After playing, testing and reviewing career mode on Xbox, I’d say that the game has improved quite a lot in these few months but there are still numerous game-breaking glitches will bang your head in. Lets go through the different stages of career mode and examine the experience you will get with each stage.
Training:
This stage of the game is actually quite stable and non-glitchy. I like how you can skip lessons and go straight to the exams if you want, useful if you are an experienced player. The structure of the lessons is great. The only bits of criticism I have is that firstly, only using a controller for the lessons is difficult especially on the trim lesson since you have to move the camera and then manipulate the trim wheel with the joystick, plus on that the wheel can jolt 10+ degrees when trying to turn it and you get a pretty annoying time compared to if you spent the £100+ to buy a wheel. Apart from that though I didn’t experience any major lag and no crashes.
Early missions (First flight, Light cargo, Flightseeing, Aerial advertising, Skydive aviation, Agricultural aviation):
These missions are actually constructed very well, for example in flightseeing you actually get to see famous places and satisfy the costumers too, this is the same as the first flight too. Light cargo can get a bit tedious, sometimes the runway is camouflaged and other times there are trees right where you are going to approach, in addition if you play skydive aviation properly by following the flight path you can’t get above a B since your execution time will be 0% so you must dangerously dive down 5000 fpm to make it to the airport in time which isn’t very realistic. Overall, these missions are well done and non-glitchy.
Medium missions (Medium cargo, Firefighting initial attack, VIP transport, Rescue mission, Medevac)
Now things start to get more annoying. There isn’t much lag but there are lots of game-breaking glitches, for example in VIP transport sometimes there can be a glitch where the planes engine doesn’t turn off when you press “Quick shutdown” the only way to solve this is to put on the engine cover, even depleting to 0% fuel won’t work. These missions can take only 10 min if you skip them but the landing part can be especially annoying, in medium cargo the runways can be too short and thin, sometimes only 50m and 3m wide, also invisible walls can kill you while landing since sometimes trees can force you do dive down to get to the runway. In helicopter rescue missions sometimes there are no landing spots and when you do find one you can skid off the mountain to your death. Most missions go fine but the odd mission can prove unplayable. The planes in the missions are diverse and introduce you to new controls but the structure of the missions needs to be improved so that all missions are playable and so that you don’t waste your time.
Heavy missions (Heavy/Super heavy cargo, Passenger transport, Firefighting extended attack, Aerial construction)
To be honest some of the missions here can be a downright joke. Since the flights are long, the planes are more complicated and the procedures can be more arduous the game lags lots, for example in passenger transport the game will lag, stutter and freeze 50% of the time just on boarding. There are many glitches to avoid in passenger transport, these include:
- Don’t skip boarding and pre-flight, most of the time it causes a mission failure screen saying you left the parking stand before completing pre-flight checks even though the skip should have done it for you
- Sometimes skipping taxi will make 1 engine not turn on the the other turn on which can be a faff
- There is a bug that means you have to load in the flight plan manually into the avionics and even then the flight plan might have problems so you might not be able to turn LNAV mode on
- Even though this isn’t technically a bug the 737 MAX 8 is very sluggish and can’t climb 20000 feet without it stalling, in the EFB I recommend reducing the cruising altitude to like 15000 feet unless you are looking for a more realistic experience
- When coming in to land the game is so laggy and nearly unplayable, it’s like 2 fps
- This is the worst glitch, when you finish the mission and go onto the loading screen sometimes it just stays on that screen FOREVER all the hard work done no reward, such a faff, if anyone knows a workaround please tell me
Furthermore Heavy cargo hasn’t even released so Super heavy cargo isn’t available too. The heavy airliner certification hasn’t come out yet either so using the 747-8 or A310 in passenger transport isn’t an option sadly. Also, in aerial construction the starter mission sometimes doesn’t appear unless you get a night license. Overall heavy missions are unplayable and the ones you can play are buggy as hell and too laggy to be actually fun. Also you have to grind over 100 missions to get 737 from medium cargo so it is a big jump.
In conclusion, you can do training and early missions without incident and it is actually very enjoyable but when you progress to medium and heavy missions the amount of bugs and lag interferes with your experience and often makes you quit. If Asobo is going to make career mode more popular they are going to have to focus on fixing the bugs on the already created and structured missions and make the whole game itself more optimized and less laggy especially on Xbox (add a fauna setting!!!).
The main lesson is not to hype up and release something unless it’s fully tested and ready for players to play!