X-Plane 11

Do you love a flight simulator? Gliding through the skies like a large metal bird filled with people. X-Plane 11 by Laminar Research may be the title that can bring you all the thrills and joy that you could get out of a flight simulator.

Gameplay

As you may expect, this game revolves completely around the concept of taking off in a plane, flying it to another airport and then landing it again. Ideally without anything exploding but sometimes it can’t be avoided.

You find yourself in the cockpit of a plane of your choosing, in there you will have to maintain simple things like altitude and speed with the gauges in front of you, you will also have to stay on top of other stuff that feels like common sense like your landing gear, glide slopes, speed breaks and more but that can be forgotten.

Can you play it while ignoring all that stuff and just wing it? Yeah, sure but I may not recommend it. It’s up to you to fight through tight cross winds and rough weather to complete your journey.

There are a lot of interesting features in this game but one of my favourite was the introduction of the “system Failures.” Whether random event or initiated by you, a system will fail and it is up to you to figure out how to continue on. It adds an incredible challenge to the aviation experience. With over 33,000 airports all across the planet, you’ll have a lot of play time available to you.

Visuals

I personally found the game to share an obvious likeness to Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, although this game doesn’t quite have the same attention to detail that the other does. Now, that’s not to say the game isn’t pretty or that it doesn’t have detail but it doesn’t share the same minute details in the buildings or the landscapes. You can make use of the 3D cockpits and the stunning high resolution exterior models for all the aircrafts included in the game. Also, customisable aircrafts are a thing in this and I, for one, love customisable options in games.

Simulation

From several proven testimonies of several actual pilots, it is revealed that the accuracy of this game is way up there with near true to life. The way these planes react, the weather effects and the ridiculous amount of buttons, dials, gauges and readings that exist in a cockpit. There is also the plane maker option which was a blast to use.

Even down to the realistic airport environments, a great authenticity and effort has been put into this title and it’s clear to see.

Pros

• Interesting new systems added
• Great terrain scope

Cons

• Some of the low visibility issues pop in late
• The world isn’t as pretty as other sims