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3.5 stars
Very good
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Product summary
X-Plane is a fantastic sandbox that makes a terrific counterpart to the much more rigid Flight Simulator series.
Specifications: ESRB: Everyone; Genre: Simulation; Elements: Modern Jet Flight Sim; See full specs
Gamespot editors' review
- Reviewed on: 06/01/2005
- Updated on: 06/02/2005
- Released on: 12/10/2004
X-Plane 8 may be Flight Simulator 2004's biggest competition, but the two products are about as far apart as you can get. Whereas Flight Simulator is designed by a huge team working with an enormous budget for one of the biggest companies in the world, X-Plane is largely designed by one person, on a relatively miniscule budget, who's working for himself. This labor of love is now in its eighth commercial iteration, and while other sims have come and gone, X-Plane is the only one still flying high as a potential alternative to Flight Simulator.
Flight Simulator 2004 came with a lot of planes, but it can't touch the variety offered by X-Plane. This is the most comprehensive flight simulator available to consumers, and it models everything from radio-controlled airplanes to jumbo jets to the space shuttle. Exotic aircraft, like the Hindenburg zeppelin, X-15, and SR-71 Blackbird, are available out of the box, along with more-standard fare, like a Cessna 172, Piper Malibu, and Bombardier 415 seaplane. Helicopters and VTOL planes also are supported, making it easy to try your hand at the controls of a Huey, V-22 Osprey, Harrier, or Joint Strike Fighter. If you're feeling really ambitious, it's even possible to switch from Earth to Mars, where low gravity and a nearly nonexistent atmosphere mean that flying planes designed for that environment (two are included) requires planning several minutes ahead of where you actually want to end up.
Tools are included for making your own aircraft, but they aren't easy to use. Fortunately, it is easy to modify existing planes by changing engine specifications, modifying wing shapes, and making nearly any other tweak imaginable so you can live out your dreams of being a test pilot. Many talented fans have cranked out plenty of other aircraft you can download from the Web, so there's never a dearth of things to fly.
The entire world is included in the game, along with thousands of airports, but graphics are definitely the Achilles' heel of this series. Planes don't look nearly as detailed as the nearly photo-realistic aircraft included in Flight Simulator 2004, and textures don't seem to have been updated from previous versions. Although the terrain graphics have improved considerably from version seven (as they now incorporate seamless tiles), nearly everything still looks like a vast lawn, with buildings randomly strewn throughout. Sounds are actually decent for a game of this type, with engine noises and radio chatter sounding particularly good.
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