaches, which is a flaw an actual competent review should probably mention) is too hard.
Too bad, because it would have perhaps helped him find a giant landmark in the game that is almost impossible to miss.
Wow. I have a habit of being verbose, but this thing went on and on and on… I lost interest, scrolled through, and realized I hadn’t read 20% of it yet.
Ugh.
All - Been following the FS-2020 reports since announcement last year. Based on just the screen shots of the press releases, I was on board. The downloading issues aside, once I got it loaded, naturally the first thing I did was look for my house. YEP, right where it should be, not exact replica, but you can tell it’s our place (east yard is dead grass/dirt). So this reviewer is well “out to lunch”. As a rule, I never place too much stock in reviews, unless 10-20 of them are all negative, so this one would not have deterred me from getting the Sim. Now the reviews on the new Samsung 49" curved monitor, those I took seriously, since the thing is 1600 dollars and change. This sim is way more involved than FSX was, and since vast strides have been made to real world A/C and Avionics, my learning curve is much higher. Although principles are the same, the buttons some of which have two fold purpose, is taking a bit to get used to.
That how group of websites that were part of the Gawker world have gone to ■■■■. Jalopnik use to be good for auto stuff but it had turned to stories from David Tracy and his obsession with junk Jeeps or them covering a someone else Youtube work. Any one good left. Nothing original out of any of their sites so it is no surprise to get a review that does not even review a product.
I’ve just looked at Bing Maps. And measured the distance between the airstrip and the mine, using their in-map tool. It is 47 statute miles. That’s 41 nautical miles. Not 30.
I’ve just flow an XCub there from Bugalaga, and am sitting parked on the plateau above it . It’s most definitely there. Looks magnificant, though a bit of a struggle for the XCub, which is only rated to 14,000 ft, and I had to climb to 15,500 or so. I’m at 13,500 ft now, which is going to make taking off again interesting…
I managed to take off again, after landing on the flat (ish) bit in the background, though it was a bit of a roller-coaster ride. At 13,500 ft, the difference between IAS and TAS makes it interesting, and it isn’t nearly as flat as it looks.
Ideological advocacy masquerading as ‘games journalism’. But at this point I think we’re all aware Kotaku is clearly engaged in some kind of elaborate self-deprecating joke.
This wasn’t a ‘review’ of MSFS 2020. It was a tedious politically-charged monologue railing against ‘late stage capitalism’ (the author’s own words), a mischievous drive-by on those evil fossil fuels, and yet another pop at successful (but, by the author’s own implicit biases, nefarious) multi-national tech corporations.
Kotaku lacks self-awareness. This deficiency harms its claims to credible games journalism, but for readers, it is fascinating and often entertaining in all the most unintentional ways.
lol, reviewer is dumb.
reviewer has issues figuring out how to navigate to a massive open air mine pit, yet here i am navigating to some remote runway in the mountains using VFR and google maps from 1000 miles away. landing on said runway, well, i was less successful with that than the navigating to it part, lol.
