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Fly! Is advertised
as a realistic simulation of true aviation. If that is the
case, than I must say God have mercy on your souls should I
ever fly a real airplane. My first sign of trouble was the
lack of any real tutorial. Rather, the developers thought it
more appropriate to simply put you directly into the first
scenario, in which it took me precisely 4.8 seconds to crash
into an oil rig. I had equal success with virtually every
scenario, whether it was pressing random buttons in an effort
to find the radio controls or spending 20 minutes searching
the manual for how to turn off brakes.
The manual, although longer than many novels, is rarely
helpful- containing only proverbial needles of helpful
information in a proverbial haystack of useless information
about true aviation physics. In many cases, I would finally
take off only to attempt a turn, a futile gesture which
usually sent me spiraling into the landscape below.
And what a flat, featureless landscape it is. Devoid of any
details, the majority of landscapes in the game are usually a
boring texture of pixels in an endless pattern until you reach
your destination. If this truly is a realistic simulation,
than I pity true pilots for the boring "sightseeing"
they must be forced to endure. The only tolerable landscapes
in the game are the airports themselves, if you can find them.
In most of the scenarios, you are given an origin and a
destination. Those lacking clairvoyance will have difficulty
figuring out exactly where they are going. In many scenarios,
I would find myself flying straight for an hour or so before
finally giving way to temptation and crashing in an effort to
make the terrain look more interesting for the next flight.
Many of the problems with the game stem for the non-user
friendly interface. Although the manual does contain a brief
keyboard guide, it is for the most part, aerial terms. To a
beginner like myself, this turned out to be a nightmare, as I
found it was easier to use trial and error than try to look
something up.
Multiplayer turned out to be a waste of time, simply because
no one is playing the game. The developers did throw in the
nifty feature of customizing your plane and flight, although
this is useless for anyone who doesn't have the patience to
figure out the rest of the game. All in all, I am sure this
game could prove interesting and rewarding to a more hardcore
audience of the genre. But to someone relatively new to
aviation like myself, it quickly became a nightmare. And now
if you'll excuse me, I have quite a few property destruction
charges to take care of.
-Michael Ayars |
Learning Curve: 4 hours
All scores are
out of ten possible points.
Gameplay: 4
Graphics: 5
Replayability: 4
Multi-player: 2
Player Compatibility: 2
-Highs-
Realistic, Intricate
Gameplay [Uninstaller functions properly-Ed.]
-Lows-
User Interface,
Graphics, Manual, Lack of User Friendliness
-Bottom Line-
Despite being Terminal
Reality's first entrance into the flight simulation genre, we
can only cut them so much slack. Stick with Microsoft.
34%
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