Microsoft Flight - Part One

How about another one to make up for not getting one last week? Go on! It's all yours. I insist.

[size=+1]Microsoft Flight - Part One[/size]
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I remember the last game I played anything that had 'Microsoft' plastered across it's logo. It was way back when the most powerful machine I had to hand was some Tiny PC with Windows 98 installed. When your around 10 years old and trying to use this thing to make your afternoon more interesting without much knowledge of far more interesting and entertaining games, you tend to have to mess around with other stuff instead. You doodle in Paint or try and find some new game to make from Excel. Or, you play the pre-installed games. Solitaire, Hearts, Spider Solitaire, Golf and even Flight Simulator.

While Golf seems to have been left behind in Windows 98 for whatever reason, Flight Simulator has been fixed up and buffed with updated graphics and shiny bits.

The results: Microsoft Excel hasn't much to worry about. Somehow, Microsoft Flight feels like a rip-off even though it's cost me nothing.

You see, the only way to actually get anything of any real use out of the game, you have to sink money into it. For a free game, that's understandable but it's Microsoft, so you have to buy extra planes and areas to fly around separately at a ridiculous price. Not for me, thank you. Even with your fancy interactive cockpit, I don't want to have to convert my Grandma into Microsoft Points so I can pretend to fly a Mustang.

On the surface, Microsoft Flight looks as fascinating as exploring the contents of your vacuum cleaner. As a non-flight sim fan, these things are really slow for me. The planes of flight sims old used to do nothing but potter around the digital airspace with no real context. I'll normally get bored and then crash. Often making it a game to see how quickly or weirdly I can plummet. I'm not asking for dog-fights, I'm searching for a purpose. I don't enjoy sitting in front of a screen watching dials and things rise and fall while I crawl through the air. I can't possibly be doing 105 Kph. I can walk faster than I'm flying at the moment.

So I booted up Microsoft Flight, because it was free but expecting to find it boring. So, I flew around a bit, played some tutorials, started looking at some of the missions and started flying around. Then it hit me:

By Celestia's Garter Belt, they've ripped-off Pilotwings! So they aren't complete morons in those Microsoft Studios then.

You see, we future types demand a little more than just planes flying around in our games, even the free ones. TF2 and Gotham City Imposters (basically TF2 and Call of Duty mixed with TF2, respectively) allow you to earn almost all of the contents of the game free of charge. Only a few bits require money. Compared to something like Sprial Knights where you have to buy time within the game to play. Sure, they give you about 100 energy every day for nothing but it's severely limiting to be barred from playing the game.

Anyway, Microsoft Flight aims for realism over Mode 7 nonsense by giving you some bright and sunny islands to fly around. You start off with the tutorials to get the basics of the game, then move on to the various modes. There's missions to do by the boatload and jobs you can take that are being offered by various airports. These will make you do various bits and bobs to give you something to do. Then there's the challenges, which are roughly the same and seem oddly reminiscent of secret areas of Super Mario 64 because you fly through either floating rings or collect coins against the clock. It doesn't feel the same without the threats regarding the slow death of one particular enemy/platform I keep crashing into. It's worrying that I thought I could demoralise a block of wood floating in mid-air, but there we go.

What baffles me are some of the other bits and pieces that have been shoved into this thing in order to make it more widely appealing. Firstly, we have an XP system for no adequate reason. It doesn't unlock any thing like new planes, but it will unlock new missions and new paint colours. Woo...I get that it's supposed to show how much better your getting as a virtual pilot but your not unlocking anything I'd consider cool. A plane would be cool. Plane accessories would be cool, like guns or headlights or a toaster oven. Even tassels to go on my propellers would have been nice. Nope, paint jobs and work.

Then, there's Multiplayer. Yes, Multiplayer. Honestly. It's exactly the same except you now inhabit this largely vacuous void of a game world with another human being that is also flying another plane. You can chat to each other and do stuff. I'm guessing it was meant to be like co-op for Saints Row 2 or GTA San Andreas but there appears to be no benefit or loss to the game as far as I can figure out. Apart from setting up mid-air collisions, it seems pointless.

Then we have their version of collectables called 'Aerocashes'. They operate in the exact same way as any other secret collectable that has ever existed. Precursor Orbs, Feathers, Riddle Trophies, yadda, yadda...It's exactly the same. This game expects you to find them on foot though. Yes, you can land and then exit your vehicle to roam the earth as a disembodied camera that can still make grass crunch underfoot despite having no feet or legs. There appears to be no point to the Aerocash collection endeavour either except for an achievement and an addition to your Gamerscore.

Yes, achievements. We got ones for doing good things like completing missions and getting high scores in challenges and also ones for the bad things like crashing repeatedly.

Continued in part two​