You know those time-stopping minutes as a plane nears the end of the runway, achieves lift, and then levels off? That millisecond when vertical acceleration stops and the heavier-than-air craft first attains the aspect of a weightless thing… like a leaf on the wind… in that moment the human heart feels the joy of the remarkable achievement that is flight. When I first entered the work world in the early eighties, the closest we could come to this experience was watching planes take off and land at the local airport during our coffee break through the office windows. Then Microsoft released Flight Sim 1.0. Much has changed since then, in the real world and in Microsoft, and in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Flight simulation has leveled up. This latest iteration of Microsoft Flight takes the game pilot from a flat earth limited map, to a full Earth globe. (Just in time, too for some of those 2020 conspiracy theorists.) Not only do you have the globe on your itinerary, but you have options for location-accurate weather, time, and traffic. With mp enabled, you can see friends who are in-game in the skies around you. You can visit real world landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, natural landforms like the Grand Canyon, and observe animal herds from bush planes.

Circumnavigating the globe? Exploring Greenland or Antarctica’s Ice bases? Island hopping? Whether emulating Marco Polo or Ibn Battuta, you will likely have many ideas for world-class flights. Schiphol Amsterdam is one of my favorite airports IRL, so I have spent a bit of time arriving and departing there in game. I have also enjoyed journeys such as Charles-de-Gaulle to Gandhi International (Paris to Delhi,) New York to Patagonia, and Tokyo’s Haneda International to China’s Oriental Pearl Tower, as well as ‘San Fran’ to the ‘Zahara’, and New York to Patagonia. My most recent flight was an oceanic cruise from Santiago, Chile to Queenstown, New Zealand. With the large selection of planes available at launch, the sky is no longer the limit.

The in-game Earth, like its counterpart, is populated with airports where you can fully interact with ground services and control towers. (The sound is great as well.) The menu provides a hangar for viewing your planes. With a robust flight customization system and many options and settings, you can fly anywhere, to and from any airport or even the blank spaces in between. There are many options for arriving and departing airports. You have quite a bit of flexibility for choosing landing strips, or even in-air spawning. Overall, you will find yourself with a world of options.

The graphics of the game rival the flight options. There is a full range of graphics output that you can expect, depending on your machine. Yesterday, I tried them all, just to get a good baseline, since I play the game on Ultra settings. Whether or not you will like the graphics quality is determined by which settings you use. The low-end settings are lousy tbh. While ultra is a good experience, you will not get that same quality on lower settings. So, while the game is accommodating for most players, not all will have the same experience. Processing power will still be an entrance barrier for some machines.

But, the real joy is in streaming photo-realistic scenery using photogrammetry via Bing Data World Graphics setting within the game. This should be handled with care, as results will vary depending on your internet connection. I have a (crappy) rural connection that is only slightly better this year with a new provider in the area. To handle the streaming graphics option (along with Ultra settings of course) I hit live pause while in flight and go into the settings to turn on the streaming graphics. This allows the game to load it in a steady state, and the results are awesome when unpausing the game. This can then be untoggled at will. You must respect that versatility.

The game mechanics (just like the price) are at the typical level expected from a Microsoft product. The buttons and gauges on the control panel feel realistic. Whether using a HOTAS system or a simple gamepad, the experience is like being there yourself. The price of the game is a bit hefty, especially if adding the premium packages. So, I recommend using a throttle and stick with the game if that is an option for you. Just be aware that a simple cheap gamepad works fine too. But, if you are going to pay that much for the game, you will want to beg, borrow, or steal enough for the HOTAS too. That goes pretty much without saying. And, after over 150 hours in-game, I have to say that the realistic flight mechanics of Microsoft Flight Sim are worth every dollar or euro you will spend.

Pros:
• The game is fully optimized for a triple-monitor setup, and looks jaw-dropping I might add.
• Stable performance on my machine, great fps, no crashes
• Simulation of circumnavigation
• Real-world weather system
• Realistic stress damage to planes, and the ability to scale difficulty
• Modern Smart cameras/ drone tools
• The graphics are spectacular… especially with the streaming option enabled.
• Multiple activities and scenarios simulate bush flights, landing, etc.
• The Globe interactive mode (sandbox-like) allows for staging variety of ifr & vfr flights anywhere in the world.

Cons:
• Hefty disk space usage 90+ GB. (I uninstalled games which this game made seem antiquated.)
• Loading screens are lengthy. (But, clicking the windows button gives you untemperamental access to other things on your pc while you wait.)
• Fuel usage seems a bit off.
• The AI needs some tweaking. Not sure if this is a user error, but while changing to auto pilot mid vfr flight, the AI will literally and unexplainably turn the plane around and head back to the departure point. (I guess you cannot get good help these days.)
• The price is steep, and while community mods will be available from the game menu, expect some money to be spent there as well.
• The save system appears problematic. While it does save, many options are lost when reopening, and save state is not quite accurate. I suspect saving also disables some achievements, or causes them to not be recognized.
• At some point the weather change options will vanish from the menu bar. To retain the ability to change the weather throughout, I keep the options window open and do not save or exit game until flight finished.

I fully expect these points will all be patched rather quickly. Along with that I would like to share a few other things I would like to see added in future.
• More VFR mapping options are needed, such as the ability to add pins to the map.
• More detail and zooming out in the map
• AI Improvements
• While some data is provided from log, more would be better. (Flights are only listed by month & year, for instance. Date not listed.) Alternatively, there are online options like Simbrief for planning and logging flights.


I am sold on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020! It is pure simulation at its best, and with the full globe navigation possibilities, I feel like the world is truly under my plane, and the wind beneath my wings. I loved it so much at launch that I deleted all things flight from my wishlist and pc. This tops everything else with its state-of-the-art imagery and real-Earth data.

Really, the outdoors experience in this open world sand box hunting sim is so like being in the great outdoors that most sessions I forget I’m gaming. I often even forget the fact that I’m looking for achievements in the game. And, for a gamer who enjoys the thrill of capturing every single achievie, that’s a big deal. It is the total world immersion that makes the experience of COTW so impressive. I’ve only been playing for 3 weeks, but at the time of writing the review I have 60% of the achievements and almost 200 hours in game. I am already the ‘Hero of Hirschfelden’ and ‘Lord of the Lakes’ because I’ve explored the total area of both maps. (*Mumbles to self in monologue-ing voice: “I like that. Yes I like that very much.”) The missions are challenging enough that it will be awhile before I finish them all. So, time in game is almost unlimited. I can’t see a stopping point yet.

UPDATE: Edited to remove problem with using 2nd monitor, since the latest patch 1.11.2 this works just fine. Thanks EW for the frequent updates & for listening to the community needs.

Story Lore/ Music & Sound:
I often think of the game as a mountain climbing sim with hunting opportunities. Of course, that’s because I’ve often wished for a sim for climbing mountains. And, the challenge of discovering all the sights modeled after real-life geographical landforms: archipelago, butte, canyon, gorge, volcano, and much more, is all very alluring. But, many natural points of interest are integrated into the maps, providing a history or lore to these fictional maps that matches their real-life counterparts. You are able to climb every mountain in the game. You can explore totem memorials and abandoned ruins and collect artifacts. The sound effects immerse you in the outdoor world, and the music is lovely. Every area of the map is crafted with painstaking detail that provides eye-catching splendor to each sunrise and sunset.

Gameplay:
Much of the fun gameplay comes in with tracking the animals, for hunting and for photography with the cinematic camera in the controls. The controls are all very simple, and can be keymapped for ease of use. I like the run toggle so you don’t have to hold down W. I changed the E use key to mouse 5, so that when I’m tracking I can run toggle and use the mouse to navigate and click to read the tracks as I’m running. The overlay provides mapping and a codex that stores all your accumulated knowledge of the world you’ve discovered.

The day/night cycle is 4 times the speed of in real life. So you have 3 real time hours of darkness to immerse in the nightlife of the woods, as well as those daytime hours. Many outposts are scattered throughout the maps, and provide access to your storage, the in-game store, and a sleep point. Sleeping allows you to move time ahead in hours. Setting it to 18:00 for example, would make it sundown if you want to hunt at night. But, each time you sleep costs in-game money, making it a bit more of a challenge.

Your character and your atv can take damage. Creatures stampede and can hurt you. But, ‘death’ only resets your character at a sleep point & you lose nothing. Atvs are unlimited. Abandoning one at the foot of a mountain is nothing. You can retrieve it at the next outpost, or even pitch a tent, and summon one up. Tents have a limit that seems to be about 7 or so on each reserve. With fast travel, you are able to move from tent to tent if you wanted to be in another location to hunt at dark. I like to explore in the daytime, and hunt at sunset, sunrise, and nighttime.

Tracking and missions
Throughout the world you come across animal need zones and tracks. These can be ‘read’ to give information about when the animal species was last there and often how many animals were in that location. Returning to that spot at the same time will allow you to encounter that species, whether for hunting or photography. Multiple arcs of missions are imbedded in the single player to allow the option of structured gameplay, for those who want more than just simple run and gun type game play. Of course, even the most hobbit-like adventurers like me, who love to wander around the countryside seeing all the sites and animals, love to find a cozy spot on a rock overlooking a canyon and accumulate a few carcasses down below before climbing down to harvest them all.

The Shooter Experience:
COTW has a range of weapons that you feel sufficiently motivated to collect for hunting every species. Of course, more is always better, when it comes to weapons in game. More would be even better. It also has lures, ammo, and other gear for hunting. Scattered around the countryside are woodpiles for building permanent ground blinds using in-game currency. These provide more experience points for the skills & perk trees as well. The skill & perk trees provide a good range of skills to work toward increased hunting experience for the current 60 max of levels. These add abilities such as gauging the weather, and improved tracking skills.

DLC expansions added ATV’s and tents and ground blinds. I’m not sure, but it looks as if these can be purchased eventually with in-game funds as an alternative, though it would take a lot of time. Either way, 4 bucks is the cheapest expansion dlc I’ve seen. And, the ATVs are an awesome part of the hunting and exploration. And, the tents allow portable base access; functioning like the permanent outposts throughout the maps. Personally, I’d love to see the addition of boats and fishing. But, that is just a wishlist item. I see no cons to this game.

The Diversity of Animal Life:
The game is inspired by the book, Call of the Wild by Jack London. Like the book, the game reveals much about the lives and behaviors of animals, and the great outdoors. Many species are integrated into the world of the current two reserves in Germany and America: Black Bears, Roosevelt Elks, Red Foxes, Coyotes, European Bison, Wild Boar, Moose, Red Deer, Fallow Deer, Roe Deer, Whitetail Deer, and Blacktail Deer. Besides the typical colors, several rare & albino furs appear randomly. The upcoming dlc expansion will add a third reserve in Siberia: Medved, with snow and an anticipated new selection of animals such as the already revealed Lynx.

Multiplayer
I was in Scouting myself at an early age, and later an Explorer’s Post as a young adult. I’ve enjoyed the fun of group campouts with my sons in the cub scouts over the course of a decade & the numerous camping trips with families & friends over the years, and even group & solitary hiking & camping experiences. But, I’ve never been hunting myself. As great of an experience as solitary hiking & camping can be, friendship is a huge part of the outdoors. COTW provides a smooth multiplayer experience, where you can either create your own server game, or jump in with already created servers. All outposts & locations unlocked in singleplayer are also available for quick travel on the multiplayer maps. You can join your buddies for group cooperative hunts or compete in challenges.

Graphics:
I get 60fps steady & can play mp with crappy internet. No problems at all. Second monitor & the Steam overlay works great with COTW. You can even open vids in the overlay and listen while you shift/tab back into the game, which is really nice while sitting in a hunting stand in the dark waiting on the animal herd to arrive.

I highly recommend the game for animal lovers, fans of shooters, open sandbox, and sims. The devs at Expansive Worlds have made a high quality game for everyone to love.